On 30 January Microsoft released Vista, a new version of the Windows desktop operating system. Since then we have been evaluating the operating system to ensure that the CERN computing infrastructure can support Windows Vista natively.
The last issue of CNL (April–May 2007) gave a humorous announcement of the arrival of Windows Vista, with a cartoon by Patrick Chappatte. We would like to introduce Vista in a more structured way. The following article describes the benefits of Vista compared to XP, includes a selection of new features and the hardware required to run Vista, and discusses issues of application compatibility.
Why Windows Vista at CERN?
In October 2001 Microsoft released Windows XP. At that time the IT department’s Internet Services group (IT/IS) started to evaluate it and prepared a pilot deployment in 2002. After one year Windows XP became the default Windows operating system at CERN and started to replace Windows 2000 computers. The operation ended in 2006 when the IT/IS group followed Microsoft and stopped supporting Windows 2000. The move from Windows 2000 to XP was smooth because it was begun so early. Learning from that experience we know that this is the right time to start Windows Vista at CERN.
Another motivation for deploying Vista is that it is more secure than Windows XP. The design and development of this new operating system incorporates Security Development Lifecycle, which addresses concerns about security in the core components of the Windows kernel. As a result Vista contains many security-related features; the most visible one, User Account Control, is described later.
Today all desktop computers bought at CERN support 64 bits but are installed with the 32 bit version of Windows XP. This limits the address space and the total memory size to 4 GB. What is more, the Windows operating system reserves half of this address space to the kernel, limiting the total address space to 2 GB. Several applications used at CERN in the field of engineering, such as CAD, structural calculations, monitoring and databases, are limited by the 32 bit address space and may soon require a 64 bit desktop operating system. At CERN we need to ensure that the central computing infrastructure is compatible and can support this new generation of operating system. Although there is a 64 bit version of Windows XP we will jump directly to 64 bit Vista. It doesn’t make sense to introduce 64 bit XP when Microsoft will stop supporting it in a few years’ time.
What is new?
There are many changes in the new operating system, and we will highlight those that are the most important and visible for the end-user.
Graphical user interface
The most visible change is the graphical user interface. The sidebar on the right side of the screen (figure 1, note 1) contains small applications (“gadgets”) that can keep information easily accessible. The sidebar can be customized to show, for instance, a calendar, the local weather forecast, the time or the content of an RSS feed that you have subscribed to.
Depending on the capabilities of the graphics card, the look and feel of your system can differ slightly. With the most advanced cards Vista activates the Windows Aero user interface. In this case the windows and start menu are transparent, which is called the “glass effect” (figure 1, notes 2 and 3). By moving the mouse cursor over the minimized items in the task bar on the bottom of the screen you can see thumbnails of the application windows, which can help to quickly identify the window you want to maximize (figure 2, note 4).
Another nice graphical effect, called “flip 3D”, occurs when you change the active window using Win+Tab keys (figure 3). The Alt+Tab keys will give the same effect but in two dimensions.
File system
The major improvements to the file system are in the search and index capabilities. The Windows desktop search, which was optional on XP, is now a native component of the operating system and its performance has much improved. With Vista you can run a more advanced and almost instant search of the content of your disk.
Users can also specify additional tags, save them in the metadata information that is kept with every file and later search for documents that have a defined tag. Figure 4 shows how a Vista tag can be added to a Microsoft Word document, and figure 5 shows how you can search for files that have a defined Vista tag.
Another improvement is the Previous Versions feature, known as Shadow Copy on earlier Windows servers. Now you can restore previous versions of a document stored on your local disk whenever you need it, as well as recover deleted items. On Windows XP you can do that only with files stored on central servers.
Security
A list of all the security-related changes introduced in Vista would be long and probably uninteresting for most end-users, but one of them is worth mentioning because it will be visible to the user. This feature, called User Account Control, replaces the NICE Non-Admin tool. In Vista, each user who is a local administrator by default runs applications without administrator rights. Each time an application requires administrative action the user is prompted to agree for privileges to be elevated (figure 6) and becomes the local administrator just for the duration of that action. A user can also force the system to run certain applications with elevated privileges by right-clicking the application icon and selecting “Run as administrator” (figure 7).
Hardware requirements
Before installing Windows Vista on your computer you should be aware of its hardware requirements (see table). Microsoft distinguishes two levels of hardware compliance for Vista. A computer that is “Vista capable” can run Vista, although some features, especially graphical effects, will be disabled. A “Vista Premium ready” will run all features and graphical effects.
Beyond the minimal hardware configurations, our tests show that 1.5 GB RAM will boost performance significantly, especially if the graphics card does not have the dedicated 256 or 512 MB memory. Similarly it is recommended to have at least 50% of the hard disk free, so a 60 GB hard disk is advised. This will avoid the decrease in performance that occurs when the operating system runs on a fragmented hard disk.
Application compatibility
Although Vista can run most Windows XP applications natively, there are no benefits in running the legacy desktop application on Vista compared to XP. That is why it is important to ensure that the desktop applications are compatible and support the latest Vista features. For this reason, Hummingbird Exceed has been upgraded to version 2007 and the CorelDraw suite has been upgraded to version X3. Similarly we plan to only support the 2007 release of Microsoft Office on Vista.
The status of Vista at CERN
Today a limited number of computers are running Vista at CERN. In August we plan to start a pilot project to enable end-users to install Vista on their computers. We are investigating certain issues with Microsoft and hope that these will be solved by then.
During the first phase of the pilot project we will propose the 32 bit version of Vista, and the 64 bit version will follow a few months later.
If the project is successful Vista may become the default installed operating system on new standard Windows desktop PCs before the end of 2007.