The new Windows 2006, the benefits?

[Trev]

The principal benefit of as 3D accelerated desktop is user interface speed. So much time and effort has gone into pushing the 3D hardware envelope this last decade that not using their 3D capabilites for conventional user interface rendering is a waste.

Well, just about every chipset since the Voodoo Banshee has included features for accelerating 100% of the Windows GDI API, and full DirectDraw support (now part of Direct3D, I think) followed soon after. I don't see any benefit to a 3D interface on a 2D surface--unless someone comes up with a substantially different mode for controlling productivity applications.

Anyhow, it's still just Windows NT. The kernel has improvments and new features, but a prettier Windows Explorer and XML-based everything doesn't really do anything for me. :-/

[Trev]

Responses to various posts in no particular order. . . .

From what I can tell, the Longhorn kernel isn't substantially different from any other version of Windows NT. Improvements here and there. . . . Changes to the driver model. . . . Some new native API calls. . . . And the Win32 API is still the same API we all know and love.

I usually disable all the flashy GUI stuff (fades, transparency, etc.) and get everything as close to a Windows 95 style shell as possible, with the addition of the address bar in Explorer for quick entry of file system paths.

Getting past and current versions of Windows NT to run with a console interface shouldn't be all the difficult. Of course, you'll be limited to console applications, and that defeats the purpose of running Windows. It should also be possible to run Windows NT with a UNIX-style set of consoles, including separate GUIs (e.g. the Windows NT 3.x vdesk driver), but you'd need to do a bit of kernel hacking.

Anyhow, it's an operating system. You can do whatever you want with it. Most people just stick with the operating environment provided by Microsoft.

Trev

[Trev]

Any change would be an improvement. I've never liked the old MS-DOS promt, but after starting to learn how bash works, CMD looks completely braindead.

I'm rather attached to the Windows command prompt, but I would like to see support for Bourne-style command substitution using backquotes or $() syntax.

[Trev]

True, the kernel is based on Windows 2003. The Win32 is there for compatiblety. Longhorn programs are supposed to use the new Api, some of wich are going to be backported to XP. The GFX engine isn't going to be, so no "fancy" longhorn effects on XP.

Bits of the kernel have been moved around and rewritten over the years, but it's still Windows NT, regardless of what Microsoft labels it.

Windows without Win32 would be pretty useless. (And actually, the lack of a 16-bit WoW environment in Windows x64 will probably keep me from upgrading.) And unless the new interfaces interact with the kernel directly (i.e. int 2e, syscall, or sysenter) or indirectly through ntdll.dll, they're riding on Win32 just like everything else. I suppose I could install Longhorn and take a look. :-) So little time to play. . . .

Trev

[Trev]

One report I've heard (not sure how reliable the source is) says that even 64-bit optimised games with Win64 drivers isn't as good as normal XP on the same hardware. That's probably just a product maturity issue, a few SPs later and it'll be probably fine

That sounds more like a developer maturity issue. It will be awhile before developers work out optimizing their code for x64 processors. In the meantime, you'll see similar performance with more features (more detailed models, deeper playing fields with less fog, etc.).

Trev