A Quick Peek at Longhorn

Kaypro writes: "The Register has an interesting article with some minor details regarding Microsoft's next OS. P2P, filesystem plugins and some thoughts from Hans Reiser, of ReiserFS fame make for an interesting read."

Comments

Scary future ahead

[tapiwa]

P2P at the filesystem level!

Couple that with MicroSoft's security trackhistory, and possible T1 pipes in every home in a few years, and I see virii mailing entire directories of data.

Scary thought huh??

Re:Scary future ahead

[PowerTroll 5000]

What I don't seem to understand is that Microsoft, a major player in the copyright industry could support P2P on any level, unless your trackhistory sytem could catch offenders in the act.

Proc suport

[Mr.Intel]

I bet they still won't support my PPC proc and mobo! Damn Microsoft bastards!

I like the antitrust jab at the end.

[dave-fu]

The bit about how Oracle may have an antitrust suit on their hands because MS is making the filesystem a front-end for a database. Uh. Doesn't RedHat ship with a database? So are Oracle's lawyers knocking on RH's doors?
Good to know that barratry is the solution for all your (potentially) obsoleted business. Just ask the RIAA...

Re:Quick Question...

[GigsVT]

Linus sees it as a competitor, respects them,

I guess you'd like to think that, and it sounds good and fits into you message well, but Linus has repeatedly said he doesn't care one bit what Redmond is doing, and isn't even familiar with a lot of the newer features in their OS. His singular goal is to make Linux better than Linux, not better than anything MS makes.

relational databases as fs

[jd142]

I've heard talk of this over a year ago, and while at first it sounded like a really overblown idea, the more database work I do, the more interesting it becomes.

There are a few problems though:

Boot media. Right now, in the windows world, most boot floppies are fat12. NTFS won't fit on a single boot floppy. And it is a pain in the butt to make a bootable cd when compared to making a bootable floppy.

So what happens when you need to boot from something other than your hard drive? How easy will it be to make a boot cd?

What about the way MS keeps things hidden from you? Try this in XP: make a directory. Put 1 file in it called "testme" with no file extension. Open the file and type in the word "apple". Now do a search for all files containing the word apple in that directory. Windows won't find it.

What happens when you do something with a file that the relational database can't handle?

Done well, this has the potential to be really cool. I doubt it will be done well.

Database Filesystem

[kill-hup]

I personally think the idea of an sql-ish filesystem might be handy for some tasks but not the majority of them. I can see the benefits of running queries on my email and documents (and maybe even log files), but I question the performance of such a system in general. I can't imagine access time would not be affected signifigantly by this - even for the home user. I definitely can't see running this on a server level - can you imagine all the I/O involved in email processing on a large server running a DB FS?

Re:Pluging FS

[lseltzer]

You talking about the File System Driver reference? Try http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/wmeother/s torage_5uig.asp

Just because you haven't looked for it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

sounds like something I have seen before

[Rubbersoul]

The demonstration version of Longhorn ... displays a new type of task dock that can include everything from stock tickers to work group collaboration features. ... That's the pane in Office XP that provides a list of most recently used files, or clipboard entries, or other frequently-accessed features.

Does this sound so very similar to any other Windomanages to anyone else. So often on slashdot I see comments regarding Linux needs to stop playing catch up to Windows, but now it seem that Windown is playing catch up to Linux in may errors:

- Security is now a hot iteam at MS
- The "new" task bar

Ok that is only a few and to clarify I am not saying that Linux is beating MS, but it does look that MS sees many good ideas with the work being done with Linux.

Re:Pluging FS

[Fishstick]

Oh yeah, wasn't there a way to get ntfs support?

or is this something different?

food for thought

[dougg]

First off, the "let's make your filesystem a database with an interface" and P2P scares me considering they are talking JET engine derivatives. MS is not known for it's security. Earlier this month there was an article about suggestions for tightening their security, and they obviously ignored it while placating to the masses that they are going to do everything to make security their highest priority( those marketing guys are hard at work aren't they).

Here's an idea MS. Why don't you try building a REAL OS before adding a bunch of features. Then I hope Oracle et al go after them for attempts at tying again. This time a RDBMS with an OS, instead of the browser. Not that they have a chance against Oracle, just that I'd like to see them burn after being forced you use their various products. It really sucks when you've seen the alternatives.

Before I started going back to school I worked in a UNIX environment, and although crashes did occur and were considered big events they were rare with years plus of up time. However, with MS products I ran into constantly (yes constantly) crashes, locks up, or spontaneously combusts. Now they want to try something as potentially dangerous with my data like ty it to the filesystem as a database. No doubt they will leave transactions and rollbacks out of it, so not only do you lose the current data from one of their features( crashes are a feature aren't they?) but suddenly it corrupts even more stuff because it was joined, etc.

Now add someone somewhere else with malicious intent, with MS current(talk doesn't count) stance on security, not only wiping out relations, probing for intimate details(you're not keeping your finances on that machine are you?)

Maybe, I'm just a little skeptical or pananiod or both. That whole thing bothers me to no end.

Re:P2P?

[Pfhreakaz0id]

Yeah, SQL Server really sucks (NOTE: SARCASM INTENDED).

Re:But on NT or XP it costs $1000

[DarkEdgeX]

It does make you scratch your head about the whole issue though-- why would MSFT work so hard at keeping others from developing alternate file systems? FS drivers are akin to video drivers for a video card (except for use with storage devices), so I'm not seeing the great advantage in forcing everyone to NTFS if someone, say Maxtor, wanted to write special FS drivers to take advantage of known physical characteristics of their disks. (And really, to Joe Nobody, a file system is about as abstract as a video driver, or any other driver under their OS. As long as it's 1) reliable and 2) not visibly different from NTFS/FAT32, he won't care.)

Very strange.