XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-11, comp.sys.mac.advocacy

Alan wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:

On 2025-06-22 21:28, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Sun, 22 Jun 2025 15:33:00 -0400, Tom Elam wrote:

So you think that Linux is sufficiently more efficient to make a
difference in which systems can do advanced rendering?

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!

Interesting site

https://vfxrenderfarm.net/render-farm-hardware/

Does Apple or Microsoft have a meaningful share of rendering OS on a
commercial scale?

Fun fact: the VFX industry is dominated by Linux.

Fun fact:

The VFX industries render farms may run Linux...

...but that's because it is inexpensive.

And fast!

--
To thine own self be true. (If not that, at least make some money.)

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XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-11, comp.sys.mac.advocacy

Chris Ahlstrom wrote:

Alan wrote:

Oliveiro wrote:

Fun fact: the VFX industry is dominated by Linux.

Fun fact:

The VFX industries render farms may run Linux...

...but that's because it is inexpensive.

And fast!

And flexible! And scalable!

--
"That's 4 for 4 whining on money, yet we're somehow supposed to
believe that no Linux fanboy considers cost a factor on Linux
'superiority'" - lying asshole "-hh", lying shamelessly

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XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-11, comp.sys.mac.advocacy

Alan wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:

On 2025-06-23 06:20, Chris Ahlstrom wrote:

Alan wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:

On 2025-06-22 21:28, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Sun, 22 Jun 2025 15:33:00 -0400, Tom Elam wrote:

So you think that Linux is sufficiently more efficient to make a
difference in which systems can do advanced rendering?

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!

Interesting site

https://vfxrenderfarm.net/render-farm-hardware/

Does Apple or Microsoft have a meaningful share of rendering OS on a >>>>> commercial scale?

Fun fact: the VFX industry is dominated by Linux.

Fun fact:

The VFX industries render farms may run Linux...

...but that's because it is inexpensive.

And fast!

Why?

Does it have magic beans?

Efficient code. Less code to load. A fully-operable desktop system with just about all the apps you'd ever need in the space of one Visual Studio install.

<https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/9gwphj/why_does_linux_seem_to_be_an_order_of_magnitude/>

--
Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is?

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XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-11, comp.sys.mac.advocacy

On Tue, 6/24/2025 8:11 AM, Chris Ahlstrom wrote:

Efficient code. Less code to load. A fully-operable desktop system with just about all the apps you'd ever need in the space of one Visual Studio install.

<https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/9gwphj/why_does_linux_seem_to_be_an_order_of_magnitude/>

Mostly what you're seeing and commenting on, is the DE part of Windows.

I've done benches before, comparing the OSes (from WinXP upwards), and the ability
to run a binary is not impeded by the design.

You can go into the visual effects panel and switch it all off,
then see what you think. Few people irritated by the DE, attempt that.

One of the things we used to do in the old days, was turn off
ZoomRects on the Mac. Which gave it a bit of extra graphical snap.
That's where the inspiration for mentioning this, comes from. ZoomRects.

But Windows could really use a rework of the DE, like a second
version that could be shipped with... 2 core processor laptops :-)
It needs an option with less Jello.

Windows tasking and threading could use work, but it's never
going to get that work, now that AI slop coding in in vogue.
The staff will be taking their eye off the ball now. It will be
graphical slop for the win (unfortunately).

What I'm referring to, is how Firefox behaves in the two OSes.
If I pretend to be selecting parts for a computer build,
on the Newegg page, the Newegg page wants to track my activities.
On Windows, the pages run slower and slower. On Linux,
that does not happen. The page continues to run smooth,
implying something about how threads are scheduled, works better.

Would it cost Microsoft anything, to improve the threading model ?

While Windows has what seems like a couple hundred SVCHOST,
most of those do not use cycles at all, which means they're
not even given a time slice to run ("not Ready-To-Run"). This
can be checked with Process Explorer, rather than Task Manager.

If the spaghetti was packaged better, you would not think
you were eating pasta.

Paul

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XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-11, comp.sys.mac.advocacy

Paul wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:

On Tue, 6/24/2025 8:11 AM, Chris Ahlstrom wrote:

Efficient code. Less code to load. A fully-operable desktop system with just
about all the apps you'd ever need in the space of one Visual Studio install.

<https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/9gwphj/why_does_linux_seem_to_be_an_order_of_magnitude/>

Mostly what you're seeing and commenting on, is the DE part of Windows.

Nah.

<snip>

--
The defense attorney was hammering away at the plaintiff:
"You claim," he jeered, "that my client came at you with a broken bottle
in his hand. But is it not true, that you had something in YOUR hand?"
"Yes," the man admitted, "his wife. Very charming, of course,
but not much good in a fight."

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XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-11, comp.sys.mac.advocacy

On Tue, 6/24/2025 6:59 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

If all the shipping code is in fact understandable, why does Windows
need to reboot about 5 times during an install?

The install happens in phases.

They keep the old Windows folder, while building
a new Windows folder.

The programs might need to be migrated. There's a phase for that.
There is a phase for installing drivers.

There's a web page somewhere that I've seen, with an explanation.

You can do an Upgrade install with the network cable connected,
or with it disconnected. The software can still bring it up.
It doesn't need the "updates" the screen tells you it needs.

And this hasn't stopped changing. The scheme is really no better,
but it was acting a bit weird on the Insider. It still took around
an hour for my Insider to update to the next release. On occasion in
the past, it completed in ten minutes. The Insider is a place for
experiments, so a user of the Insider is never surprised when
the wheels fall off or it hits a brick wall. I hardly ever make
a backup of it any more, it "forward ho", fix it and bash on it
until it moves forward. That's the Insider.

Unlike Linux, the installer has the ability to roll "all the way back"
to the starting state. Without using an actual container and an image
to do it. It can even roll back now, if the "final phase reboot" fails. Something that initially it could not handle, but they figured out
a way to roll all the way from that state, back to the beginning.

This is the extent they go to, to help naive users who don't
know what a backup is (yet).

When I do something like this on Linux, I usually do a backup first,
and not a Timeshift. And any install or upgrade, where something
valuable is involved (even with the Microsoft rollback capability),
I still do backups for that. But if the experiment is intended to
break things, and practice repair steps, then those don't need
a backup. I've managed to pull a few things out of the fire on
the Insider, over the years. My Insider started around 2014 or so,
so it has a fair amount of cruft accumulated in it.

Paul

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XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-11, comp.sys.mac.advocacy

On Tue, 6/24/2025 10:38 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Tue, 24 Jun 2025 21:31:06 -0400, Paul wrote:

On Tue, 6/24/2025 6:59 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

If all the shipping code is in fact understandable, why does Windows
need to reboot about 5 times during an install?

The install happens in phases.

They keep the old Windows folder, while building a new Windows folder.

The programs might need to be migrated. There's a phase for that. There
is a phase for installing drivers.

A Linux system can upgrade everything with a single reboot.

Why are they different? Something to do with the fact that Windows keeps a lock on open files, so if those files are essential to a running system
they cannot be replaced while the system is running?

Unlike Linux, the installer has the ability to roll "all the way back"
to the starting state.

If that were true, there would never be any failed Windows installs.

This is not a contest of wits.

The installer sequence has come a long way from its start.
A lot of energy went into this.

At one time, Microsoft installers worked with precisely one
precursor. Now, Microsoft installers handle multiple precursors
and their states. Linux, you can't jump revisions and you
proceed sequentially. 20.04 22.04 24.04

The installer today, doesn't trash anything. It's a tool
ordinary users can use. It has a rollback capability.
Part of the installation procedure, *is* the preparation
of the rollback folder. Then the thing is armed for recovery.

Failures in the phases, the lead digits, such as 10000- or
20000- tell you which phase is failing. The digits on the
end are the error code. It's not Kreskin, and it does
occasionally run into a "blocker" that the Health Check
does not pick up. For example, my ancient Intel graphics,
the Health Check did not notice the driver was XDDM, then
during the install, during the driver phase, the driver
installer noticed the unanticipated issue (that was a W10 22H2
issue). I used my imagination to figure that one out. Slapped
in a HD6450, made it install again, it finished that time.

Unlike Linux, this means you can return to the previous
machine state. Without dropping to command line and
"trying this" or "trying that". This is partially
why there are so many rude experiments on the Insider.
they continue to tune the process, and the Insider users
are now used to the hickups. But the production version
is what the end-user sees.

If they were to throw "hot turkey slices" on top of it,
they'd likely break it again :-) I'd just as soon they
leave it alone now.

It's a completely separate OS folder. On one of the phases,
you're booting on it, and have an entirely different rev set
of files. The OOBE (Out Of Box Experience) phase is later.
You keep two sets of resources, either rolling forward
or rolling back.

Once the process finishes, you can use "cleanmgr.exe"
to remove the carcass. (That's for people who worry about
such things.) On the Insider, I do that immediately so
it's ready for the upgrade next week.

Paul

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XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-11, comp.sys.mac.advocacy

On Wed, 6/25/2025 2:45 AM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Wed, 25 Jun 2025 02:02:40 -0400, Paul wrote:

This is not a contest of wits.

It does look that way though, doesn’t it?

Microsoft has, what, 100,000 employees? (Less a few thousand from the last couple of rounds of layoffs.) Yet they can’t match the versatility of a Free Software project with maybe only 1,000 reasonably active contributors
at any one time.

You know the number. The Windows group (now under the hardware head and
not a separate division), had around 7000 employees. There have been some efforts to get rid of middle management.

I can't find a recent claim of the headcount there right now.

They are likely to be using a software factory approach, in which
case there could be a bit of blurring on a day to day basis. For example,
a number of Visual Studio people were grabbed and put on various AI projects.
I suppose it might be CODEX, but that's not a given. They could instead
be working on Clippy2. Who would they bill to ?

While there have been layoffs, there isn't the level of detail necessary
to work out the Windows Division number at the moment. It could be
6600 instead of 7000. Losing 5% per annum, and having a hiring freeze,
could do that to the number for you, without an explicit firing campaign.
My company used to use attrition to manage head count. There were
more hiring-freeze times, than hiring times. It was very difficult
to hire someone during hiring-freeze time. The individual would have
to be Einstein.

You'll notice that the Windows 12 activity has been very quiet,
and it's all under the disguise of being "AI only" work. Which who
knows, might not be that far from the truth. They are spending the
hours, making crisp dialog for a paper clip?

*******

The WSL2/WSLg work is pretty impressive. It was impressive because they delivered a prototype that was a bit "glitchy" at first, but after
a week of tuneup, it was working fine. As far as I know, that's not
a hardware accelerated stack, but it works well enough that I'm not complaining. I use that every day.

Paul

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XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-11, comp.sys.mac.advocacy

Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote at 01:31 this Wednesday (GMT):

On Tue, 6/24/2025 6:59 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

If all the shipping code is in fact understandable, why does Windows
need to reboot about 5 times during an install?

The install happens in phases.

They keep the old Windows folder, while building
a new Windows folder.

The programs might need to be migrated. There's a phase for that.
There is a phase for installing drivers.

There's a web page somewhere that I've seen, with an explanation.

If you can find it, do post it here! I'm interested to read it.

You can do an Upgrade install with the network cable connected,
or with it disconnected. The software can still bring it up.
It doesn't need the "updates" the screen tells you it needs.

And this hasn't stopped changing. The scheme is really no better,
but it was acting a bit weird on the Insider. It still took around
an hour for my Insider to update to the next release. On occasion in
the past, it completed in ten minutes. The Insider is a place for experiments, so a user of the Insider is never surprised when
the wheels fall off or it hits a brick wall. I hardly ever make
a backup of it any more, it "forward ho", fix it and bash on it
until it moves forward. That's the Insider.

They do make SURE you know the risks..

Unlike Linux, the installer has the ability to roll "all the way back"
to the starting state. Without using an actual container and an image
to do it. It can even roll back now, if the "final phase reboot" fails. Something that initially it could not handle, but they figured out
a way to roll all the way from that state, back to the beginning.

This is the extent they go to, to help naive users who don't
know what a backup is (yet).

When I do something like this on Linux, I usually do a backup first,
and not a Timeshift. And any install or upgrade, where something
valuable is involved (even with the Microsoft rollback capability),
I still do backups for that. But if the experiment is intended to
break things, and practice repair steps, then those don't need
a backup. I've managed to pull a few things out of the fire on
the Insider, over the years. My Insider started around 2014 or so,
so it has a fair amount of cruft accumulated in it.

Paul

I thought the whole point of Insider was to use it on a spare/less
critical laptop, and run the main branch on your actual daily computer.

Also, good on you for keeping backups :D
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

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