Desktop ScreenShots

loren_brothers · Post by **loren_brothers** » Sat May 01, 2004 10:27 am

well,

I have to toss my hat in the ring. So here goes:
My desktop

Its nothing spectactular, but the scenery is nice!

1398342003 · Post by **1398342003** » Sat May 01, 2004 11:06 am

Here's mine. 1600*1200*32

The bar at the bottom is called Objectdock. It's where I keep all my menus and icons.

Post by **Rusty075** » Sun May 09, 2004 7:54 pm

The New Toy

PhilgB · Post by **PhilgB** » Sun May 09, 2004 9:57 pm

OT: Sweet... How is Longhorn? And where can I get a copy?

Jan Kivar · Post by **Jan Kivar** » Mon May 10, 2004 1:01 am

Rusty075 wrote:The New Toy

That looks cool. Do the windows fly from somewhere or what's exactly happening?

Cheers,

Jan

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Mon May 10, 2004 5:16 am

Rusty075 wrote:The New Toy

Hey cool, now we can have the GUI crash in 3d. Far out man!

How'd you get the mouse pointer in your screen capture? Is that yet another new feature of LH?

Post by **Rusty075** » Mon May 10, 2004 5:43 am

Longhorn is, um, interesting. That's probably the best word for it at this phase.

What you're actually seeing there is the "new-and-improved" Alt-Tab function. Since the desktop is all 3D, rather than the current Alt-Tab, where you just get impossible to differentiate icons that pop up, Longhorn rotates all the open windows in 3D space, so you can see what they are.

Like most GUI improvements, it's 10% function, 90% looks.

The new filesystem is full of fancy new features, about 10% of which you'll actually leave turned on once you using it. It's very much a continuation of what you've seen from win98, to ME, to XP. ie: XP added that "common task" pane to the left of each folder window...Longhorn adds one to both the top and the left, with more features, that's more integrated and harder to get rid of.

What's really going to get people is the hardware requirements. It requires a DVD drive to install, and a DirectX 9.0b VGA card, with 64megs of RAM, as a minimum. At the desktop, with nothing open or running, the OS consumes 480megs of RAM. Get a few windows open and a couple of apps running, and it easy crosses the 1gig mark. That's likely to drop as they refine the code, but it's still going to be huge.

At this stage, unless you're writing drivers for it, or developing software, there's no real reason try to use it as a day-to-day OS. But it is pretty fun to tinker with.

You're supposed to be a part of MS's developer/beta program to get it.....but a little googling will probably turn up a dozen or so links to downloads of leaked copies. One thing to note: if you decide to play with it, don't do it on your main machine! It has a new file system (WinFS, instead of XP/2000's NTFS) so it installs only as a clean install, and there's no going back.

Post by **Rusty075** » Mon May 10, 2004 6:01 am

Ralf, getting a screen cap was a giant PITA.

I wanted a cap of the new Alt-Tab thing, since it's the coolest feature I've seen.

Ever try to screen-cap while pressing Alt-tab? arrg.

Ended up running a vid-cap, and then just pulling out a single frame. (hence the mouse pointer showing up)

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Mon May 10, 2004 6:03 am

Rusty075 wrote:Longhorn is, um, interesting. At the desktop, with nothing open or running, the OS consumes 480megs of RAM.

HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa!

wumpus · Post by **wumpus** » Mon May 10, 2004 3:39 pm

Well, longhorn is the first completely hardware 3D accelerated GUI from Microsoft. So naturally it's going to have higher system requirements, particularly of the video card variety. Not sure where 480mb comes from, but it's still very much alpha.. not even close to beta.

Post by **Rusty075** » Mon May 10, 2004 5:02 pm

True, the code is nowhere close to the level of optimization that will in the final product. But even then, it's going to be a big leap from the current standard. (not that XP is exactly frugal in the RAM usage department

)

I still remember the controversy from when they announced the hardware requirements for Win95.

My advice: Buy stock in the memory companies.

EDIT: LH (at least in its current form) is not completely 3D. All the 3D aspects can be toggled off, leaving a GUI that is much more familiar in appearance.. Whether that feature will make it through to the final is another matter.

shathal · Post by **shathal** » Tue May 11, 2004 11:42 am

To point out - Longhorn has just proceeded to RC-1 status.

The good news, it now comes with gizmos. A colleague of mine is going to look at it at home (I can't be asked at the moment, to be too curious, haven't got the spare time).

The inquirer posted something about supposed Microsoft recommendations on for Longhorn (which i can't find right now, typical - should have bookmarked the thing).

What I remember was "HOLY CRAP" - something akin to:
- 2 GB of RAM miniumum
- CPU's 3x the speed of today's.

This isn't ENTIRELY surprising, as Microsoft seems to develop OS's with the approach of "it'll run smooth in a year or so", mostly (even though XP seems to be a nice exception, pretty well behaved OS IMHO, even though it's leaking left, right and center with security bugs

).

I'd assume the inquirer's rumour-mongering is somewhat overkill - we can ALWAYS be certain that if "you have the hardware" then "Microsoft will find a way to make use of it" ... somehow

.

wumpus · Post by **wumpus** » Tue May 11, 2004 12:28 pm

Longhorn is WAY out, I'd say possibly very late 2006 as a relatively optimistic guess for release date. Do a google search on it if you don't believe me.

http://news.com.com/2100-1008_3-5189453.html

It is a major change to the UI, possibly the biggest change since Windows 3.1 -> Windows 95 in terms of interface. Still NT kernel of course, that part isn't changing as much, but everything around it is!

shathal · Post by **shathal** » Tue May 11, 2004 12:46 pm

Never said it wouldn't take a while - it will

.

Just said that it's gone RC-1, which is distinctly different (and a good thing it's no longer beta)

.

Post by **Rusty075** » Tue May 11, 2004 1:14 pm

Longhorn is no where close to RC status. It's not even close to beta status.

Build 4074, the most recent one released, is a pre-Alpha.

MSDN Longhorn Developer Center wrote:It (Build 4074) is the second public release of Longhorn, distributed to attendees of the WinHEC 2004 conference in May 2004. It was also made available to MSDN subscribers at the same time. Like its predecessor, the PDC Longhorn, the M7.2 Longhorn is a pre-Alpha (i.e., not feature complete) technical preview designed to get early feedback from developers.

Alpha, Beta, and RC are a long, long ways away.

Tigr · Post by **Tigr** » Tue May 11, 2004 1:17 pm

You may want to join this discussion on Slashdot

And my snapshot is right here (271k!)

Post by **Rusty075** » Tue May 11, 2004 2:09 pm

I would rather take a fast ball to the groin than join any discussion on /.

but that's just me.

What is that you're running there Tigr?

ChucuSCAD · Post by **ChucuSCAD** » Mon May 17, 2004 11:46 am

Longhorn is yet another prime example of useless poorly written software that forces the general population to upgrade to it and in turn forces the general population to upgrade their computers.... and so the vicious cycle continues....... no suprise..............

On an interesting side note you do realise that the rovers on MARS only use :

RAD6000 microprocessors are radiation-hardened versions of the PowerPC chips that powered Macintosh computers in the early 1990s, with 128 megabytes of random access memory (RAM) and capable of carrying out about 20 million instructions per second

information found at www.space.com.

And a pentium 4 chip does approx 1,700 million instructions per second

We can put a robot on Mars, control it, take pictures with it. But we can't boot up Longhorn with it.

ChucuSCAD

wumpus · Post by **wumpus** » Mon May 17, 2004 6:03 pm

Yes, because god knows the computer I use to play Far Cry, and the computer we send to Mars have a lot in common

kloppe · Post by **kloppe** » Tue May 18, 2004 12:35 am

Of course we can't boot up Longhorn with it, it's a PPC. Now, MacOS X on the other hand...

peteamer · Post by **peteamer** » Sat Jul 31, 2004 12:00 pm

Back on topic , I know... Sorry... but...

On my desktop...

http://img4.imgspot.com/u/04/212/19/Desktop.JPG

And the GF's desktop taken with her own fair hand... on a crappy camera believe it or not...

http://img4.imgspot.com/u/04/212/19/PassionFlowers.jpg

Pete & whatsername...

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Sun Aug 01, 2004 6:23 am

Hmm, changed my desktop a few months ago but never posted it in this thread. Probably didn't want to go off topic from the Longhorn discussion, but now that Pete's broken the ice:

shathal · Post by **shathal** » Sun Aug 01, 2004 9:29 am

Still showing your sentiment for the Vantec Tornado, I see...

Wraith · Post by **Wraith** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 7:44 pm

Here is my current desktop. A little fuzzy because it had to be JPG-ed.

fancontrol · Post by **fancontrol** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 1:11 pm

nevermind the OS stuff, here is the current image of choice. Thanks to explodingdog.com

Wraith · Post by **Wraith** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 5:10 pm

I love explodingdog.

Dos_Junkie · Post by **Dos_Junkie** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:17 am

Mine:

http://www.geocities.com/redairo/desktopRAGE.gif

It doesn't show, but I made a custom VooDoo ensignia mouse curser

hwsboss · Post by **hwsboss** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 4:11 am

http://cdlinux.netfirms.com/Image1.gif

hwsboss · Post by **hwsboss** » Sat Sep 11, 2004 5:26 pm

updated...
http://cdlinux.netfirms.com/desktop2.png

now using litestep....

also shows desktop of mini itx pc, through VNC

top left shows system info, top right is task bar (firefox viewing spcr, and a folding client)
bottom left is the run box, and winamp, bottom right is the system tray, and the virtual desktops

start menu is where ever the cursor is, and on mine is titled "cyrehlaeder" which is old englis for "menu"