Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 22nd Oct 2007 13:48 UTC
Earlier today, OSNews ran a story on a presentation held by Microsoft's Eric Traut, the man responsible for the 200 or so kernel and virtualisation engineers working at the company. Eric Traut is also the man who wrote the binary translation engine for in the earlier PowerPC versions of VirtualPC (interestingly, this engine is now used to run XBox 1 [x86] games on the XBox 360 [PowerPC]) - in other words, he knows what he is talking about when it comes to kernel engineering and virtualisation. His presentation was a very interesting thing to watch, and it offered a little bit more insight into Windows 7, the codename for the successor to Windows Vista, planned for 2010.
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Member since:2005-11-12
Member since:2005-07-06
64bit computing on WIndows is useless to say the least, may was well run 32bit version because only a handful of apps are 64bit. Windows 7 pure 64bit like they said is there marketing team after a bad night out.
The kernel, drivers, and all of the apps in the package are 64-bit. What's not pure about it? In terms of third-party apps, most don't need 64-bit versions. They run on x64 Windows just fine via WOW64.
Depending on your workload, 32-bit Windows may be fine, but some people benefit from the larger available address space (even when running 32-bit apps -- particularly some games).
Member since:2005-06-29
Nothing speaks against a completely new main subsystem, keep the old one running side by side for "legacy" applications. Glue put where needed (i.e. windowing).
The NT kernel indeed allows for subsystems (up until Windows 2000, for instance, it had an os/2 subsystem), but would you really want to run the entirety of win32 in an NT subsystem?
One of the prime points in these two articles of mine is that you really do! not! want! to ship/run the current Windows userland, because it is a mess - if you move it to a subsystem, you do just that: you move it to a subsystem. You're just moving it around, you're not sandboxing or isolating it.
Member since:2006-03-20
The NT kernel indeed allows for subsystems (up until Windows 2000, for instance, it had an os/2 subsystem), but would you really want to run the entirety of win32 in an NT subsystem?
Actually, Win32 as it is, IS a subsystem in the very sense of the NT definition. Maybe with the years, they spaghetti coded some stuff, but that's being unwired for quite some time now (been said a whole lot during the Vista development, and Traut said it in his presentation).
One of the prime points in these two articles of mine is that you really do! not! want! to ship/run the current Windows userland, because it is a mess - if you move it to a subsystem, you do just that: you move it to a subsystem. You're just moving it around, you're not sandboxing or isolating it.
If it runs in a tailored VM or in a controlled subsystem (using resource virtualization a la UAC), where's the difference? Latter is easier on the total system.
As said earlier, the best way to implement this IMO would be using a construct like Solaris Zones, where there's hard partitioning inside the kernel already, running full blown operating systems (well, everything right above the kernel) inside the partitions, but using the same kernel and as such able to share resources (mostly just CPU and memory). Using a huge shim, you would be able to keep the old Win32 system running, just like Solaris can run e.g. the whole unmodified Ubuntu userland using a syscall translator in a zone.
VMs really aren't a solution for this, because they're too static and have a huge footprint (memory). To make them more flexible in that regard, the guest operating system would have to be able to deal with fluctuating memory sizes. I don't see that coming anytime soon, at least not automated, because different systems deal with memory pressure in different ways, resulting in a memory scheduling clusterf--k.
Member since:2005-07-11
WOW64 is proof, shipped with any 64bit Windows, that it's entirely possible to run two different userlands (more like subsystems) on the same kernel. There's a full 32bit subsystem installed to run any 32bit application, and apart from messaging, the 32bit subsystems runs completely on its own, only sharing the kernel as common code.
WoW has been around since the earliest releases of Windows NT 3.51. There were several "personalities", as they were called, released with NT 3.51:
- Win16
- Win32
- OS/2
- Posix
- probably more, but that's all I can remember off the top of my head
The OS/2 personality was dropped with Windows 2000, the Posix subsystem was "replaced" with Services for Unix, and Win64 was added.
This is not a new concept, and was one of the main selling points of Windows NT back in the day.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/25/13 0:45 UTC
"So in summary... Google has pulled the plug on support on a protocol they've helped popularize, after years of promising interoperability, for reasons that are dubious at best, and in a way that leaves people who don't jump to the new Hangouts app unable to talk to their contacts without any feedback that their IMs aren't getting through... And they've done that with no warning to anyone. I imagine there's a bunch of people out there wondering where some of their buddies have gone, or why their messages aren't getting responses, because this isn't documented anywhere." Google really messed this up. Such a dick move.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 23:59 UTC
The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 22:33 UTC
Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Linked by Howard Fosdick on 05/24/13 21:41 UTC
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 14:44 UTC
"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 23:22 UTC
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 22:04 UTC
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 22:01 UTC
"In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 17:52 UTC
"The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 22:23 UTC
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.More News »
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Member since:
2006-03-20
I keep posting it whenever this topic is being talked about.
WOW64 is proof, shipped with any 64bit Windows, that it's entirely possible to run two different userlands (more like subsystems) on the same kernel. There's a full 32bit subsystem installed to run any 32bit application, and apart from messaging, the 32bit subsystems runs completely on its own, only sharing the kernel as common code.
Nothing speaks against a completely new main subsystem, keep the old one running side by side for "legacy" applications. Glue put where needed (i.e. windowing).
Alternatively, Microsoft could take a clue from Solaris Zones, if there's a more heavy-handed approach needed (quasi full hosting of an operating system), which is still lightweight in regards to resource sharing.