3 ms·

Microsoft working on better Windows 11 and 10 graphics and audio driver quality

8 points by pizza 4y ago

rektide 4y ago
My major quibble: I can't seem to get Windows to play a movie while I play a windowed video game, without the video going at <2 fps. I've spent at least a dozen hours over the years, trying and trying and trying, different video players, different video codecs, different video codec outputs; some are absolutely terrible, others are even worse. This is not a problem I have when I am in Linux! I'm very impressed with a lot of things Microsoft is doing. They've done an amazing job making a quite capable Linux atop Windows, and have been pouring in absurd amounts of effort to make it fast (Dzn mesa-on-DirectX driver being a recent high-flying example). But there's still things like being unable to play a 720p video and windowed game that make me very confused, and very sad for Windows.
- hulitu 4y ago
  There are many things broken in windows. The main problem is that MS prefers shiny new things instead of fixing bugs so we will have to live with flickering, programs starting on nonexisting monitors, black GUI elements, audio driver not shutting down, etc.
  - rektide 4y ago
    This post does seem to be summarizable as: "we should maybe start looking at the fact that these drivers crash (and recover) pretty frequently". Which is, like, a kind of low bar. :) It's interesting seeing how open-source faces the hurdles of change. X vs Wayland, OSS/ALSA/PulseAudio/PipeWire come to mind as examples, or systemd in a variety of SysV-ish shell scripts. Being willing to do the rewrite, to change the stack for good technical cause has been an interesting fulcrum, is a much harder to find similar purchase for when you're also supporting so much legacy. The task of making organizations care about the software is hard. Orgs everywhere are so driven by "shiny new things," new markets, new features. How & where we find the caring, the will to go improve things because they're in a bad way is a stunningly hard case to make apparent, to get folks onboard with. It feels like it doesn't affect the bottom line. Or put another way... company's dont really know how close they are to the Thermocline of Trust[1][2], don't recognize when instability & chaos & inconsistency overtake the organization or product. [1] https://twitter.com/garius/status/1588115310124539904 https://twitter.com/garius/status/1588115310124539904 [2] https://every.to/p/breaching-the-trust-thermocline-is-the-biggest-hidden-risk-in-business https://every.to/p/breaching-the-trust-thermocline-is-the-bi...

8 points by pizza 4y ago

My major quibble: I can't seem to get Windows to play a movie while I play a windowed video game, without the video going at <2 fps. I've spent at least a dozen hours over the years, trying and trying and trying, different video players, different video codecs, different video codec outputs; some are absolutely terrible, others are even worse. This is not a problem I have when I am in Linux! I'm very impressed with a lot of things Microsoft is doing. They've done an amazing job making a quite capable Linux atop Windows, and have been pouring in absurd amounts of effort to make it fast (Dzn mesa-on-DirectX driver being a recent high-flying example). But there's still things like being unable to play a 720p video and windowed game that make me very confused, and very sad for Windows.

hulitu 4y ago
There are many things broken in windows. The main problem is that MS prefers shiny new things instead of fixing bugs so we will have to live with flickering, programs starting on nonexisting monitors, black GUI elements, audio driver not shutting down, etc.
- rektide 4y ago
  This post does seem to be summarizable as: "we should maybe start looking at the fact that these drivers crash (and recover) pretty frequently". Which is, like, a kind of low bar. :) It's interesting seeing how open-source faces the hurdles of change. X vs Wayland, OSS/ALSA/PulseAudio/PipeWire come to mind as examples, or systemd in a variety of SysV-ish shell scripts. Being willing to do the rewrite, to change the stack for good technical cause has been an interesting fulcrum, is a much harder to find similar purchase for when you're also supporting so much legacy. The task of making organizations care about the software is hard. Orgs everywhere are so driven by "shiny new things," new markets, new features. How & where we find the caring, the will to go improve things because they're in a bad way is a stunningly hard case to make apparent, to get folks onboard with. It feels like it doesn't affect the bottom line. Or put another way... company's dont really know how close they are to the Thermocline of Trust[1][2], don't recognize when instability & chaos & inconsistency overtake the organization or product. [1] https://twitter.com/garius/status/1588115310124539904 https://twitter.com/garius/status/1588115310124539904 [2] https://every.to/p/breaching-the-trust-thermocline-is-the-biggest-hidden-risk-in-business https://every.to/p/breaching-the-trust-thermocline-is-the-bi...