It would be nice if they went back to a console based kernel, like DOS. Maybe DOS2006. Then you could buy GUI plugins of all shapes and sizes...
Originally posted by: SagaLore
Originally posted by: dabuddha
I haven't seen much about Longhorn. How does it differ from XP?
It doesn't. They stripped out the 3 primary features that Longhorn originally was dependent on. Now it's just XP with a few utilities slapped on.
If that's the case, then not until either some new software or some new hardware I want to use requires it.Originally posted by: FoBoT
Originally posted by: SagaLore
Originally posted by: dabuddha
I haven't seen much about Longhorn. How does it differ from XP?
It doesn't. They stripped out the 3 primary features that Longhorn originally was dependent on. Now it's just XP with a few utilities slapped on.
this is pretty much the truth. it is XP version 2. dropping the good stuff was dumb
Originally posted by: FoBoT
Originally posted by: SagaLore
Originally posted by: dabuddha
I haven't seen much about Longhorn. How does it differ from XP?
It doesn't. They stripped out the 3 primary features that Longhorn originally was dependent on. Now it's just XP with a few utilities slapped on.
this is pretty much the truth. it is XP version 2. dropping the good stuff was dumb
Originally posted by: logic1485
Originally posted by: FoBoT
Originally posted by: SagaLore
Originally posted by: dabuddha
I haven't seen much about Longhorn. How does it differ from XP?
It doesn't. They stripped out the 3 primary features that Longhorn originally was dependent on. Now it's just XP with a few utilities slapped on.
this is pretty much the truth. it is XP version 2. dropping the good stuff was dumb
if they wouldn't have dropped those "features" then Longhorn would have take much longer
I might only wait a year, but I'll definitely wait for it to mature.Originally posted by: elektrolokomotive
not until it's stable. Probably about 1 1/2 - 2 years after release.
Originally posted by: SagaLore
Originally posted by: dabuddha
I haven't seen much about Longhorn. How does it differ from XP?
It doesn't. They stripped out the 3 primary features that Longhorn originally was dependent on. Now it's just XP with a few utilities slapped on.
Originally posted by: FoBoT
Originally posted by: spherrod
Probably - looking forward to seeing WinFS (even if it's in Beta)
they dropped WinFS, so it doesn't matter now
it will come on new systems, so i'll get it at home when i buy a new computer with it
at work, we'll get copies as soon as it is released and i'll start using it to learn is ASAP
Originally posted by: spherrod
Originally posted by: FoBoT
Originally posted by: spherrod
Probably - looking forward to seeing WinFS (even if it's in Beta)
they dropped WinFS, so it doesn't matter now
it will come on new systems, so i'll get it at home when i buy a new computer with it
at work, we'll get copies as soon as it is released and i'll start using it to learn is ASAP
so WinFS isn't even included in Beta form now?
Q: I keep hearing that WinFS is a new file system. Is Microsoft abandoning NTFS?
A: No. WinFS is implemented as an add-on to NTFS and is not a completely new file system. Rather, it is a new storage engine built on the NTFS file system.
Originally posted by: SagaLore
It would be nice if they went back to a console based kernel, like DOS. Maybe DOS2006. Then you could buy GUI plugins of all shapes and sizes...
Originally posted by: Riceball
Originally posted by: SagaLore
Originally posted by: dabuddha
I haven't seen much about Longhorn. How does it differ from XP?
It doesn't. They stripped out the 3 primary features that Longhorn originally was dependent on. Now it's just XP with a few utilities slapped on.
What were the 3 big features? Link?
Microsoft beefs up its Longhorn
By Richard Waters
Published: April 21 2005 18:40 | Last updated: April 21 2005 18:40
MicrosoftIt will be the most important product from the world's biggest software company in more than a decade. It will influence the way hundreds of millions of people conduct their digital lives, and how companies manage their technology resources.
Just what this new software will amount to, however, is proving remarkably hard to pin down.
The long-awaited new version of the Windows operating system is about to move out of the realm of the theoretical. Next week, Microsoft will hand out a limited early rendition of the software to help hardware developers design compatible equipment.
More important, a test version - known as a beta release - is scheduled for this summer: at that point, the countdown to the official release, due in late 2006, will finally be under way.
"It's a big deal - it will be a significant industry event," promises Jim Allchin, the Microsoft executive who oversees the various versions of Windows designed for personal computers, servers and mobile devices. Its impact on computer users will be bigger than that of Windows XP, the last version of the software, rivalling Windows 95 as a landmark event, he says.
Even if the arrival of the software - codenamed Longhorn - does attract the razzmatazz that greeted Windows 95, it is guaranteed to have a more wide-reaching effect. In the mid-1990s there were only 100m PCs in use: now there are an estimated 730m. With the average machine replaced every four years or so, it will not be long before the new operating system is a fact of life for millions.
Trying to define exactly how Longhorn will change the PC experience, though, is not easy. Some questions are already familiar to users adopting each new generation of Windows: what are the benefits that make it worthwhile for consumers to pay to upgrade, or for companies to bear the testing, retraining and other costs of switching their PCs to new software?
"Is the current generation of Windows you're running already good enough?" asks Michael Cherry, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, an independent research company. Also, at a time when Linux, the open-source operating system, promises a cheaper, more simplified approach, do we really need another souped-up version of Windows?
To some extent, such doubts are only natural when it comes to a computer operating system. As a form of deep software "plumbing", operating systems should by definition be invisible to the user - at least until they crash, or prove vulnerable to viruses and other security breaches. It is the new applications that the operating system enables that are its real selling point.
Other considerations make the significance of Longhorn difficult to assess. One is a result of the software's tortuous development history. Delays and diversions over the past four years (see below) have led Microsoft to change its whole approach to the software.
In effect, Longhorn has been unbundled. Each of the three elements that were once touted as its key ingredients have been split off from the core system. One - a new file system known as WinFS that would have made it easier to find files on a PC - has been delayed due to technical problems, although Microsoft still plans to include it in the operating system some time after the first release.
The other two elements - Indigo, a communications technology that makes it easier for different computers to swap information, and Avalon, a technology for rendering more sophisticated 3D graphics - will be made available without Longhorn. Users of older versions of Windows will be able to run these pieces of software on their current systems, although Microsoft is likely to argue that they will work better on the new software base.
So what does that leave of the "core" Longhorn system?
According to Mr Allchin, the main selling points will be a far higher level of security (Microsoft has yet to describe how this will be achieved), easier manageability for corporate information technology departments that handle hundreds or thousands of PCs and greater ease of use for consumers. In effect, the operating system is meant to retreat further into the background, where it belongs. "It just works," says Mr Allchin.
If Microsoft can fulfil some of this promise, it would bring relief to millions of frustrated computer users and go some way towards repairing the company's damaged reputation for reliability and security. On its own, though, this hardly seems to justify all the expectations that have built up around Longhorn, or the five years that will have gone by since the previous version of Windows was released.
Rather, if the software is to be the landmark event that Microsoft claims, it will be because of the more sophisticated applications that it can carry. Yet the very nature of the technological shift that Longhorn represents makes it hard to anticipate what these new applications will be.
"Mr Allchin is telling us how great the plumbing will be, but I'm having difficulty visualising the fixtures that get built on top," concedes Mr Cherry.
Rick Sherlund, software analyst at Goldman Sachs, adds: "It's too early to say what [the results of Longhorn] will be, because it is not in the hands of developers yet."
Take Avalon, the new graphics technology that, while also due to be made available separately, is expected to draw many Longhorn users. According to Charlie Di Bona, software analyst at Sanford C Bernstein, Avalon's impact may well stretch beyond its superficial visual appeal. In the hands of software developers, the technology could be used to build simpler, more intuitive interfaces to applications that run on PCs, Mr Di Bona says.
For developers, and ultimately for users, it is the Indigo communications technology that could turn out to be the most far-reaching element of the Longhorn family of software.
Its aim - to make it easier for computers to exchange information automatically - is simple but has potentially far-reaching implications. It has been the idea at the heart of Microsoft's ".Net" vision since the late 1990s: that breaking down the technological barriers that prevent different computers and applications from talking to each other will usher in a new wave of innovation on the internet.
By letting different companies' computers exchange data more easily, for instance, business-to-business e-commerce could achieve its full potential, says Mr Sherlund.
"The whole B2B thing could come alive," he says. "You couldn't do it before, because no one had software that would talk to other people's software."
Other new pieces of Microsoft software are scheduled to fall into place to boost the overall impact of the so-called "web services" capabilities made possible by Indigo.
A new version of VisualStudio.Net, the Microsoft software tool that helps developers write software to run on Windows, is scheduled for later this year, while a new release of the Office suite of productivity software, including Word and PowerPoint, will draw on the capabilities of the new operating system.
"To a degree, Office will be a rendering engine for this new .Net generation of software," says Mr Sherlund. It will embody the technological potential in Longhorn in everyday applications that make the life of office workers or consumers easier.
Just what applications will follow, and how they will enrich the life of the average computer user two or three years from now, are the biggest questions that still hang over the software.
The long road to Longhorn
July 2002 Bill Gates says the next version of Windows will probably arrive in 2004, a year later than had been indicated. Codenamed Longhorn, it is named after a bar in the Canadian ski resort of Whistler.
June 2003 With no big new product releases due in the short term, Steve Ballmer warns that Microsoft faces a difficult period as it waits for the next generation of software based on Longhorn.
October 2003 Microsoft describes WinFS - a new file system that will make it easier to find files on a PC - as a key element of Longhorn.
February 2004 Bill Gates reveals that work on Longhorn has virtually stopped as developers are switched to deal with more immediate security problems in Windows.
August 2004 WinFS is dropped from Longhorn so that Microsoft can hit a new target release date of 2006.
April 2005 Microsoft to issue a preliminary version so that hardware developers can begin to design their systems around the software. A more complete test version is due in the summer.
December 2006 According to the latest timetable, the software will finally be available by the holiday period - more than five years after Windows XP, the last version of Windows.
Originally posted by: FoBoT
Originally posted by: spherrod
Originally posted by: FoBoT
Originally posted by: spherrod
Probably - looking forward to seeing WinFS (even if it's in Beta)
they dropped WinFS, so it doesn't matter now
it will come on new systems, so i'll get it at home when i buy a new computer with it
at work, we'll get copies as soon as it is released and i'll start using it to learn is ASAP
so WinFS isn't even included in Beta form now?
Great info and links - thanks! :beer:
i believe what has changed is the definition or, what WinFS was supposed to be and what it now is. when it was first talked about, it was made to sound like a revolutionary new file system (although its new features have been in other non-microsoft file systems for a looong time), but according to the site i linked above, it is now just an "add-on" module for NTFS
Q: I keep hearing that WinFS is a new file system. Is Microsoft abandoning NTFS?
A: No. WinFS is implemented as an add-on to NTFS and is not a completely new file system. Rather, it is a new storage engine built on the NTFS file system.
Before any work could begin on the file system, we had to define what our
goals were and what features we wanted to support. Some features were
not optional, such as the database that the OFS supported. Other features,
such as journaling (for added file system integrity and quick boot times), were
extremely attractive because they offered several benefits at a presumably
small cost. Still other features, such as 64-bit file sizes, were required for the
target audiences of the BeOS.
The primary feature that a new Be File System had to support was the
database concept of the old Be File System. The OFS supported a notion of
records containing named fields. Records existed in the database for every file
in the underlying file system as well. Records could also exist purely in the
database. The database had a query interface that could find recordsmatching
various criteria about their fields. The OFS also supported live queries?
persistent queries that would receive updates as new records entered or left
the set of matching records. All these features were mandatory.
There were several motivating factors that prompted us to include journaling
in BFS. First, journaled file systems do not need a consistency check at
boot time. As we will explain later, by their very nature, journaled file systems
are always consistent. This has several implications: boot time is very
fast because the entire disk does not need checking, and it avoids any problems
with forcing potentially naive users to run a file system consistency
check program. Next, since the file system needed to support sophisticated
indexing data structures for the database functionality, journaling made the
task of recovery from failures much simpler. The small development cost to
implement journaling sealed our decision to support it.
Originally posted by: dabuddha
I haven't seen much about Longhorn. How does it differ from XP?
Originally posted by: FoBoT
a good place to see the evolution of the MS vaporware known as "Longhorn" is Paul Thurrott's web site, he has kept the copies of the articles he has written over the years about it, so you can see the BS that was originally spewed about it and see what the current feature set has been reduced to
http://www.winsupersite.com/longhorn/