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Comment by jmmv | Hacker News Reader

I remember Windows 95 getting a ton of heat for moving the graphics subsystem into the kernel and how that made the system unstable and unsafe and blah blah blah.

What I don’t remember was the reception to KMS from this same group of folks. I think there were similar concerns but my memory is fuzzy here. Does anyone remember some details?

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Windows 95? What specifically are you talking about? It uses the GDI and driver model similar to Windows 3.1 and is nothing like any of the NT lineage OSes - and Windows 95 architecture is at its core not stable at all - it’s kernel driver model is simple but even a user mode program could crash the system with errant I/O.

Windows NT 4.0 migrated GDI into the kernel, maybe that’s what you’re referring to.

But KMS is not a graphics engine or display driver nor “moving the graphics subsystem in the kernel.” These are not at all comparable. KMS enhances system stability by allowing better modularization.

As for “the same group of folks” there is always the know-nothing peanut gallery on sites like Phoronix and Reddit, and to a just a slightly lesser extent, here. They will say whatever dumb uninformed crap they want.

I think the difference is, Windows has kernel-side windowing(!) and 2d drawing(!), while Linux only has kernel-side resolution switching.

Some comments here imply that it goes well beyond that (indeed drawing font characters in non-VGA text mode shows this), but I think this difference holds -- no GUI widgets or operations in kernel mode, whereas Windows had this since NT.

Certainly I always found it scandalous that MS did that GUI stuff in the kernel, even if the NT desktop was unusually smooth as a result. Remember this was at a time when MS was positioning NT as a server OS as well, a server OS with desktop GUI crap in the kernel.

Ah hell, I'm still disgusted by it.

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