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Longhorn Developers @ MSDN
ePIsOdEOnline writes "The official Microsoft Longhorn Developers website went live. Content is filled with information fresh from the PDC, and the host of secrecy swarming Microsoft and its next generation Operating System,
Longhorn"
"The official Microsoft Longhorn Developers website went live."
Must not be running Longhorn.
Make or Break for M$ eh? Ooooo please let it be break! pleaseOpleaseOpleaseOpleaseOpleaseO :)
My Portfolio
If you ask me it's a very Good Thing that Microsoft is making it possible to get developer insigt into Longhorn at this point. After all, the OS is not scheduled to be released for several years.
And before we start with the M$ bashing, let's remember that Microsoft can also do some things right, just as the Gnu/Linux community can do some things wrong...
My 2 cents, anyhow.
.: Max Romantschuk
I've already upgraded my Debian box to Longhorn using a simple apt-get dist upgrade command. I don't know why Microsoft has secrecy warnings all over the place...you should be able to get it from any Debian mirror. Has anyone else upgraded their Debian install this way? I can't seem to find GNOME any more.
The fix was simple. They simply swapped:
$error.backcolour=#0000ff;
for
$error.backcolour=#000000;
Now, no Blue screen of death!
That's a nice source of information there. I was especially interested in their description of WinFS.
Everything that is stored in the WinFS store is an item and each item has metadata properties that are described by a schema. Items that follow the schema are stored in the WinFS store as serialized
No, seriously. How are they gonna maintain an active interest during the next two years of development?
/jibe
I say things up there about 'migration' and 'preparing' and 'interoperability' but I didn't see a way for them to maintain support. Linux can maintain an active beta because people can actually work on it, so they can more easily test it and benefit immediately from that testing.
Microsoft, I've seen many claim, is drumming up support and mostly trying a publicity stunt. The question is, how do you run a 2-3 year publicity stunt?
Maybe they should ask SCO.
And as we all know, premature launches are not satisfying.
I realize the product isn't finished... and won't be for a long while (hint to /. editors)... but check out this comedy from the developer site.
It's a so-called 'guided tour of Longhorn', which consists of no actual imagery, but rather a gigantic step-list of things for you to click on in your Longhorn alpha, to make you go 'ooooh'.
Just brutal. I mean, if its really a 'bet-the-company' strategy, you'd think they'd splash out just a little cash for a Flash or non-ass-looking PPT prez... or even screenshots.... something other than this. Just looks really amateur.
Um... which of these options do you prefer:
1. Microsoft makes fake demos of things that don't exist yet.
2. Microsoft has the guts not to show what they don't have.
This is a developer site, not a marketing splash. Developers want information, not pretty presentions.
The fact that they are willing to give out information on a product which is years from being finished shows both courage and strategic integrity, if you ask me.
.: Max Romantschuk
Well, I for one care. I'm sure there are plenty of others here too. Some of us actually have jobs based on Windows technologies that provide well for our families. Interesting concept, eh?
Over on C|Net, there's an article about Longhorn. Bill Gates has called this their biggest effort since Win95. Now if we assume that he's telling the truth (hey, why not?), it brings up some interesting parallels.
Windows95 originally was just going to be Windows 4.0--an updated version of Win3.1 Turning it into more than a GUI for DOS, adding multitasking, recreating the GUI, and so forth, was a HUGE undertaking which lead to endless delays. (Win4.0 was supposed to be out in '93; Win95 barely made it into it's named year.) But what threat caused the massive effort? OS/2. OS/2 2.1, the PPC chip, and the Pentium FP math bug got MS good and scared, and they came up with a (relative) miracle.
Now they're saying that they're putting that effort in again. What, pray tell, is the threat to MS this time, hmmmm?
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
It seems the signal to noise ratio of this discussion is terrible. People are bashing the site like there's no tomorrow, without taking into account what it's for.
This is a developer resource. Take this UI guide on the Sidebar. Excellent writing, and finally something which approaches what has made Apple keep the UI edge for all these years.
If an article was posted about the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines I suspect the crowd would be singing to quite a different tune.
Where is even the slightest bit of objectivity these days?
.: Max Romantschuk
You know, that's exactly how I feel.
I still run 2k on my home system (mostly out of lazyness really, theres nothing windows-specific that I really rely on, save a couple games on occasion). I still run 2k on all the workstations at work (except mine, which is RH). My PDC is NT4 on a 500mhz box, as it has been for 3 years, and once I get time it will become Samba3 (it also runs Apache and BIND).
I do have a 2k server, which is running our accounting system (unfortunately, the low-cost (under $1k) linux-based stuff didn't meet our needs, linux mid-market ($5-20k) doesn't exist, and the rest is $90k+). We ended up going with a mid-market windows-only solution, but that system is ready to be a terminal server.
I have all the pieces in place, and my ultimate plan here is to switch all our desktops over, once I find something that isn't going to reduce the 'feature set' of our desktops. An upgrade isn't really viable if I have to tell everyone "oh sorry, you can't select printing options when you print anymore, they can only be set in the driver options - which you can't access".
I'm just totally giving up on windows. It's just not worth the hassle anymore. I can't do any sort of automatic app installation, which is one of the things that bothers me a lot. Our office is small - 8 workstations - but it's big enough that it takes a lot of time to go around doing windowsupdate, installing version x.y+1 of whatever, etc. I never found a nice solution that didn't cost a lot of money. (And yes, I know 2k can do it. I've used it at another company, and we had to turn it off because it made things more difficult). This is the sort of thing that I can use rsync and a couple shell scripts for, and have a working solution in half an hour. Flexibility is key: My job is not to be a sysadmin (we're not even a computer-related business), so the less time I spend sysadmin-ing, the better.
Anyway, that kind of turned into a rant, and i'm not looking to fight with any of you MSCE's that are going to try and counter everything I've just said - I've heard it a million times. I'm just trying to point out that if you're going to wait, wait for something worth waiting for. I personally don't see longhorn adding anything that justifies the expense.
Speak before you think
Microsoft knows that the delay to 2006 is unfavorable for them. First its a problem for all of the companies that bought into the subscription licensing, who are now seeing their money wasted essentially, paying MS for nothing for three more years. Second, it gives their competition nearly three years to advance before MS has an answer to any of it. Mac OS and to a lesser extent the Linux desktop will be quite different in 2006.
Knowing that, Microsoft is deliberately drumming up the hype now with an outrageously early beta, leaked screenshots, and surreptitious press releases and leaks about their upcoming features. Why? To get the current installed base excited about the next release, and to quiet any concerns they have that might make them switch in the interim. If they saw no compelling reason to stick around until 2006 they may migrate to other platforms. The leaks and beta try to give them that reason.
"4-6GHz processor
...
2GB+ memory
1TB hard drive
Graphics processor 3X today's performance
1GB Ethernet, 54Mbps wireless networking"
4-6Ghz? "Trend: Developers rent meat lockers."
2GB+ memory... "our API has completely done away with garbage collection. we just periodically reboot."
1TB? are we going to support versioning of the entire hard drive? (might be an interesting way to roll back virus damage.)
m.
How many Longhorn articles is this now?
Is Slashdot still interested in Free Software?
Or did someone forget to tell me that Longhorn is GPL'd?
Also, isn't there someplace better than the front page to discuss minor updates to legacy systems?
I mean, really, Windows?? Who uses this crap any more?
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
1. WinFS was always running on top of NTFS. It will change things, because the new storage API in Longhorn makes WinFS a first-class entity and the preferred method of working with the filesystem.
2. Nearly all the bits, like Explorer, applets, property pages, etc are being rewritten to run on the CLR. This also means Microsoft has greatly expanded the capabilities of the class library, but much of the windows-specific functionality looks like it will go under the Microsoft.* namespace, making it easy to keep cross-platform if you wish.
3. Aero is the new window manager, which does away with 2D/3D for an integrated, vector graphics & 3D, all-new windowing system. The new Aero classes do not wrap Win32. It talks directly to the window manager. How many of the other classes no longer talk to Win32 and do their work directly remains to be seen.
4. The Longhorn kernel will be the base of the next version of Windows Server, including the focus on managed code as being THE new API. This is a huge shift - Microsoft is basically telling everyone "get ready to move away from Win32/Win64 - it is in legacy mode now."
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Don't blame us if you aren't using Active directory with Win2k/XP clients w/Group Policy and SUS.
Microsoft has provided the tools to make software installation, management of desktop settings, and automatic pushing of patches and service packs completely automatic and easy to do.
If you refuse to use the technology, you deserve what you get.
If you use Win9x/ME, you deserve to be shot.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Dude, he said "beta-quality" not "beta".
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
You complain about a four year old operating system, you list off a bunch of complaints, and then you say you will ignore Longhorn, which fixes all those complaints. With Longhorn, you can even write your own XML-based installation scripts.
.NET, WinFS, Avalon, and the rest of the Longhorn technologies aren't better than crappy old 2k.
I'm just trying to point out that if you're going to wait, wait for something worth waiting for. I personally don't see longhorn adding anything that justifies the expense.
I'm sorry, but you're an idiot if you don't think
For all you trolls bitching pointlessly about the sidebar (which is optional anyway), this is from the UI guidelines page. which nicely describes what the sidebar is for:
"The sidebar will be most useful to users with large monitors who will have the space available to keep the sidebar open all the time. Users with small monitors will usually keep the sidebar minimized. When the sidebar is minimized, all sidebar tiles will have an icon in the taskbar; clicking an icon lets the user access the related tile."
In other words, it's not a big deal, and it won't take up your space. I think it's silly to react this way about an optional sidebar, when probably at least 80% of you run gkrellm and whatever other sidebar apps exist for the Linux desktop environment. This is just Microsoft's XML-based version of that concept (now comes the "they're stealing ideas again" replies).
Kind of reminds me of when Red Hat dared change their desktop theme, and all the knee-jerk Slashdotters flamed them to hell for absolutely no reason. Then it turned out not to be a big deal after all.
My With Longhorn, you can even write your own XML-based installation scripts.
Ok. Well, I can do this on linux today. In fact, I already have done it (I use an XML-based install/update script for a large application I'm developing). But I can even accomplish it with a simple call to rsync. No hidden settings, no scattered dll files. If I want, an application installs all in one directory. rsync that directory, and thats it- applications are updated and/or installed automatically.
Of course, I could also wait 3 years for windows to get to this point.
I'm sorry, but you're an idiot if you don't think .NET, WinFS, Avalon, and the rest of the Longhorn technologies aren't better than crappy old 2k.
I didn't say that they aren't better than 2k. In fact, you even quoted me saying "not worth waiting for". I don't think they are. I'm not totally convinced on .NET, a lot of it is marketing fluff, and it's being controlled by a corperation that will change everything, if it meets their business needs at the time (it's hard to maintain an application when the API is not totally documented and will randomly change).
Avalon has been done (XUL), and is cross-platform. I don't see the point in waiting 3 years for a proprietary version that's less mature.
WinFS is about the most interesting development, but worth the headaches of windows? Probably not. There are similar concepts in development for other OS's anyways.
Speak before you think
From this:
Finally, it is worth noting that Windows executables can be hosted in a window (by default) as well as in the browser.
For Longhorn, desktop executables are the next version of today's Windows Forms client-side apps. On the other hand, XAML and browser-hosted applications represent an evolution of today's client-side programming model to work over the Web. Right now, existing client-side applications can rarely be deployed over the Web. If you want to embed a Windows Forms form into a browser page, you'll get a reduced feature set and have to tweak bits and pieces of your code. With Longhorn, the common application model will let you write one application and deploy it over the Web. However, the final application is Longhorn-specific--very different from a traditional Web application like ASP.NET.
Sigh. I remember when the web was based on open standards...
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Linux and Apple now have three years to change that. MS has now told everyone they won't have anything new to show until 2006. Since OS X is pretty much now what Longhorn promises then, Apple can make huge strides during this period. Likewise, all the governments and companies considering Linux have 3 years to decide whether to get off the MS forced march or not.
And what are the compelling business features? 1. We get to rewrite all our custom apps that work just fine to use new APIs! 2. We get to buy all new computers for our employees with 4GHz processors and 1TB disks so the file open dialog box can be 3D and texture mapped with moving video! Or something. (ps The Longhorn graphics features run on current Apple hardware in OS X now.)
Meanwhile, MS is already starting to see revenue losses due to companies hesitant to upgrade because of security concerns.
I'm starting to feel almost bad for MS. Nah, not really.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
XML Tools for Mac OS X