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Microsoft Longhorn Delayed
skreuzer writes "Microsoft has once again shifted the schedule for the release of "Longhorn," the company's next major version of Windows. The product was originally expected to ship next year. Then in May of this year, officials pushed back the release date to 2005. But now executives are declining to say when they expect the software to ship."
It happens all the time. Even in the Opensource community it does. KDE 3.1, Debian 3.0 and Linux 2.4 are prime examples of when software gets delayed to make sure it works properly.
Nero-burning ROM for Linux!
There are 44 security fixes for RedHat 9 (https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/rh9-errata-security .html), still it does not look like they are planning any service pack.
MSDOS: 20+ years without remote hole in the default install
Nowhere in this article does it say that Longhorn has been pushed back. Not saying when it's going to be released doesn't mean it's being pushed back any more than it means it will be out earlier.
Come on guys...
"Microsoft aren't regular 'deadline'-missers - opting to release sub-par software instead just to reach the deadline."
The Blaster worm probably lit a fire under Microsoft to rethink their security practices. At least I hope that's the case.
"Derp de derp."
Actually Microsoft is the only company I have ever seen that can delay a product 5 or 6 times and THEN rush it out the door ready or not. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying your theory about hardware and licensing are wrong, I'm just saying this delay is classic Microsoft.
Insert pithy comment here.
XP came out within 2 years of 2K but now they look like 4 years from XP to the next version. I remember some analysts at the time were saying that Software Assurance only was good value if upgrades came out more often than once every 3 years. Now it looks like it would have been cheaper to not buy Software Assurance and just re-buy a new license when the new version becomes available. Or use an OS with less restrictive licensing ;-)
Cheers
VikingBrad
The complete opposite is true. Microsoft is well-known for missing release dates. At least three of the previous releases of Windows were at least two years late.
.NET was announced at least three years ago. Instead of complaining, lets take solace in the fact that they're at least trying to get it right, instead of some "release early, release often" schedule...
The whole
"Sufferin' succotash."
We really need a service pack 2 for XP. There's a million updates on windowsupdate, too many for most modem users. So let's see MS bring out sp2 and get working on sp3 so that we don't have more and more security updates to download.
I think the problem Microsoft is running into is one of finding areas that need so much improvement they can get away with charging for it.
I personally think Windows 2000 Professional is a damn fine operating system. I run it at home and my workplace has standardized with 2K.
XP Pro added nothing of note except more onerous licensing conditions and a confusing UI change. Everyone I've met who uses XP changed the UI back to Windows 2000. Also, the only reason they use XP over 2K is because XP came with their new, name brand computer.
Really, what does Microsoft add to, change about, or remove from its desktop operating system to make it worth upgrading?
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
I hear this one a lot. There are X patches for such and such distribution. Let's take a look at a few of those patches shall we:
1. New up2date available with updated SSL certificate authority file
I have never used SSL. I've used Apache but I've never needed SSL. This patch does not apply to me.
2. Updated Sendmail packages fix vulnerability.
I've never set up a mail server. This patch does not apply to me.
3. Updated pam_smb packages fix remote buffer overflow.
I do use samba, so I guess I'll download this one.
4. GDM allows local user to read any file.
I've used XDM but generally I prefer to boot to a console. This patch does not apply to me.
5. Updated unzip packages fix trojan vulnerability
I guess I could download this one because I probably do have unzip installed, but I can't remember ever using it. Wake me when there's a vulnerability in gzip.
6. Updated Evolution packages fix multiple vulnerabilities
Call me crazy, but I use Mozilla's email client.
What's the point to all of this? Redhat doesn't need a "service pack" because most of the security vulnerabilities do not affect the majority of their users. You can't compare Redhat's patch list to XPs. If you want to make it fair, compare Redhat to the sum of XP, Office, IIS, SQL Server, and whatever else. I think you'll find that XP has a lot more critical issues all by itself and when you add the application software you'll see why the idea of a service pack makes sense in the MS world but not in the Linux world.
The desktop will be hardware accelerated DirectX, so eyecandy won't slow things down.
More "protection from myself".
People always play this card without citing a single example in XP. Can you?
More Messenger, WMP and goodness what else providing "integrated Windows features that can't be removed and keep nagging you".
How do they keep nagging you? I don't ever use WMP, and I removed Messenger at least a year ago.
I'm not having your CD problem at all. I'm using the latest Nero 6.
"Sufferin' succotash."
...they will actually try to write something secure.
They will find a significant drop in sales afterward though... people will be unwilling to upgrade if their systems are stable, bug free and secure. It is against their business model to write secure code.
They'll have to come up with a new way to keep people buying Microsoft... who knows what it will be.
Longhorn's probably not vaporware though... more likely they realize after all the crap MS OSs have been through lately... what with being on the top news for being vulnerable, unreliable and close to being the weak point of civilization itself, I guess they are rethinking that "business as usual isn't the play to make this time around."
Do you know what makes people stop using WinNT 4.0? NOTHING. It works well for businesses. Active directory? People STILL don't know what it is or what it's for or how it can improve the way they do business. MS drops support for it and people will STILL continue using it. What terrible thing will happen to Microsoft when they create a secure and stable OS? We know they can -- they have the money to throw at it and if they are willing to delay release of their newest OS project, then I'd take that as a sign they intend to make it secure and stable.
I'd say that CAN do it and they WILL do it. But the question that rings in my mind is what doom it will spell to Microsoft when they do. No more upgrades for a long time... people won't want it or care about it. That's a huge chunk of income for them.
1. New up2date available with updated SSL certificate authority file
I have never used SSL. I've used Apache but I've never needed SSL. This patch does not apply to me.
Wrong. You DO need this patch. It's used to connect to the up2date server (your SSL connection between you and RedHat). 2. Updated Sendmail packages fix vulnerability.
I've never set up a mail server. This patch does not apply to me.
True, but some distros have sendmail enabled (whether you set it up or not). Make sure it's turned off or you could run into trouble.
Wake me when there's a vulnerability in gzip.
There was a zlib vulnerability about a year ago.
I will agree with you that a service pack is unnecessary. RedHat will release version 9.1 (or 10) in due time, in less time than it takes for MS to release a service pack.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
2k/XP are stable (in Windows terms), they run apps well. I can't see any drastic changes, improvements or features coming along and I think Microsoft knows this.
They can't integrate much more for risk of annoying the DOJ, all I can see them improving on is the security side of things.
>The desktop will be hardware accelerated DirectX, so eyecandy won't slow things down.
That's not his point, he's suggesting that the new version is eyecandy - not extra functionability. When I use XP I immediatly goto the "classic" theme and make it show the standard desktop icons just to be able to use the damn thing. I certainly am not alone in that regard.
>People always play this card without citing a single example in XP. Can you?
The above. The "are you sure you want to view these system folders" screen. The crippled search option until you change folder options to show "hidden" and system files. The hiding of tray icons, some of the 'inactive' ones are pretty important.
>How do they keep nagging you?
Here's a default Dell computer with Office. Try to just close, let alone remove, messenger. "Sorry, another program is using this." Umm, who? Its outlook, but it won't tell you that. So for millions of people it sits there wasting RAM because they can't close it. More WMP means more browser intgration and DRM. Some people don't like that.
>I'm not having your CD problem at all.
This problem is fairly common and a few good google searches brings up a few solutions.
Regardless, I have yet to see a good reason to move from 2000 to XP. System restore is tempting but not needed. When technophobes ask me why they can't just get Windows 2000, which they know pretty well, on their new computer I tell them its because Microsoft doesn't want them to. Learn XP or find your old 2K CD.
The same could be true for Longhorn, the desktop model of computing is actually pretty simple and more bloat and pretty colors doesn't help - it hinders. I'd rather see effort put into the applications than the OS. Ideally, the OS shouldn't be the selling point, the apps should be. Pretty colors and 3D shouldn't be applauded, good HCI practices should be.
The big deal with XP was getting all the home users off the 9x/DOS codebase. Sure, you corporate clients were barely affected--we were already running NT/2k.
XP is geared for home users, though they offer Professional because it does lend improvements over 2k that warrant it being used for workstations.
"Sufferin' succotash."
because so-called "web standards" are specifications of policy, not technical merit or need.
I agree that many W3C standards are not well designed and are often for things nobody wants. But Microsoft is a participant in the W3C. That means Microsoft is partly responsible for the bloat and redundancy of those standards.
If Microsoft realizes the problems with W3C standards, they should (and could) throw their weight around to change things. For Microsoft to encourage the development of bad standards on the part of the W3C and then not implement it themselves amounts to sabotage.
Windows alone has many, many times the number of lines of code that Red hat 9 has.
.Net SDK so I'll credit that. However I don't see revision control systems, IDE's, etc to match the 20 or so languages and related development tools that come with RedHat 9.
Also if you install Windows 2003 and know where to look you can actually find a C# compiler, email server, SQL database engine, etc. etc.
I have installed Windows Server 2003. It came with 0 lines of source code compared to over a GB of source code that came with Red Hat 9, so as far as I am concerned Windows has no source code at all.
2003 came with an SMTP service, but no mail server. Red Hat 9 came with both POP, IMAP mail servers and SMTP services. I haven't checked for the C# compiler, but I know MS gives that away free as part of the
As far as a SQL database engine, maybe. But is that available for use in developing database backed applications? I sure haven't seen any indication of that.
Basically the number of patches issued is about as meaningless an indicator of code quality as number of lines of code per day is a measure of productivity.
Perhaps there is some validity to that statement. I will have to think about it.
Yet another explanation could be that more people use XP so more people find code paths that have bugs.
I think that if you argue that XP has many times the number of lines of source code that Red Hat has, you will have to accept that it also has many times the number of bugs unless you can convince me that MS somehow magically writes higher quality code than everyone else. Since we already know that products like Windows 95 have bug rates per LOC comparable to industry norms, I think you are going to have to come up with some pretty good arguments for this proposition.
Sure, and there were people who said the same thing about Windows 95 and the "Windows 3.1 look" option that it offered. "I'll never change" they declared. But eventually Microsoft will deprecate the old look and you'll be forced to change.
Every generation goes through the same phases. New and shiny. I'll never change. Remember the good old days. You're in stage 2.
He probably meant Windows 3.0 (which WAS released in 1990) and not Win3.11.
Incidentally, NT 3.51 and 4 were intended for use in a server enviornment and not a desktop environment. Neither were "hugely" adopted either; I've never seen anything before NT 4, and I didn't see NT4 very much either.
Win98 & 98SE were major revisions to Win95, but were based on the same fundamental code/technology. As such, 98 and 98SE were not fundamental changes to windows.
Win2k represented the first version of NT that was "good", and was also the first version of NT that was widely used beyond a server role.
The original poster's timeline was correct. Major OS release events from Microsoft generally happen every 5 years.
There have been several well known studies done by MIT and other well known institutions that show the number of developers is not a predictor of quality or quantity of software. In most of the studies, the primary factor in the over all quality of a piece of software was the depth of knowledge in a specific field.
In the area of security, microsoft is still just trying to get enough people. But the primary problem for MS is this. They can't simply dump all the existing code and rebuild from scratch with security at the core. What is worse, trying to retrofit may cause far more problems than it solves. I'm too lazy to google the links, so those who believe the myth increasing the number of programmers some how makes software better and finish faster needs to read up on the topic.
"Outlook Express, Internet Explorer, and Windows Media Player"
;) At best they'll give us another system like NT, that appears to be great at first and rears it's ugly head later.
According to microsoft these programs are part of the core OS. They also aren't removeable, even if you want to use a different email client, webbrowser, or media player, you can't get rid of them. Since you can't remove them from the core OS, their bugs are and should be grouped in with it.
"IMHO, the only thing that could possibly rectify this situation is a new code-base, from the ground up."
I agree, a new code base (kernel, new gui, etc) is the way to go. They should contract someone else to write it as well. They also need a new development model... and the only way they'll be able to use that new development model is to figure out a new business model. Somehow I suspect none of this will happen though
Closed source doesn't make them more secure, it merely makes it take longer for the peer review... and most of the peers reviewing have no intention of telling microsoft when they find holes.
Those screenshots of explorer crashing with a .NET exception do not prove that explorer.exe is now a .net app -a COM component running in the process could be managed code.
.NET stack and not have the system appear dog slow.
That said, I have no evidence to disagree with any of your statements. The longer they slip, the more PCs will be able to run a deep