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Longhorn in 2006
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."
The way things are going, the next version of Microsoft's OS will have many more security holes and even more "Palladium" evilness and DRM restrictions on what I can co with my own content on my own machine. Hold of on this as long as possible, Bill. Get the current one working first.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I'm beginning to wonder if the industry will be in a far different place than Microsoft envisions 3 years down the line
I'm sure it would if Microsoft wasn't around. But they will bend the future to their will using the power of 40 gigadollars
...who thinks Microsoft could have this OS ready sooner, but are waiting for user-hostile hardware (aka DRM) to take off?
Actually, this is good news. ;-)
I'm crying trying to use XP on my newest system.
Where has the speed of Win98 gone ?
Arguably, windows2000 was better than 98, which was better than win95, dos, and so on.. Now MS is going downhill, and.... oh, you're right
i think the important thing is that, in 3 years, other OSes will have made huge strides to at least "catch up" in some areas they are lacking right now.
hopefully, this will level the playing field a bit, and give more marketshare to Macs and other *NIX based OSes.
*** For a better tommorow, change your life today ***
Personally, I think this is welcome news. First of all, this puts the potential wide scale deployment of palladium another year down the road. Secondly, a year is long enough down the road for another generation of open source alternatives to eat more market share from Microsoft perhaps bringing a semblance of legitimate competition to the market. For you guys who are holding onto Win NT boxes who are waiting on Longhorn this probably isnt the most welcome news though.
"Where do you want to go today..oops, in 2006?"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Why should Microsoft be capable of implementing secure DRM when normal security has thus far eluded them?
The screenshots of the latest build of Longhorn can be found here.
Enjoy!
Every Super Villan uses Linux.
I'm beginning to wonder if the industry will be in a far different place than Microsoft envisions 3 years down the line.
No, I doubt that... Longhorn will be what Windows 95 was. 95 crushed OS/2 Warp, and Longhorn will crush whatever other OS crawls into its space while MS is developing it. Besides, with all the 'amazing new technology and breathtaking new UI' B.S., the media will have a field day with it for at least 3 months before launch... Mass hysteria will ensue, people will line up outside stores to get the first copy as it becomes available at midnight, Microsoft lines their pockets with a few more billions, and 2 weeks down the road, some major flaw in the OS will be exploited, bringing business and the internet to their knees... then the media will resume the Microsoft bashing, and Joe Q. Public will want to re-install whatever OS he had before, only to find out that the company has folded, and now he's stuck with this peice of shit... oh, but wait, now Microsoft is promising a new version that will have no flaws!
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Of course the pirates and crackers will quickly bust and run rings around whatever Microsoft does in the DRM field. It will still, however, make the machines with the OS harder to use.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Everything old is new again. Remember a few years back, when OS/2 was still considered a semi-legitimate contender, Apple's market share was greater than a single digit, and most IT hands were pretty unconvinced that migrating from Netware to NT was worth the time, money or aggravation? Against what should have been an overwhelming competitive landscape, and armed only with what was in retrospect a dismal product (NT4), MS managed to convince IT managers everywhere that they were the Future of Computing as We Know It. Why? Well, there was this thing called "Cairo", and it was gonna ship Real Soon Now, and it was going to be an all-object-oriented thingamabob that would shine your shoes and make your teeth whiter. The industry bought it, hook line and sinker, and after NT4 had trounced OS/2 and Netware soundly, Cairo evaporated into the same neverland that Apple's Copland project did.
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...
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
I'm debating what exactly the ups and downs of the next release will be. If my office uses Longhorn, there will be hell with DRM. And I'd hate to lose control of my own machine.
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).
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Might as well plan to bundle 'Duke Nukem Forever' in there, right next to 'Freecell'
Oh, oh! Can I be the first to call bullshit?
You sir are the victim of a broken OS. There's a memory leak in XP which will slow any HW down to a crawl in a matter of a month. The really fun thing is, it's designed in such a way that it doesn't register to the rest of the OS the way it should, so you can't even see that your memory is nearly maxed.
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.
I think the funniest part of all this is how MS sales reps used the new Licensing programs to browbeat people into signing up to "subscribe" to Microsoft software - where you'd pay them a yearly subscription fee and get whatever OS they released, if they released one. If you didn't, well, you'd still pay, and you'd maybe get one next year.
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.
# Erik
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?
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.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Does MS really think people are going to be willing to run 5 year old technology on their work systems, when a cheaper and more current alternative is readily available?
I just hope Sun will be able to push madhatter well enough for companies to let go of their grip of Microsoft products and open the future of corporate desktops to any player with a plan; be it Sun or whoever. It's just that currently, Sun is the other company that can do it. Who knows what the corporate desktop will look like in two years.
These are prototype shots. Of course, I don't expect Slashbots to realize that, and I already see people making judgement posts like this is what Longhorn will look like, but still, allow me to interject a little bit of logic and sanity.
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.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Does anybody know if Vegas offers odds on the actual release date of Longhorn? They seem to cover most any bet, why not this one? Options might include 2006 with 1 date push, 2 date pushes, 2007 with 1 date push, etc.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Please write an entirely new OS!!!
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!!!!
But then I would return the questions back to the CEO: Once you master the markets, why are you abandoning them? Why does IE still have linear browsing, linear back and forward buttons? Why does IE have so many unfixed bugs, and why isn't it fully W3C compliant? Why do all the Office apps change format with every edition, into something that prior editions cannot read? Why do my new Access databases not work with my old databases, and why does it ask to convert them when opened with the newer versions? Why don't any of the Office apps generate good HTML or XHTML or XML code? Why can't you copy certain complex pages from IE and paste them into Word without Word crashing?
The answer: Once you've made the other systems irrelevent, such as the comment about developers saying "How do we port it to that other operating system -- what was it -- Linux?" when Microsoft gets there, they abandon innovation.
And that, Mr. Balmer, is Microsoft's biggest problem.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Revisions used to be each first digit (OS 6, OS 7, 8, 9 etc..) but now Apple's hooked on the X theme... so revisions are X.0, X.1, X.2 and X.3 (Panther) (X=10)
The service packs are the 3rd digit (10.2.1 -> 10.2.8 currently) which update small features, drivers, and bug fixes.
In addition to the OS updates (10.2.6-10.2.8) there are security fixes based on the date of release, so that when the new SSH exploit is found, within the next few days there is a "Security Update."
So all in all, Apple has a FAR faster and aware OS release schedule.
How else would they have the time to steal all the features from panther?
You like your new Mac more than you like me, don't you, Dave? Dave? I asked...She said Yes.
And, of course,
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.
This is rather amusing, because it points out an odd trend amongst "technophiles" in computing today. Somehow or other, *NIX kernels have become synonymous with "software excellence." When this trend started is not entirely clear to me, but I'd say post-1995 for sure. If it is indeed a FUD campaign, it seems to be succeeding, because 10 years ago if anyone had mentioned that *NIX kernels were superior to modern OS multi-threaded microkernels they would have been laughed into submission.
BSD-style *NIX kernels are NOT, contrary to what you may have heard, the end-all be-all of OS kernel design. In fact, most people who architect operating systems for a living will tell you that most of the concepts contained therein are good ideas, but they're somewhat stale and in need of some serious revision.
I don't have the time or the inclination to go through a feature-by-feature comparison between a modern *NIX kernel and NT, but I'll point out a few examples. The NT kernel's native support for threads and access control list kernel object security are superior to what the *BSD kernels offer. Other newer features like microarchitecture to support several different system call APIs are virtually on par feature for feature with *BSD.
So why would switching the kernel make the OS any better? If a kernel has the necessary features it requires, performs well, and provides remarkable stability, that's just about all that a kernel can do.
I think you're confusing the recent security problems discovered in the Windows system with problems in the kernel itself, which are few and far between. Holes in IIS, or SQL Server, or even the "RPC System Service" are NOT problems with the NT kernel, and they should not be confused with them.
Don't misunderstand me: I think the number of features that have been integrated into the Unix framework over the years (by the Linux and *BSD projects) is astounding and a telling tribute to what the research communities can accomplish when they work together. But that doesn't mean they're superior to what alternative OS kernels can do.
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!!!!
I don't even know how to address this one. The NT kernel does MUCH more for security than any *NIX kernel. The trick is, people writing software that runs on the kernel have to make USE of these features properly. NT offers complete Access Control Lists and security descriptors for every possible kernel object. This is just about as granular as you can get, and better than the simple "rwx" permissions on file descriptors available in *NIX kernels.
Now, why everyone logs into the Windows Shell with a superuser security account is an entirely different matter, but it is NOT the kernel's fault!
I am a Mac user (used to admin XP boxes), so those who want to skip this, go ahead.
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.