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A Quick Look at Longhorn Build 4053
An anonymous reader writes "Even though the next generation Windows product is not due until late 2005 or even 2006, here is a look at what Microsoft has in store for it's future operating system. 'Without a vast amount of tweaking, this build is a resource hog. At idle, with no applications running, the commit charge is at a whopping 483 MB!! Obviously, the final release or even the beta releases will not consume this much of the system resources.'"
Are you so sure it wouldn't, Microsoft was never one for making a small package, and Longhorn is meant to be run on machines of 2006, where there is much more RAM in the the system.
So the big news is, an alpha version of an operating system from an OS family known to eat lots of memory, actually eats lots of memory?
"They must be running IIS on Longhorn!" or something. I heard that if nobody says something like that in a Slashdot thread, the universe implodes.
They're just waiting for the hardware needed to run it to become available...
Chances are the alpha is built in debug mode. Those seem to be rather bulkier, both on disk and in memory.
"[A] high IQ is like a Jeep; you will still get stuck, just farther from help!" --Just d' FAQs, c.g.a
Obviously, the final release or even the beta releases will not consume this much of the system resources.
No actually, they have the all important Brushed... I mean Slate look in place, so thats development pretty much wrapped up on this version.
Jonathanjk.com
Am I the only person who thinks improvements should come in the simplification of code rather than adding new features? I would much rather have another version of Windows 2000 that runs more efficiently than whatever may come from Longhorn. It's beginning to sound less like an application launching layer and more like a 3-ring circus stuffed into a shoebox.
Is this Gate's law once again counter-manding Moore's Law?
Joe
I just wonder how they where able to graft X-Windows into their current source code.
Intel: Hey Microsoft why don't you slow down windows a bit? Microsoft: Why? Intel: That way home users will actually have a reason to buy a 3Ghz processor
At idle, with no applications running, the commit charge is at a whopping 483 MB!! Obviously, the final release or even the beta releases will not consume this much of the system resources.
What'd they do? Replace the Windows GUI with Gnome?
ducks
FreeSpeech.org
Remember the days when the PC magazines all used to review pre-release software, find some bug or other, and say this will be fixed in time for the final release? Except the bugs never were fixed come the final version?
microsoft works with computer vendors to make it that the new opperating system requires a new computer to be compatible with it. Revitalizes companies like Dell, HP, etc. Everyone walks away richer (well except all of us who will have to throw away our current computers).
Dang, i remember the days when 8 megs of ram was a lot, and 80 meg hard drive would never get filled.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
I see Longhorn ain't going to play nice with even XP-class machines. Oh well, not like I wanted my rights digitally managed anyway.
/b
|f(x)dx = F(b) - F(a)
Why is this flamebait?
Why is it obvious that an OS in two years won't consume 400mb of ram?
What will the base system Microsoft target contain, in terms of memory?
Right now 512mb of ram is $100.
In a year then it might be $50 or $60. Or it might mean a base system will contain 1gb of ram, and everyone will have 64bit CPUs capable of addressing 16gb, or 32gb of ram. We already have desktops today that can address 8gb, and we're only waiting on ram sticks to increase in density.
GPL Deconstructed
Bill gates has called a meeting with the memory chip manufacturers...
GATES: "Gentlemen, I'm here to offer you a proposition. With my evil, resource bloating operating system, you can join with Microsoft and we will band together and control all the memory on the planet."
JAPANESE BUSINESSMAN: "I am not comfortable with this."
GATES: "I understand."
(He presses a red button on his arm rest)
(A trap door opens up from the ceiling and 10,000 copies of WordPerfect, Borland C++, Lotus, and Quattro Pro, bludgeon the Japanese semiconductor CEO to death. His lifeless body slumps over.)
GATES: "Anyone else have any problems with my plan?"
Geez and I thought Gentoo had a lot of builds...
Nah, just feels that way cause they take so long to compile.
Well, NT4 is build 1372 (I think), and I believe that Win2k is in the build number 2000-something... It seems to be the build number for the NT kernel itself.
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
Of course it's a resource hog, they probably have every debugging feature turned on in it. Is there a point to "reviewing" this build?
I found a handy page on Google with some torrents and other doodads. You may want to check how much RAM you have first ;-)
I have tried to install an alpha version of Longhorn. It hangs when it gets to detecting hardware, so I havent been able to actually use it. I think the build that i have it pretty much like XP is so I'm not that hurt that I can't get it to run. The nice thing is though, that it comes with a nicer partition utility than XP does. Not as good as something like Mandrake or SUSE, but still good for Windows.
People get a grip... Microsofts customer is *NOT* you and me. It is Dell, Gateway, HP and the like.
They goal is help their customers sell more product. That means give to their customer's customers pretty bright beads and *CAN NOT* work on existing (well slowly at least). This leads to the people buying BIG compters from MS Customers allowing for MS to sell the product twice!!
Can you say "More profit!"
not caring about proper memory management and usage leads to lazy programming. it's wasteful. why not spend the extra time to have a smoother running program that requires less of a footprint? any improvement you make now will help you in the long run, especially if you're always adding things to older code. start with a polished base and more often than not you'll end up with a polished product. this whole "memory is cheap, who cares" thing reminds me too much of how wasteful people are in general..
"why build 1 when i can build 2 for twice the cost?"
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Hey, if you're extremely worried about the RAM resources, are too cheap to shell out that extra $40 for 256 MB of memory, or expect to run the whole thing on TI-83 calculator, then maybe next Windows is not for you.
If you want functionality, you have to dedicate resources, if you don't want much functionality, stick to Linux on a floppy with pre-installed vi and life would be great.
Mozilla Firefox 0.8 is currently taking up 63 MB of RAM, and that's just a browser with no media players, mail clients, task schedulers, etc.
It will consume more...
Probably they put the animated "Clippy" on the Start button.
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
Posted by Team Flexbeta on 05 March 2004 (34135 views) Rating: 4.64
Even though the next generation Windows product is not due until late 2005 or even 2006, we wanted to take a look at what Microsoft has in store for us. We take a quick look at the recently leaked Longhorn Build 4053.
For those of you that are lucky enough to have snagged a copy, remember this, Build 4053 is still a baby, not even in Beta stage yet, so we will not go in depth into subjects such as the theme, sidebar, etc.
The installation wizard has improved greatly from past installers that Windows 2000 and XP had. No more will we see the plain DOS like setup screen, its all graphical now with minimal questions during the installation process, which, has its good and its bad. For a home user upgrading to Longhorn, the installation is a breeze, start the setup, enter the key and go take a nap, by the time you wake up it will be done. If the setup continues on this path towards final release, then the use of an answer file will be necessary to alleviate any post installation changes, especially for a network administrator implementing a company wide roll out, but Microsoft has always provided excellent administrator tools for this very reason. The installation did take an awfully long time, especially during the "Hardware Detection" phase, but I'm sure that this will be improved upon in the months to come.
Even though the initial startup is extremely fast, once logged in the system crawls along, taking a seemingly endless amount of time to get everything up and running. This too will definitely improve over development time.
The layout is clean and clutter free. Minimal icons are presented on the desktop, which is one of my pet peeves; I go to great lengths to maintain an icon-less desktop. The sidebar is definitely going to have its share of protestors, me being one of them. To me, no matter what is docked on the sidebar in the final release, it is a huge waste of space and system resources that a vast majority of users will just turn off. There will be more applets applied to it in the end, search bars, link bars, etc, so as the sidebar comes of age, we will examine it once again.
Without a vast amount of tweaking, this build is a resource hog. At idle, with no applications running, the commit charge is at a whopping 483 MB!! Obviously, the final release or even the beta releases will not consume this much of the system resources. My test system is an Intel Pentium 4 2.4Ghz with 512 MB of RAM, so it is still running at a good pace, but anything less than this makes the system crawl along at an insanely annoying pace. When the final build is released, the recommended system requirements will be roughly the same as Windows XP, but as anyone that has tried to run XP with multiple users will testify, simply having the recommended requirements is just not enough.
At this point in time, build 4053 is basically Windows XP with a different theme, even though some new technologies are being created and there are dribs and drabs of them in this build. Build 4053 is still a lot different from previous builds where some of the new technologies Microsoft is working on were clearly integrated, such as the Hardware Carousel, WinFS, etc, in this build like Build 4051 (PDC) they are absent or implemented at a minimum.
There are very visible bugs at this stage, but it seems that some of the major pains that plagued previous builds have been worked on or corrected. The infamous Internet Explorer memory leak seems to have disappeared, and that was a huge memory leak, but as I sit here writing this, the commit charge is growing and growing, so there are still memory leaks in some processes and/or services that are running.
Some features previewed in previous builds have been developed to a greater extent such as Contacts, Photos and Videos. The layout and orientation of the windows has been vastly improved. All links and graphical elements have been fine tuned
You know how the Microsoft employees do: Once in a while they press several times the "Build All" button, so their bosses think they've been working hard.
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
Maybe it won't take until 2006 to finish Longhorn, maybe they just need to wait until DRAM prices fall enough that people will be able to afford to run it.
Sources working at the Redmond campus say that it is common knowledge on campus that Longhorn will not ship until mid 2007. With current technical problems mounting, the same sources say that 2008 is starting to look likely, if not optimistic.
Those who have to use the current build say that it is not stable at all. Apparently, there are new failure modes in the DRM and file systems that are "very difficult to analyze and very non-intuitive to troubleshoot or even understand." The failure modes are reported to totally freeze the computer, prevent rebooting and resist reformatting.
If true, the words "difficult and non-intuitive" are not encouraging, particularly when used by very experienced users at Microsoft .
That build number is the build of the overall NT kernel and code branch, not just of Longhorn. For example:
Windows NT 3.1 = build 511
Windows NT 3.5 = build 887
Windows NT 3.51 = build 1057
Windows NT 4.0 = build 1381
Windows 2000 = build 2195
Windows XP = build 2600
Windows Server 2003 = build 3790
(FYI, those are for the original release versions. Betas have earlier build numbers.)
Even though the next generation Windows product is not due until late 2005 or even 2006, we wanted to take a look at what Microsoft has in store for us. We take a quick look at the recently leaked Longhorn Build 4053.
For those of you that are lucky enough to have snagged a copy, remember this, Build 4053 is still a baby, not even in Beta stage yet, so we will not go in depth into subjects such as the theme, sidebar, etc.
The installation wizard has improved greatly from past installers that Windows 2000 and XP had. No more will we see the plain DOS like setup screen, its all graphical now with minimal questions during the installation process, which, has its good and its bad. For a home user upgrading to Longhorn, the installation is a breeze, start the setup, enter the key and go take a nap, by the time you wake up it will be done. If the setup continues on this path towards final release, then the use of an answer file will be necessary to alleviate any post installation changes, especially for a network administrator implementing a company wide roll out, but Microsoft has always provided excellent administrator tools for this very reason. The installation did take an awfully long time, especially during the "Hardware Detection" phase, but I'm sure that this will be improved upon in the months to come.
Even though the initial startup is extremely fast, once logged in the system crawls along, taking a seemingly endless amount of time to get everything up and running. This too will definitely improve over development time.
The layout is clean and clutter free. Minimal icons are presented on the desktop, which is one of my pet peeves; I go to great lengths to maintain an icon-less desktop. The sidebar is definitely going to have its share of protestors, me being one of them. To me, no matter what is docked on the sidebar in the final release, it is a huge waste of space and system resources that a vast majority of users will just turn off. There will be more applets applied to it in the end, search bars, link bars, etc, so as the sidebar comes of age, we will examine it once again.
A Quick Look at Longhorn Build 4053 - Page 2
Without a vast amount of tweaking, this build is a resource hog. At idle, with no applications running, the commit charge is at a whopping 483 MB!! Obviously, the final release or even the beta releases will not consume this much of the system resources. My test system is an Intel Pentium 4 2.4Ghz with 512 MB of RAM, so it is still running at a good pace, but anything less than this makes the system crawl along at an insanely annoying pace. When the final build is released, the recommended system requirements will be roughly the same as Windows XP, but as anyone that has tried to run XP with multiple users will testify, simply having the recommended requirements is just not enough.
At this point in time, build 4053 is basically Windows XP with a different theme, even though some new technologies are being created and there are dribs and drabs of them in this build. Build 4053 is still a lot different from previous builds where some of the new technologies Microsoft is working on were clearly integrated, such as the Hardware Carousel, WinFS, etc, in this build like Build 4051 (PDC) they are absent or implemented at a minimum.
There are very visible bugs at this stage, but it seems that some of the major pains that plagued previous builds have been worked on or corrected. The infamous Internet Explorer memory leak seems to have disappeared, and that was a huge memory leak, but as I sit here writing this, the commit charge is growing and growing, so there are still memory leaks in some processes and/or services that are running.
Some features previewed in previous builds have been developed to a greater extent such as Contacts, Photos and Videos. The layout and orientation of the windows has been vastly improved. All links and graphical elements have been fine tune
Every Microsoft operating system during development does! The OS is not designed to run on systems that we use now, it is designed to run on systems that we will be using in 3 years time.
Historically, when Windows NT received heaps of exactly the same flack about it running extraordinarily slowly from reviewers quite simply because they weren't smart enough to work that basic fact out.
Its a product that won't hit the shelves for 2 years. It was compiled in debug mode - of course its going to be a resource hog.
Don't you love the fact that MSFT always builds an OS for nonexistant hardware? MSFT relies on the hardware manufacturers to put out faster, more capable hardware to support their shotty implementations; it's a crackers heaven.
This is how it works:
1: MSFT Releases new OS
2: MSFT stops supporting old OS
3: End user forced to upgrade
4: PROFIT $$$
but it doesn't stop there.
Since the OS is implemented badly to begin with, you can expect there will be plenty of things to exploit, to gain control over the end-user's machine. With the above cycle in mind, it's more than obvious that MSFT is blindly supplying crackers with faster, more powerful machines that they can use in their network of zombies.
I hear that they plan on shipping a virus scanner with future versions of windows...I sure hope they update virus definitions much faster than they currently patch their security holes.
and 483 MB? That's rediculous. I'm running slackware with everything I need to rule the world, and it uses less than 200MB.
Memory isn't really an issue for me, as I have an ample amount, but my point is this: Microsoft should more concentrate on fixing their current implementation issues. They need to make their OS's usable (and fast) on widely available hardware. They need to do a lot of work with their memory mangement. I shouldn't have to reboot my computer twice a week, or even twice a month. MSFT should not require users to use the latest technology either, because generally it's prohibitively expensive, and always implemented poorly.
Until MSFT fixes the above issues, I think I'll stick to OSS.
Is MS in bed with hardware manufacturers?
MS is in bed with almost everyone, in the sense that almost everybody is taking it up the tailpipe from Bill & Friends. And many don't seem to mind.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Moore's Law says that the numbers of transistors per integrated circuit increased exponentionally.
One day a economist overheard this and didn't know how to apply it, so he looked at a price graph and observed that technology cost half what it did 18 months before.A Marketing major heard it and thought that too drery, and declared speed doubled every 18 months.
Then an MCSE came along, and proclaimed efficient programming isn't cost effective, and Windows bloat will be absorbed.Just a reminder: with Mac OS 10, Apple has been improving its performance with every single release...
although, Jaguar and Panther did add a 128 MB "requirement"
..for a Windows build, in terms of window colour (brushed metal, like OS X). As far as everything else, it isn't needed. These screenshots show how nothing has really changed.
Come on x86ers, save up for a Mac (even a used one) and get more stuff done more enjoyably. If you're going to spend $ on new hardware (which Longhorn will surely require for 95% of the pop.), don't run the risk of it not working with your setup.. and you can still run *nix or a BSD.
must not post while Bob is involved.
Last Friday, I had to fire up an old, tired PC running Windows 98. Gosh, a real dinosaur - 166Mhz, 256Mb RAM, MS Office.
It was weird. It booted quickly, and the whole thing felt snappy. Menus actually popped up on screen immediately. Explorer did things, instead of hanging about "thinking" all the time.
Windows XP doesn't feel like that, even with my brand new 3Ghz, 1Gb RAM machine.
Why is this so? Why are the menus so slow - and what have they done to Windows Explorer to make it so snail-like?
"Cats like plain crisps"
It's great to see betas leaked. While we in the free software world of course shouldn't just follow in Microsofts path, we should keep a close eye on them. Hopefully, by the time Longhorn is released we will have most if not all improvements implemented. In this release, I don't see much to copy. Actually, it was more of Microsoft playing catch-up with free software (Firefox).
Of course the UI has changed a bit, but other than new colours there didn't seem to be much enhancements. I guess I'll go back to study the screen shots more carefully. I'd better hurry before the rest of you make Flexbeta grind to a halt completely--it's already slow!
So, first he calles it micro - soft, and now he's calling it long - horn?
micro. soft.
long. horn.
I think that makes my phallic implications painfully obvious. My work here is done.
It's called debug code. Just look at FreeBSD:
/boot/kernel/kernel /boot/kernel/kernel /usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC/kernel.debugx r-x 1 root wheel 30170033 Mar 7 21:31 /usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC/kernel.debug
fafnir# ls -l
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 5940286 Feb 26 00:52
fafnir# ls -l
-rwxr-
Enabling debugging options makes the FreeBSD kernel five times as large; if anything, I'd expect Microsoft to have even more debugging code in their pre-release builds.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
How is mine *anti* Microsoft?
It's a legitimate point, I asked why it was obvious the final release will take less memory?
I would fully expect all OSes in 2005 to take more than 256mb; possibly even 512mb. Microsoft would just happen to be one of many. If this were a Linux article, I would have asked the same question. I use a Mac, and I *know* how much memory OS X likes, and am under no illusions that 10.5 won't take as much!
GPL Deconstructed
"At idle, with no applications running, the commit charge is at a whopping 483 MB!! Obviously, the final release or even the beta releases will not consume this much of the system resources."
MS typically aims at having the OS consume, or fit into, about a quarter of whatever amount of memory is considered standard at the time.
Now, by the time Longhorn rolls out in 2007 or so, it's likely that 2 GB of RAM, if not 4, will be standard on most new systems. So I'd say MS is probably aiming at a 512 MB base for Longhorn. Maybe 256 or 384, but there's nothing in MS's history to indicate that they would have a problem releasing an OS that consumes 512MB.
Longhorn 4053 Tweak Guide ...
...
Found this over at Neowin
a fully-loaded 2003 server running dreamweaver
That could be the most appropriate use of a server I've ever seen.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Obviously, the final release or even the beta releases will not consume this much of the system resources
What is the point of showing these numbers then?
In other news:
Apple is working on a ultra-mini iPod. The pre-beta-alpha version we got our hands on weighted 20 pounds and was bigger than my G5. Of course, the final version will be smaller and lighter. One could still wonder where Apple is heading at with such a bulky product.
Foreword: If you have nothing relevant to say, don't say anything!
Write boring code, not shiny code!
If you look at past versions of windows, 500MB for Longhorn isn't really that crazy either. From experience, I'd say you needed about 32MB to be comfortable in Win98, 64MB in WinME, 96-128MB in Win2k, and 192MB in WinXP. 500MB in 2006 just seems like a natural progression. (And by comfortable, I mean being able to run the OS and other things to make it usable like a browser, e-mail app, and whatever else is needed. In reality, much less is needed to get the OS to actually run, it will just run like ass.)
Of course, after having to manage several GNOME/Mozilla users on a VNC server at work (university departments are poor), I've gotten into the habit of making sure there is at least 256MB per user to prevent running out of swap and taking the machine down completely. So Linux isn't really doing that well in terms of memory usage either.
Memory usage in current environments is all pretty insane to me anyways though. A harddrive is literally a million times slower than ram for latency. You'd figure operating system and desktop development people would want to use as little swapping as possible as doing so would dramatically improve the responsiveness of the system and, consequentially, the user experience.
I think I'll just stick with fluxbox.
What will the base system Microsoft target contain, in terms of memory?
Bill Gates himself answered this question years ago.
It's not necessarily how much memory is used, it's what it's used for.
.NET "managed" code at the core of the OS. If it's anything like Java, then this also uses a lot of RAM.
Longhorn is going to have an embedded SQL server in its filesystem, right? Well, SQL server uses a lot of RAM. So that's one thing. It will also have
The RAM usage really should be itemized and MS should provide ways to turn off features that people might never use that just eat up RAM in the background.
I am not surprised. They probably used .NET to build it all. That means a few things:
.NET style SOAP XML messaging)
.NET does essentially the same, but it will have the same drawbacks as Java - slower execution and larger memory footprint.
- they are now using components (with
- they use bounds checking all over
- more meta information on objects is stored
- libraries are probably more extensive - makes reuse better
- more things are service-driven, so more is in memory all the time
This all comes down to more memory use. Look at Java. It's fast enough nowadays, but it still uses a lot of memory resources. You get more runtime functionality (reflection etc) in return.
This is a good thing though, it's a one time performance penalty returning huge benefits. It won't favour small/old machines though.
The future is runtime.
XP is tolerable with 128
What, if you're running one application? I've got 512MB in my XP machine at work, and I've turned off all the snazzy effects and play-skool skins, and there are still times that my machine just suddenly decides to be completely unresponsive. This on a recent model Sony VAIO. I do tend to run back and forth between a lot of applications (Photoshop, Fireworks, Word, Excel, Thunderbird, Mozilla, IE, text editor, and when I'm feeling brave, Illustrator), but after a few days of uptime, even if I'm running only 2-3 of those, funny little things (like, selecting a drop-down menu) just start to crawl.
I'm suspecting it's something to do with disk performance, rather than memory, of course, but if I had 1-2 GB, maybe I wouldn't have to swap out so often.
Tweet, tweet.
The average household must not have any games. Sure, some people may be happy playing the same games 7 years later (off the top of my head estimate at how old a P200 would be), but not your average gamer. Sure, your average household may not be your average gamer. However, many home pc sales are fueled by games. For example, take a (mother|father|pair of parents) who works very hard trying to give their children a better life than they had. This is part of the American dream, no? Due to working long hours, this perental mass feels guilty over not spending as much time with their children as they want to. However, computer games make this child act happy. The parent can rationalize spending to much time away from the house, as it allows them to buy computer hardware/games, which make them happy. (Ok maybe this includes console gaming as well, but that appears to be getting closer and closer to desktop hardware). Anyway, the point is, that new games, a HUGE market, create a need in a household for new hardware.
Lead me not into temptation. I can find it myself.
(i work at microsoft)
what you say is correct, the build numbers for the most part go +1 each day. but for releases and such, they have jumped numbers for convenience's sake (e.g. xp gold wasn't actually 2600, it was something like 25xx, but they made it 2600 b/c this is convenient.) also, they branched out the longhorn build while the xp build was still being finalized, so they made these start at 3000 (iirc) to keep them separately identifiable. so, 4053 doesn't nec. mean 1053 days after 3000.
Now that the link is slashdotted, I'll post another review / info page about this alpha build from PDC:
. asp
http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/longhorn_4051
There are no apparent differences between that reviewed build (4051) and the one in this article.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
OS X will use as much RAM as it can - it caches apps and data you use a lot to cut down on time accessing the disk. I have a gig in my machine and OS X is using 892.8 megs, with 12 days of uptime and ten apps currently running. However, I bet that bits of apps I don't have launched right now, like Photoshop and Preview and Acquisition, are cached, because I tend to launch them a lot.
I'm not saying that modern OSes don't use a lot of RAM, cause they do. But the fact that the OS is using almost a gig of RAM on my machine is not a sign of inefficiency.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
First of all, I am sure it was compiled in degug mode - resource hog.
Secondly, whenever ID Software claims:
-"Our next game, DoomQuad, will require that you travel forward in time and get yourself a system powerful enough to run it. Unless, naturally, you are content at playing the game at -2 FPS".
Now M$ has a product that requires you to have a somewhat beefy system and everyone starts bitching.
Why am I not surprised? This is slashdot after all.
Ronald said nothing. He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.
Hey, I found out today you can buy computers pre-loaded with the alpha version of Longhorn - the store was all white with wood floors, and they were selling these cool MP3 players too.
My laptop came in this cool aluminum case, and it's running pretty well. Searches were really fast and the new browser (I think they are calling it Jungle or something like that) was really great. Plus I had no viruses even when I connected it to the internet for a minute without thinking!! And in this version they made that huge bar on the side of the screen you could see in the article screenshots resizable. So I think Longhorn will do just fine.
The PowerMac G5. Technically it should be able to support more than 8GB, but only 8GB is supported by Apple.
"Why is it obvious that an OS in two years won't consume 400mb of ram?"
Because there's no good reason for it to. It's hard to think of a good reason for it to take 400MB on disk!
This is just the same kind of bloat that took word processors / desktop publishing from floppies to multi-CD bloat-fests. Yes, things should naturally get a little larger with these windowing systems etc., but not so many orders of magnitude larger (or slower).
What does XP give me with that > 1GB install that I couldn't otherwise have in less than 100 Meg? I excpect any disassembly of most modern software will find 100MB chunks of NULLs to increase hardware sales. And perhaps there is one copy of each file for each day of the month.
RAM/HD space is for the data your applications work on, not your OS!
Even Multics, VMS, and MVS back in the day had kernel features comperable to modern, BeOS had the database FS and it was small and fast, Plan9 is just 64MB and the whole windowing system is TINY, NeXT had DisplayPS way back when and was smaller and faster than modern systems...
Let's design an OS.
We'll give it preemptive multitasking w/ hard realtime support, memory protection, ErOS type capability security, sync & async I/O, rethink the API like BeOS, make it multiuser, full-featured shell (before Berkeley [cat should not have flags]), a database filesystem (hell, several lesser FSs too), a DisplayPDF or PS vectored windowing system, give it TCP/IP OpenGL etc., support for filesharing of various types, some initial apps (basic UTF-8 editor, HTML4+CSS browser, image preview)...
How much space? 'Prolly well under 100 or 200 Meg.
//end pathetic, illucid rant
Is that meant to spoof the old "more Windows viruses because it's more popular" myth?
If a company has to write 2 drivers, which one are they more likely to spend time writing and testing properly: the one that will be used on 95% of desktops or the one that will be used on 5% of desktops? Even the large companies that can write decent drivers often write their Linux drivers in a rush, usually after some big customer asks for it and they're facing the loss of a big sale.
Of course, one could argue that a company that doesn't have the resources to make a decent driver won't even bother with the Linux market. But such no-name companies mostly just use common chipsets anyway, most of which have good drivers.
Longhorn is a patch over XP.
.NET framework for managed code.
Not really. Windows XP was over 2000 though. There are some huge underlying changes -- not a 100% rewrite -- but some major rewrites anyway. For example is the Windows programming API switched from Win32 to WinFX, and a whole lot retrofitted for the
In total, I'd expect Longhorn to bring about as many rewrites as there was from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Actually, I haven't noticed any increase in memory footprint between jaguar and panther. It could only be me, but it seems that OSX has gotten smaller, faster and more stable with each release.
"Looks like Quartz Extreme" indeed. I'd bet anything they "borrow" the technology.
Because *nix supports more platforms than OS X does. :P
-If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
This is so fucking stupid I'm not sure why I'm replying to it, but I think the power of sanity compels me...
No, it's not hard to think of why it takes up 400MB on disk. Windows isn't a fucking command-line based hardcore sysadmin funtime OS. It is designed to be everything to everyone. There is an old saying you obviously haven't heard that goes something like this "90% of users will only use 10% of an application, but those 90% will each use a DIFFERENT 10%."
Anyone that pines for the days of VMS should be legally restricted from bitching about current operating systems.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
http://www.activewin.com/screenshots/longhorn/Imag e29.jpg
m dk 91-scr7.jpg
lets look at this image for 1 second, lets calculate how much percentage of the screen goes to some useful usage, 30%, 35%?... And you are paying a few grand (software + hardware), for a bit more eye candy which makes you less productive? am I missing something?
Now lets look at a typical linux session:
http://images.mandrakesoft.com/img/screenshots/
KDE now has all sorts of integration, and gnome is heading the same way. So soon, if not already, there is nothing windows has to offer that doesn't already exists in linux open source with open standards that can be used on ANY platform.
I do not have a single complaint or problem with linux except for less than perfect hardware support, which requires you to pay a little extra for better quality hardware.
In linux, I can do graphics, video animation, I can program, I can use the wonderful openoffice, I can record sound and edit sound in highest quality (with some commercial programs), and these are the very reasons why Crysler, Disney, IBM and other leading companies use linux. Not to mention the reliability, control, and power both as a server and a desktop machine.
I for one am now getting an OQO, (oqo.com), that is the size of a typical handheld with 500mhz P3 equivelent speed and 256Mb ram and 20Gb hard drive. And I will run linux with KDE, and it will work more than adequate to use. Then I'll become a lot more productive as this will replace both the PC and the laptop for me and since its low power CPU, battery lasts up to 6 hours with standard battery and 15 hours with extended.
I do not see longhorn ever rising personally and microsoft knows it and tries postpone the release as long as it can, as it will be seen as an instant failure. So instead, microsoft invests in companies like sco to try to slow down linux.
And I for one plan to use 1ghz PCs for a long time to come, I just do not see a reason to update as each new versions of KDE and the linux kernel focus on making it run better on both older and newer hardware, and with every release, I enjoy using linux on my 400mhz laptop more and more.
And as someone in one of the comments said, while you spend time rewriting a program to be cleaner, someone will come up with a better, more full featured product, and that someone is linux.
Can someone please tell me how there is a potential advantage to use windows? because I am completely lost how such a pointless, expensive, slow, unstandarized, closed standard product can be even discussed seriously as an alternative to linux.
I recently visted Ford's design lab. They were working on the 2007 Mustang. Those guys didn't even have the engine designed! I mean what the hell? The car can't even drive for god sakes!
I know it's a joke, but. . .
Even an idiot like me can set up a webserver/fileserver with MacOS. You've got to give Apple ease of use points for that.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Honestly if by the year 2007 you don't have a computer with 4gigs of ram then you're just lame, regardless if you use Linux or Windows.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Here are the most interesting quotes:
All in all, a great article.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
The Speed of Software havles every 18 months, So I think when Longhorn will be released, We will need at least 5 GHz to run it properly
It's XP. XP's VM is total shit. The moment you minimize a window, the VM will page it out to the swap space. When I was doing Windows development for 3 months, the trick I found was to use a third-party tool which allowed window shading, and then I just shaded windows which didn't require my immediate attention.
512mb of RAM was thus able to sustain VS.net, Mozilla, Firebird, WinAmp, and a couple of extra windows all at once without choking like a 5$ hooker.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Same Shit Different Package. While m$ windows is busy trying to reinvent a square wheel made of snazzy buzzwords, Apple is moving forward with a strong, stable, lean, mean operating system with very nicely separated yet integrated layers, each of which are subject to exponential innovations: UNIX subsystem powered by collaborative work of the open-source community and Apple developers, journaling filesystem, graphics/video subsystem, user-interface.
meanwhile Apple is also busy developing aspects of computing life people actually care about, meet iLife. Say hello to email with built-in bayesian spam filtering and built-in support for ISP-supplied spam-canning frameworks. Say hello to iSync, Address Book.app, Calendar.app, Mail.app, iChat.app, all insanely intuitive independent applications, yet tightly integrated thru open APIs. Apple is already moving forward with consumer electronics vendors: digital still cameras, digital video cameras, PDAs, cell-phone manufacturers to all get them to adhere to Apple's very-well defined APIs and standards so their products will "just work" with Macs, without installing a single piece of additional software, beyond what comes out of the box with the mac. iSync currently lets me sync my contacts and calendar, to my iPod, my sony ericsson t610 bluetooth phone, my online .MAC account, and my powerbook laptop with built-in bluetooth, all with the single press of a button. If i make a modification to contacts or calendar on any device, the next sync reflects it on all other devices. I could buy a Palm Pilot and have it work in the exact same way, without even using Palm's desktop software.
Apple gets it.
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I remeber back in the days of fixed-spec computers. Tandy Color Basic, Commodore 64, Amiga 500... Computers like that had more or less locked specs, which developers would have to keep in mind. Kinda like the gaming consoles these days.
It's amazing how much better the software get's written, when there are absolute constraints which can't be tangled. That goes for back in the old days on FS-computers, and it goes today on the consoles. The developers will actually have to write efficient code.
Totally unlike todays computers, where software authors really doesn't seem to give a shit. "If it doesn't run well, spend anotgher $2-300 on your setup allready". Does my current computer work that much faster than my 66Mhz 486 running Windows 3.11 and Word 6.0? No really, it runs faster, but heck, take into account my current computer specs.
My computer is rigged with a Pentium4 2.4Ghz and 512MB ram. Running the "multi-tasking" OS Windows XP (yes I use it, software issue, say no more), inserting a CD/DVD (not to mention DVD+R) and any opening of (new) files gets lagged 3-6 seconds at least.
Generally anything which involves disk-access will have to wait until Windows has properly detected (and performed an Autorun on, if not disabled) any removable media.
Amazing. Multi-tasking my fscking ass.
And for 486-comparison... If we say my current setupis aprox. 40 times faster. I'll say that a bloat-factor of 10-15 is applicable. That means 40/(10-15) is the actual speed increase.
But that's just me, and this comment is getting way long.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Around these parts we call it memory usage. Has someone thought up a new buzzphrase to make themselves sound more with-it or something?
By looking at the screenshots, I can say that the Longhorn GUI sucks. First of all, the sidebar is useless and takes too much screen space. Secondly, they have flatten the GUI too much, and suddently the user can't tell a label from a menu item. In previous versions of the GUI, the 3d elements made clear which parts of the window are editable and which aren't. Without 3d, it is much more difficult to quickly judge the borders of each area.
The only good thing about Longhorn is WinFS. Something that the Linux community should embrace. I have said it previously, and I will say it again, that we need to manage information, not binary data. The operating system must be aware of the types of data stored on the disk. It is a task not to be left on the application layer.