Windows 9 Technical Preview Screenshots Leak: An Analysis (Part 1)

lol - virtual desktops - lol

But are they really what Linux (or Mac) users would consider true, fully-functional, actual virtual desktops?

Bigger question is when they are going to claim they invented it...

As soon as MS can convince Apple to not make the very same claim themselves?

Too late,... MS filed a patent for it in 2004,... despite it being present in FVWM since its first releases around 1993, and having been first demonstrated on the Amiga in the mid 1980s... The patent application pretty much reads as though a patent lawyer looked at the existing Linux pager apps and scribed a description of it in legal terms,... PATHETIC...

Eyerolled so hard it hurts. Isn't it wonderful what billions of dollars can build.

There's prior art in CDE as well.

Can't MS find some budget for designers who are not color-blind?

OLVWM had them in 1992 when I first used UNIX with SunOS4.

The references to this version of Windows being called simply "Windows" rather than "Windows 9" make me wonder if they are preparing for a subscription based licensing model for Windows. Offering subscription based licenses for Windows might not be a bad thing for Microsoft, but I don't think that changing completely to a subscription based model would go over well at all. If they did try it, I think they might end up backpedaling when they realized they couldn't get a lot of people to leave Windows 7 behind with that model.

Maybe Microsoft isn't that crazy. I can't see how any kind of mandatory subscription wouldn't wreak havoc on the consumer based sales of Windows computers when people's first year ran out and they didn't see any reason they should have to pay to keep getting updates for their computer. The one way it might work is if the "Home" version were free to consumers (maybe with a one-time fee to buy the shrink wrapped version) and you only had to pay a subscription for the "Pro" and above versions.

I guess all this crazy speculation is a lot to read into the lack of a version number for the release previews. :-)

> if they are preparing for a subscription based licensing model for Windows.

I seem to recall that as one of the hoped-for developments several years ago.

At least it would give a better excuse for repeated charges than the "upgrade treadmill".

Paid subscription was what they were going for 20 years ago,... right around the time that Win95 came out... Failed to even make it to market then because of consumer distrust/dislike,... Now, with free OSes gaining traction, it'd go over like a led balloon...

Back to the original subject:

> But are they really what Linux (or Mac) users would consider true, fully-functional, actual virtual desktops?

Given the pathetic state of Windows wrt multiple user logins, I seriously doubt it.

With Linux, I can open multiple consoles and have different users logged into each. Then I can launch an X session from each of those logins and switch between them with a single Ctrl-Alt-F* key stroke. Windows still can't do anything like that.

> Then I can launch an X session from each of those logins and switch between them with a single Ctrl-Alt-F* key stroke. Windows still can't do anything like that.

Hopefully the developers of Wayland and systemd don't do anything to interfere with that kind of functionality.

Yes, I'm paranoid. Folks are making changes to the underlying infrastructure, and that concerns me.

Quoting:> Then I can launch an X session from each of those logins and switch between them with a single Ctrl-Alt-F* key stroke. Windows still can't do anything like that.

Hopefully the developers of Wayland and systemd don't do anything to interfere with that kind of functionality.

Wayland is supposed to have this capability, and additionally is supposed to be able to host a full X session itself (lending support to the idea that multiple sessions would be OK too)... Since Wayland is still very much in development, it remains to be seen. I'm more optimistic about Wayland than I am about SystemD.

From what I gather, X Windows has become a bit of an anti-pattern. It is rolling graphical control and rendering in with network transport. Wayland is an attempt to separate networking from graphical rendering which seems to me a good idea....as long as they don't lose functionality in the process.

Since a lot of desktop applications require better graphical performance and don't require the networking aspects of X, it seems on the surface to be a good move. Inasmuch as Wayland is an attempt to separate out integrated components into separate parts, it would seem to me that this is a good move. That compositing is being improved as part of the process is almost a side issue for me.

systemd seems to be going in the opposite direction: the *integration* of dissimilar parts. This is most certainly a poor solution to what is a very real problem in the Linux infrastructure, that of an over-complex mishmash of unarchitected parts.

You people don't realize Microsoft invented the Seidell Viewer in 1940, which already had virtual desktops, do you?

You younger people on this forum need to youtube for "How to use microfilm" (© Microsoft) to realize OLVWM stole it from Microsoft I guess.

Oh, BTW, you should also realize that Microsoft both invented and patented any method which may compromise - amongst other things - in one specific embodiement of the innovation, both a computing device compromising a central processing unit and readable and storable data, carrying on its data storage device an over-complex mishmash of unarchitected parts. It's not fair of Linus Thorvalds in corporation with Apple to steal it and call it Systemd!

> to steal it and call it Systemd!

chortle