More Looks At Far-Off 'Longhorn'

b17bmbr writes "According to eWeek, the first builds are out, with an SDK. The Register notes: 'Microsoft builds leak regularly, Microsoft knows this, and Microsoft knows that the wider the distribution of the software, the faster it's going to spread all over the internet...The timing is impressive for an alpha build of a product that is not scheduled to hit the streets for another two years, and which could quite easily stretch to three.' Methinks this is just vaporware." And Cleverone writes "Several days before PDC 03' attendees will obtain their copy, screenshots of the new build have already made their way to the net. For those inquisitive few, the build stamp is 6.0.4051.0."

Comments

Sweet

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about time alternatives to Linux pop up for people to use.

Where Could They Possibly Be Getting Their Ideas?

[anaesthetica]

I really like the toned-down brushed metal windows in place of the Playskool XP Theme. These are the kinds of innovations that are going to keep Windows ahead of the game in the long-run.

Quick Version Info

[Infernon]

Windows 2000 - Version 5.0
Windows XP - Version 5.1
Longhorn - Version 6.0

So it looks like Longhorn is actually a full version up. Not that I truly understand what any of that means. Anyone have a changelog? :)

Re:Quick Version Info

[tuba_dude]

Sure, it's right here:

JRH:
-Moved NSA backdoor from explorer.vb to kernel
-Just recieved payment from FBI, finishing touches on their backdoor.
-Looked at networking code from the 32-hour coding session, no security holes found yet.
TODO: Find more caffiene to hide with next time marketing comes to fire me.

BG:
-New easter egg in ie: "ALL YOUR MARKETSHARE ARE BELONG TO US"
TODO: Get a press relase out about security.

Marketing department:
Cleaned up the puke on the UI, left the corrosion patterns there.
TODO:
-Change codename to something less sucktacular.
-Fire JRH

Re:Quick Version Info

[Jugalator]

There might be a lot of "under the surface" changes in Longhorn, making Microsoft think it's worth increasing the major version number. I think parts of the OS will be rewritten to use .NET API's using managed code (i.e. more secure code with better bounds checking, etc). They'll introduce the new file system WinFS that's implemented as a layer on top of NTFS and will make working with the files on a system more like working with a database. Whatever that will mean in practice might be unknown at this point. :-) They might also introduce DRM as part of the OS, which could have all sorts of implications to the user.

So there's a lot of known and unknown features planned, and since I haven't tried a Longhorn Alpha, I don't even know exactly what's in it so far. There are of course all sorts of visual changes, and the PDC build have already revealed dozens of surprise changes like an improved Internet Explorer with for example anti-popup support, a new plugin architecture, and a new download manager, etc.

Since Windows has a lot of software integrated, it's hard to keep track of all changes, especially if you're going to do it in detail, this early. Longhorn isn't even in Beta yet.

Re:Quick Version Info

[Jugalator]

I have no idea what is supposed to merit a major version bump in longhorn, though; I guess the new GUI rendering engine?

No :-)

Actually, all Windows releases so far with a bump in the major version number *has* been very major indeed. Compare Windows 3.x to Windows 95 with its total change of desktop metaphors, going from icons representing file "links" only to real files, or Windows NT4 to Windows 2000 with enormous changes in the OS core.

Microsoft may bump a lot of version numbers for their software unnecessary, but I wouldn't say they're doing it with their operating systems. Windows XP only got a 0.1 bump since it is only a revised version of Windows 2000 after all.

Windows Longhorn will feature radical changes in the GUI, maybe making todays' Windows XP look like Windows 3.11 in comparison. It will also offer code restructures to use the .NET API and attempt to be even more secure than Windows 2003 Server by doing this. All .NET API procedures should for example automatically do basic things like bounds checks, which C++ code seldom does.

Windows Longhorn will also feature DRM built-in, which might have large implications for the user as well.

I personally think MS is putting a lot of eggs in one basket with Longhorn. If it's a failure, MS will be hit hard by it, but with the market dominance they have, they're probably sleeping well at night anyway.

Re:Quick Version Info

[bmajik]

i know you're being funny but i thought i'd chime in:

there is now (and has been for at least 3 years) the policy at MS that if you put an easter egg in MS software you should expect to be fired upon its discovery.

also, no one in marketing at MS is in a position to fire anyone working in a product group. i have never actually even met any marketing people at MS. I think i see them from time to time -- i'll see a bunch of dorks in nice looking clothes having a meeting, often with catered lunch, all staring blankly at a .ppt presentation -- but i've never dealt with any of them. Infact, the only real impact marketing has on product teams that i can tell is for naming stuff. I.e. longhorn is the code name for the future windows client. At some point, it will get renamed to something. Thats a decision that marketing is in on. Once the new name is decided, an email will go out to everyone that more or less says "marketing has said that the new name is x, please update all string resources to use the new name". For instance, late in the game Windows Server 2003 was changed to not include the ".NET" branding. Going over every place in the product (docs included) where someone had written down "Windows .NET Server" was required.

Also, product developers are not strictly/solely responsible for finding bugs. If a developer works 32 straight hours on a peice of code, its not up to that developer to own the correctness of the code - its up to the tester(s) assigned to that feature area. I've met at least one tester that would ask each of the developers he worked with (conversationally) how late they'd worked, and then would prioritize his testing for the day partially based on who had stayed up the latest or worked the longest hours. Finding a bug less then 12 hours old is incredibly helpful.

Finally, marketing has little to do with the UI in windows. Nobody in marketing (that i am aware of, anyway) has the right know how, much less access and tools, to modify the code that draws UI's in Windows. They may have input into how stuff works, but thats really more of a PM issue (program manager). PM's are typically very technically savvy (although often not with the depth you'd see from test or development), so they're closer to the JRH side then the Marketing side (usually)

Re:Quick Version Info

[bogie]

"Windows Longhorn will feature radical changes in the GUI, maybe making todays' Windows XP look like Windows 3.11 in comparison"

Somehow I find that really hard to believe. If these screenshots are even sightly Representative of the way MS is going then its going to look a lot like XP with just different colored/sized widgets and maybe a stupid "infobar" that most people will disable because it takes up 30% of your screen. I know MS is holding some visual aspects back, but there is nothing I've seen that's far off from what has already been made by the modding community.

Will it be different then XP, Yes. Will it be some radical shift that someone working with XP won't even recognize? Doubtful. MS has invested too many years in getting its users used to the way Windows works. My guess for the GUI is XP & 1/2, ie more "things you can do with files" will pop up when browsing folders and of course a different theme and wallpaper. Remember that last radical shift GUI-wise was win 3.x to 95. The only thing massively different between 95 and XP gui-wise is the Start Menu. Underneath there may be a lot going on, but on top MS can't go too crazy because secretaries need to be able to find their programs and my docs folder just as easy as they did with XP and 95.

"I personally think MS is putting a lot of eggs in one basket with Longhorn. If it's a failure, MS will be hit hard by it, but with the market dominance they have, they're probably sleeping well at night anyway."

But like you inferred they can't really fail can they? I mean when 90% plus of all desktops ship with whatever OS you want how can you fail? Once these new desktops ship you'll need to upgrade all your apps etc and the treadmill will continue except for the 10% of users who realize that there are alternatives. MS may fail in a technical sense if they somehow fuck up Longhorn, but given that they have so much time I don't see how they could. Worst case they scale back features because they a)don't work or b) aren't wanted by beta testers, and then they ship win2003 plus minor updates as a desktop.

Isn't it great having a monopoly?

Re:Quick Version Info

[bmajik]

1) i'm not touching that at all :)

1a) irregardless isn't a word :)
ok, i'll bite a little. I have a hard time beleiving that everything in linux is a 100% clean room implementation, when the point of linux and the GNU toolchain was to make a freeware clone of UNIX. So, im predisposed to thinking there's some lifted code or designs in linux. On the issue of who that was lifted from (was it sco ?) or if that actually matters (there are only so many ways to write a VFS layer, or grep) i don't really have an opinion, and im not really qualified to have one. in general i think our society is too litigous and there are lots of frivilous lawsuits. On the other hand, the open source phenomenon presents a big challenge for commmercial software vendors in the following sense: according to the Fredrick Brooks classic "the mythical man month", dev time is 1/6th of the wall-clock time in a software engineering effort. The rest comes from design and testing.

Alot of what's happening in the linux space is wholesale cloning of existing software/features, with careful picking and choosing of whats great and what sucks about the peice being cloned. The design is apparent in the functionality of the system to be cloned - so thats time and expense that some proprietary company went through that the linux project is avoiding (potentially). The "testing effort" is simply "does it work as good as the original?" so significant time is saved there as well. In effect, the linux clone/improve effort can clone functionality faster than it can be created originally in many cases, and of course free software has the "side effect" of pulling the market out of commercial software if it truly is an acceptible feature parity clone of the commercial offerings.

So i think part of what SCO is doing is reactionary - they're saying "this can't keep happening - these people are cloning our designs, cloning our interfaces, and we think they're just flat out stealing code in some cases. then they give it away for free and we of course suffer as a result"

i think this is a hard problem that really comes down to wether or not you think intellectual property is a real thing or not. the classic problem with IP is the following:

company X spends 10b over 20 years to develop a drug that effectively treats a human ailment. Once discovered, manufacture of this drug is essentially zero cost per part. The 10b research cost has to be amortized over a certain volume of pills for a reasonable time period to allow return on investment, otherwise the company goes under and brilliant people dont figure out new ways to cure ailments.

at the same time, the drug is just a molecule and may even be easy to produce in your kitchen. why can company X stop you from mixing water, baking soda, and maybe 3 other things in your own home ? what about if you sell your concoction more cheaply than they do ? should they be allowed to stop you ?

Now to throw in a twist - what if company X's molecule is too expensive to buy in 3rd world countries, but those people need this medicine as well?

precisely the same problem exists in software. Someone does all the hard work, then its cloned cheaply by others, and given away for free, typically because people want to
1) do it themselves
or
2) are in developing countries and cant afford US prices for things

(we see lots of linux adoption in developing countries, actually)

anyway, back to the specific SCO issue:
the biggest thing that irritates me is that most slashdot posters beleive 110% that the whole case is completely BS and that SCO is making a frivolous lawsuit. i think there may be something to their case (see above - i have a hard time beleive linux is 100% clean room), but i also don't know what SCO is hoping to get out of all of this.. the cat is out of the bag, so to speak.. linux and other free unixes are "good enough" for many problems.. at least as good as SCO probably ever was.

2) i

Any screenshot mirrors?

[roumada]

Of course, the screenshots are /.ed already. A machine brought to its knees by Longhorn without even having it installed!

Re:Any screenshot mirrors?

[Jugalator]

Beware. It's looking like crap at this stage. :-)

A dozen of screenshots, or so...

Uh...

[DrEldarion]

Methinks this is just vaporware.

Vaporware? You think the next version of Windows is vaporware? Somehow I don't think Microsoft is going to hype a new Windows version and then never come out with one. "Sorry! That project got killed! You'll have to stick with XP!"

-- Dr. Eldarion --

Re:Uh...

[Jack Auf]

I think what the original poster meant is that Microsoft has a long history of leaking/releasing screenshots and tidbit about upcoming products when they know damn well that the product won't be available for many months if not years. So in that respect it is "vaporware" - the product won't see public release for at least a year and a half.

Microsoft has a long history of doing this - Exchange, MSSQL, Windows NT2000 & XP, SMS, etc. Why do they do this? To prevent existing customers from changing products. Example:

Tech: (product n.n) sucks ass and is unreliable. We should dump it for (other product).
PHB: But the MS rep told me that (product n.n+1) is on the way and going to be released "Real Soon Now(tm)".
Tech: They told you that to prevent you from switching to something that actually works.
PHB: The MS rep promised that it would be out by the end of the year.
Tech: Which really means the end of *next* year. Maybe. Maybe the end of the year after that.

You see how that works now? They lie to keep their customers locked in and on the hook. I have seen this first hand many many times.

Re:Uh...

[Speed Racer]

Vaporware? You think the next version of Windows is vaporware? Somehow I don't think Microsoft is going to hype a new Windows version and then never come out with one. "Sorry! That project got killed! You'll have to stick with XP!"

The name Cairo springs to mind.

Screenshots

[ewithrow]

More screenshots can be found here.

Naming Scheme

[Anonymous Coward]

Good to see Microsoft is using there old naming scheme...

Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows 4051

DRM?

[t_allardyce]

There are some screen shots missing from that site, namely the error message saying "a non-drm enabled media file has been detected and removed from your computer"

Why?

[Simple-Simmian]

Why is the "news" 2007 is a longway off.

IE changes

[Jayde Stargunner]

Noticed in some of the screens that the Longhorn IE has both a pop-up blocker/manager as well as a download manager (ala GetRight).. Kinda interesting developments--although I suppose we'll have to buy Longhorn to get that version of IE. Heh.

-Jayde

Microsoft is in a tough spot with this one

[Crashmarik]

Theyr'e talking about a 2006 release for longhorn. Operating system updates have traditionally been nice cash cows for them. The same is true for office. Now, no one feels a pressing need to upgrade their office suites. Office 2003 is not very compelling. Anyone who sends me an encrypted document and expects me to spend nearly a grand so I can read is going to get a rude document back in plaintext.

So, they have their next upgrade is due in 2.5 years, their competitors are upgrading at an ever faster and regular pace (witness apple 4 upgrades in 2 years the latest being 64bit). It becomes a little bit obvious why they are leaking this.

The problem now is they will promise whatever they think the customer wants to hear at this point. When it comes time to ship they will need an OS that delivers features while still maintaining backward compatibility. Microsofts installed base has become the anchor around its neck. If they do big feature changes that obsolete products no one will upgrade, if they don't no one will upgrade.

OSS has the same problem when picking up new features but it doesn't have the same petty extortionists trying to sell the same thing all over again.

Re:Where Could They Possibly Be Getting Their Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you, Prof. Anal Killjoy.

Here is another link..

[adeyadey]

Here is another link where you can see the next version of Windows..

Re:Yeah

[dougmc]

It's Windows XP, but with an obnoxiously larger clock and sidebar! Great!

Hmm, it made me think of Hal 9000. I suspect that wasn't an accident ...

This gives us time.

[Adolph_Hitler]

This gives us linux developers time to add whatever improvements are made via longhorn into Linux so that by the time 2006 comes alone, Linux will already have all of the important features and plus its own improvements.

Finally!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

A true alternative to the Linux tax!!!

What are you doing?

[sabNetwork]

You have a lot of nerve. Why did you link directly to the forum site? They obviously can't handle the server load or the bandwidth, especially for screenshots.

Re:Another chance for linux.

[AntiOrganic]

1. Improve every area of linux possible

Thanks for the insightful plan, buddy!

Re:Where Could They Possibly Be Getting Their Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, way to ruin a good M$ bash with facts.

Re:Where Could They Possibly Be Getting Their Idea

[typhoonius]

Yes, they're always 10.3 steps ahead of the competition.

Re:Where Could They Possibly Be Getting Their Idea

[Mysticalfruit]

Not to be overly critical, but if you look at the theme of the gui of an OS as an indicator of it's maturity, that's frightening...

I've worked with lots of very advanced OS's with no gui.

Then again, OSX is a good example of a mature OS w/ a slick gui.

DRM

[Alain Williams]

How did they get the screen shots ? I thought that the big thing about this release was supposed to be DRM & Fritz chip to stop this -- or are all of these GIFs going to stop working next week ?

Oh, wait - I get it, silly me, it's Microsoft, so of course: it just doesn't work. SNAFU.

Re:Yeah

[C10H14N2]

They are marketing to the same people who buy $60,000 SUVs based on the $10 dashboard clock. This is asinine from a technical point of view, but sadly good marketing. I'm surprised the taskbar doesn't have "Bulgari" embossed over simulated Connolly leather with burlwood accents and bling-bling galore.

Re:How do you assume this? Thats 2007.

[Overly Critical Guy]

[A]nd trust me, 3 years from now Linux will be mainstream.

I heard this 3 years ago. And the 3 years before that.

Linux will not be mainstream in 3 years. I imagine things will be just as they are now. MacOS and its iteration, Microsoft putting out its new version of Windows, and Linux struggling to have even just a sane media player, much less a sane desktop environment not reliant on hacking on top of X11.

That's nothing!

[Valar]

I have a leaked beta of the new linux.

Re:Yeah

[insertionPoint]

It's Windows XP, but with an obnoxiously larger clock and sidebar!

MS Developers get ideas from spam....
Add three inches to your CLOCK size!

Re:How do you assume this? Thats 2007.

[ealar dlanvuli]

I'm at a hospital that intends to move 3000 machines to "some alternative" (basically the options at the moment are linux and linux) inside the next 5 years.

We intend to replace a great deal of our server room as well.

The people who communicate with us will need to support our formats, people with larger contracts will be told to ditch Excel.

This particular hospital used to have a MS site license for Windows + Office on every machine here. It's only a matter of time before even more places do this.

Also, I've seen three companies switch to be mostly Mac based in the past year.

Re:Yeah

[Geek of Tech]

If they weren't marketing, I believe Microsoft has the power to keep snapshots from "leaking" out. They wanted people to see the brand new features. "Wow! Now I've got 2 clocks!". They're trying to keep people from migrating to OSes while they're finishing theirs.