Can we ever have a perfect distro? A call to the community

[ardvark71]

Re: Can we ever have a perfect distro? A call to the community

Firstly, there is no explicit counterpart of Xorg in Windows. The Windows graphical interface is managed by the kernel and its modules which talk to the video driver, and not in the userspace.

Hi saurav...

So in this case, we're talking about one less "layer" of software (in Windows) that handles graphics?

Regards...

[saurav]

Re: Can we ever have a perfect distro? A call to the community

It's not technically one less layer. The architecture is actually different. The work that Xorg does on Linux is done by an "invisible" layer on Windows. These layers are part of the Windows kernel, so the entire graphics mode on Windows is run by the kernel, which is not the case on Linux, which is primarily a text-mode system where the graphical system runs outside the kernel. For details see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l.../cc768129.aspx. In that article enlarge Figure 9-1. You will see a component called Graphical Digital Interface towards the lower right side. That part is, very "roughly", similar to Xorg, but not exactly. Also note in the figure that the entire graphics part is in kernel mode. You can also see this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT as a source other than Microsoft itself. In the image in the Wikipedia article the name of the component has been shortened to GDI, which is what it is commonly called in the Windows world. This architecture is fundamentally different from that used on Linux. For the Linux architecture, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linux_kernel_map.png. Note that there is no graphics subsystem shown in that image.

[ardvark71]

Re: Can we ever have a perfect distro? A call to the community

Hi saurav...

Thank you for your clarification

Regards...