Longhorn in 2006 639
worm eater writes "Microsoft Watch reports that Microsoft officials are now aiming for a 2006 release date for Longhorn, the follow up to Windows XP. Microsoft has been hyping aspects of this OS to its partners since 2001. I'm beginning to wonder if the industry will be in a far different place than Microsoft envisions 3 years down the line."
Keep putting it off. Please ! (Score:3, Interesting)
changes in industry (Score:0, Interesting)
-j2g
Am I the only one... (Score:5, Interesting)
competition... (Score:3, Interesting)
hopefully, this will level the playing field a bit, and give more marketshare to Macs and other *NIX based OSes.
The Good and the Bad (Score:2, Interesting)
Longhorn == Cairo (Score:5, Interesting)
Flash forward to now: Apple is regaining a bit of strength on the desktop, Linux is seriously eating into their server revenue, and while Windows Server 2003 is itself a solid (if unexciting) product, the greater gestalt of the Windows Infrastructure is looking more and more like a bug-ridden, unmaintainable mess. But wait, we've got this really cool technology just around the corner, it's called Longhorn and it'll get your whites whiter, you're gonna love it!
The more things change...
Strange juxtaposition (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other hand, I will only have to wait a week to find a root expoit and regain access to my own computer.
Sort of strange isn't it? Everyone can gain access to your computer (1200 inevitable bugs)... except you (DRM).
Re:Keep putting it off. Please ! (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, I think the opposite is the problem. It seems that DRM restrictions are aimed at protecting other people's content, while so far MS has done a poor job of protecting my content.
I stuff that I create (documents, code, music, whatever) is very open to theft on my Windows machine due to MS's poor security. Yet, they are spending tons on DRM for other people's content.
Since their main customer is the mass-market, why don't they spend more time protecting the mass market and less protecting the professional artists with DRM? There are more of us than them.
(BTW, before you get the wrong idea, I am a supporter of IP and its protection, however, I am an even bigger supporter of the monopoly supplier's responsibility to its customers. If they were not a monopoly I, frankly, would not care, and would let the market decide. Them being a court-verified monopoly places certain resonsibilities on them)
Re:Longhorn...and then... (Score:2, Interesting)
We worked on this for a month, then rolled back to 2000. Just so you don't waste your time, the following had no effect: stop caching dlls; move pagefile to it's own partition; keep kernel resident in memory (yeh, that was a crazy guess); complete reinstall (just recurs over and over after a month). Strangely, it did help when we ran Open Office on one instead of MS Office, but it just took longer to slow down.
Re:Screenshots (Score:1, Interesting)
Can we expect twice that in 2006?
hilarity (Score:5, Interesting)
Not surprising that as soon as a ton of people are on this licensing scam^H^Hscheme, they can now make everyone wait 3 years for anything new.
A total rewrite? (Score:2, Interesting)
On a side note, i've been toying around with the new .NET stuff and it seems that their hope is to make the system more secure by basically having all the programs emulated by the framework, therefore nothing actually changes the OS, you guys think that's a good way to do things?
Spacing them out may not be so bad (Score:3, Interesting)
Independent of the technical nature of the changes, if you want to seriously hype an OS maybe every-few-years is the way to go. It's hard to gear yourself up for a massive [sales jargon]paradigm shift[/jargon] every 12 months. The Mac OS that went out in 1984 basically underwent evolutionary change until OS 7, which brought true multitasking. Even OS 7 wasn't that jarring a change. Then it bounced happily along until OS X, really, if you don't count the hardware changes involved in the PowerPC chips and then the G3s.
Not that I'm exactly enthused about Longhorn, or anything -- OS X will do fine for now. But the delay isn't necessarily going to hurt the marketing, here. People need a little rest between blockbusters -- when it's one must-see movie after another they get bored with it.
Not worth looking at (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft has yet to reveal their "photorealistic" interface codenamed Aero that is supposed to revamp the entire Windows interface. They're considering keeping it secret until release so that nobody steals their ideas. KDE, look out.
Re:Screenshots (Score:1, Interesting)
Longhorn and Vegas (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft! Hear my plea!! (Score:5, Interesting)
We don't need compatibility any longer. We're used to upgrading everything every 30 days anyway. We can dual boot the way Apple users continue to do between OSX and MacOS9.
Write the OS so that only the OS runs at ring 0. Write the OS so that it fixes the problems associated with the message queue. Write the OS so that user level restrictions are STRICTLY enforced so that even if there is a bug found, the damage it can cause is severely limited. (Meaning that an SQL bug doesn't result in email viruses being distributed across the internet.)
Please forget about tremendous levels of programability!! We don't need a word processor that knows how to format my hard drive or copy files into my system directory!! We just want it to process words. So far, the only people who really know how to use these "features" are the freaking virus authors!!!
It's not like you have to do a lot of thinking about it. Apple saw the light and went with an advanced yet tested kernel. It has ALL of the appropriate features built-in with a license compatible with their purposes. Write your own *NIX core if you want to.
Want to shut down Linux users? Write your next OS on a BSD kernel, make the old Windows apps work the way people want them to (it can be done... it's BEING done) and sell it to people. They will buy it because there are people out there who still trust you for some reason. Once you out out something with a *NIX kernel, you will see an amazing amount of curiosity and popularity.
And did I mention that trivial bugs needn't be fatal flaws if the kernel enforces proper user level security? If I hadn't, then I will say it now. Trivial bugs needn't be fatal flaws if the kernel enforces proper user level security!!!!
Re:Keep putting it off. Please ! (Score:3, Interesting)
Do What? (Score:2, Interesting)
Like most everybody else, I have some serious doubts about the idea that XP can last until 2006 as a viable competitor in the desktop market... Linux is a serious alternative to Windows on the desktop, and frankly, OS X is way ahead if you got the cash.
But the thing that jumps out at me with this news is the idea that there will be no new Internet Explorer until Longhorn's integrated browser. There will be plenty of XP die-hards still using it in 2006, I'm sure. But IE is old, buggy, and is facing vastly superior competition right now. There's no way IE can survive that long unless there's some sinister aspect to this plan I'm just not seeing.
MS, problems and cashflow (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't nearly hate Microsoft as much as some of the fanatic zealots, I've used Windows in all colours from 95 to XP to 2k Advanced Server, and I actually think that mostly it's good enough. I have found software relatively easy to install and use, and security to be mostly ok if one took the time to take note of patches and security warnings (Blaster could have been avoided by most by simply closing the port or stopping the service). I even find Office to be good enough, even though I have never used more than perhaps 20% of its features. The OS has definitely improved in XP and major apps like those from Adobe or Macromedia run better there than on my Mac.
What I still don't like about Windows is the lack of UI consisitency. The dialogs and window layout in system critical components is anything but easy to comprehend and most often just resembles a mess of older dialogs that have been rearranged and newer ones that have been "tacked" on.
However, for most people, Windows has been good enough even though the vast majority of PC users do NOT really understand how their computer works (and why should they?). Now on to my Longhorn puzzlings:
1. I think MS has the cash reserves to withstand major mistakes that no other company can afford to make. Witness the subsidy of the XBox. MS can really afford to make major OS mistakes and the money will still flow in as the sheer momentum of all those millions of PCs that get sold all have Windows OEM on them. The situation might change a bit by 2006 in that Linux could well have achieved some critical mass in the business world by then. That possibility is, by all accounts very real, and I doubt that any business that will have switched to Linux will ever switch back to Windows, no matter how good it is, simply for the price point, which MS cannot beat. In home PCs I seriously doubt that Linux will have made huge gains by 2006. Some but not much. Windows is too entrenched in the home, I think.
2.MS cash reserves could dry up very quickly if no new products arrive by 2006, but as some else mentioned, there's 64bit computing to consider, although I think Apple and especially Linux will beat them to the gun with uptake initially. I think that in the server arena, Linux will definitely beat Windows in 64bit computing.
3.MS' UI task oriented approach as implemented in XP will almost certainly be a major feature in Longhorn in order to make the PC easier for home users to understand, but unless they address the issue with user newbie feedback studies, it will only confuse users as much as the current approach.
4.The new compositing model, will probably present MS with major headaches initially as legacy software will probably work but not as well as it did before. It will be used to market the hell out of Longhorn though.
5.Microsoft will, I'm sure, use whatever methods they can to lock future users in, be it server incompatibilities with Exchange or with DRM or with special pproprietry protocols, they will do as much as they can. They will certainly try to get hardware makers to implement features that lock out Linux, such as hardware DRM, and an MS coded BIOS that will break the hardware if changed, or things like DirectX only graphic cards. I'm sure MS sees this as a point in their survival.
6.Lonhorn is probably a make or break milestone for Microsoft. They probably want to get as many users as possible onto XP and 2k3 server before Longhorn arrives. Longhorn will probably be for them like Win95 was, released with huge media attention pointing out the ease and beauty of the new OS. The timing is probably ok because their marketshare won't drastically erode by then. The only questions will be how far Linux and OSX will have progressed by then (probably quite a lot judging by what's happened since 2000) and if the enterprise will not have changed by then.
Re:Keep putting it off. Please ! (Score:1, Interesting)
If you could turn off RPC in Winxp and 2k this might be true.
see SOAP.
DRM as envisioned in palladium will allow a well written rootkit worm to spread to every DRM enabled box on the planet in a matter of weeks without anyone being the wiser.