Windows 7 Gets Windows XP "Classic" Environment
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 24th Apr 2009 23:44 UTC, submitted by google_ninja
Windows It's something lots of people here on OSNews have been waiting for. It's something we've talked about, something we've theorised about, and something we've declared as the future for Windows' backwards compatibility - and now it's here, and official. Over a month ago, Microsoft bloggers Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott have been briefed by Microsoft on a technology for Windows 7 called Windows XP Mode. Available as a free download for Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate users, it's a fully integrated and licensed copy of Windows XP SP3 in a VirtualPC-based environment, with full "coherence" support. In other words, it's Microsoft's variant of Apple's Classic environment, and it's coming to Windows 7, for free. Near-instant update: The Windows 7 RC will indeed be available publicly on May 5. TechNet/MSDN will get it April 30.
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RE[5]: Get rid of DLLs? Why?
by kaiwai on Sun 26th Apr 2009 03:40 UTC in reply to "RE[4]: Get rid of DLLs? Why?"
kaiwai
Member since:
2005-07-06

Yes I did. Now would you care to explain exactly why you think windows should get rid of dynamically linked libraries? Posting a bunch of links does not a valid argument make.


The irony of Anymous Penguin is the fact that he provided a link ( http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/coffee-lounge/37811-does-linux-use... ) that refuted his stance on the issue of DLL's and the apparent issues in the form of DLL Hell (which is just as annoying as dependency hell)

Actually, "DLL" is a generic computer science term -- A "Dynamically Linked Library" is just that, a library which, rather than being linked statically into the executable, is linked dynamically at runtime. It just so happens that Microsoft chose the generic name as the name of their implementation as well.

In most Unix systems, the object and executable file format is called ELF (Executable and Linking Format). A part of ELF is the Shared Object specification (hence the filename suffix ".so"), which is the ELF implementation of DLLs. The name "shared object" is, of course, derived from the fact that they are (usually relocatable) objects that are shared by several processes simultaneously.


So Linux/UNIX has DLL's already but they're called share objects, but then the person goes on to say:

Mind you that the ELF shared object system is far superior to Microsoft's DLL implementation, though, in that shared objects can be versioned. That way, one system can have several independent versions of the same shared object installed simultaneously, as to maintain binary compatibility for compiled executables. Microsoft's DLL implementation has no concept of versioning, so when one program overwrites an existing DLL with a newer or older version that it wants, that is what is known as "DLL Hell".


So the issue has nothing to do with DLL's but the lack of versioning of DLL's; that can be fixed without making an idiot claim of 'getting rid of DLL's'.

PS. What I am posting is on the assumption that the the post on that link is correct.

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