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Windows XP To Get Longhorn Technologies
SilentChris writes "According to CNet, Microsoft is revising their plan for Longhorn. In addition to scaling back WinFS, they will also have separate releases of Avalon (the new graphical system) and Indigo (a new network architecture) for Windows XP and 2003. If most of the updates will be available for current versions of Windows, what is the incentive to upgrade?"
I think that they will MOST certainly have other products ot unveil at the same time. They wouldn't just release ALL their new code for an OS, thats just not like thair business model.
1st...?
"If it moves, shoot it till it stops moving" -Tex, Brute Force
Wwell it seems longhon keeps falling behind schedule, and Microsoft keeps cutting back features to keep the same release date. Maybe Longhorn will be another Windows Me, just something to hold everyone over until they get another release out.
Blood spurt gush!
Seriously, Apple is adding features that were supposed to be in Longhorn into Tiger and it will be available early in 2005. Meanwhile MS is removing those same features just so they can hit a 2006 launch date. Huh?
The funniest bit was all my Windows collegues telling me about how fantastic Longhorn was going to be and how it would allow MS users to overtake the Mac.....
Guess not!
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Win98SE? This is a Linux site :-)
Seriously, there is no 'incentive to upgrade'. How many people replace one version of Windows by another? Maybe some do to get away from an unsupported version like Win95, or a version which does not support new peripherals like Win98, but not that many people upgrade. The market has moved on from the days where the choice was between Win 3.11 and Win95.
The market is in new systems. The natural (non-)decision is to get the newest version available, and that will eventually be Longhorn. Microsoft would save themselves a lot of money by not bothering to produce a new version of Windows. Then again, how long has WinXP been on sale? Maybe they are doing exactly that.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
who really upgrades anyways, pre-installs is their bread and butter with regards to keeping their OS monopoly rolling. What is interesting is that they expect existing computers, running their current OS's, will be able to run the updates from their next OS. THIS IS NEW for the most part. Usually, they shoved so much kludge into the next OS that only current hardware would/could run the OS.
So, if they can't force hardware upgrades then they will be slowing down sales of their future OS. This isn't typical for Microsoft and I don't expect this to happen. Or atleast they most likely won't be upgrading XP or 2003 to the 2007 version. Just small bits and pieces.
gawd, remember when they wouldn't upgrade USB support into Win95? OEMs were probably hammered into only pre-loading Win98 with that incredible USB support.
Trust me, Microsoft will not do anything at the expense of OS uptake( not upgrade ). XP won't get much useful stuff. that'll only be in 2007.
IMHO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
If you want Adobe stuff, you could upgrade to a Mac instead : D
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I have the opposite experience. Win2K runs many of my older games that WinXP choked on.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I'm still running Win98 as well, but my incentive to upgrade has arrived: Doom 3 only runs on 2k or xp.
Is that the real limit, or are those just the "officialy supported" OSs? I know of (and play) several games that are supposedly 2K/XP only on my 98SE box.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Cupertino should take notice. Tiger-only apps are going to be a bitch to sell to people with a $129 add-on.
While I realize that the majority of the /. crowd is from the UNIX world, I also realize that it would be more professional to replace the broken window graphic with something more appropriate.
The technologies coming out of Microsoft might not be as innovative as they claim it to be, but it's certainly groundbreaking for a company with such magnitude as Microsoft to consent to the superiority of researched technologies.
Longhorn is going to include some exciting new technologies such as Avalon, WinFS, Indigo, and most importantly their new Monad (you really must research this, as it could do for Longhorn what BASIC did for Microsoft's first operating systems). While these are just codenames for abstract ideas (and possibly just buzzwords) it will certainly be exciting to see some of these things deployed.
This is the longest Microsoft has ever waited to release an OS. Windows 95 to Windows 98 took only 3 years, as the names describe. Windows Longhorn looks as if it will take up to 7 years. What can be done in seven years' time with hundreds of emplyees? Amazing stuff.
Linux has some serious issues. I'm not going to argue how many compared to Windows, because that argument would be futile. Instead I will offer my "credibility" as an unbiased commentator:
I'm 17 and have been using Linux since 2001 after getting my first computer sometime in '98. It didn't take long for me to fall in love with it. Since then, I've been using Debian GNU/Linux for the past few years, and enjoy it's breadth of developer friendly software. I've used FreeBSD, and plan to play around with BSD's like OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD, and even get a Mac G5. I also plan to make my own Linux from Scratch, an embedded uClinux distro with BusyBox, and other fun things like that; eventually working my way up to hacking on the Linux kernel. I would also enjoy testing out Hurd, as well.
However, if what's coming out of Microsoft is as developer friendly as advertised to be (what really IS these days anyways, but that's not for me to predict) then Linux might have a problem. If people are really going to be able to hack up some XML applicaton like what's hyped, there might be some serious problems, no matter how many Mono's or GNU DotNETs there are.
Until the community stops getting cocky and starts getting worried, nothing will ever go anywhere. Being afraid is a good thing(tm), because it gets people working harder.
So, again, I emplore somebody to please change the graphic to more accurately represent what we have to fear this new century.
-Devin Torres
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. -- Larry Wall
You upgrade because Longhorn will replace cruddy Win32 with sleek .NET, will be entirely DirectX-accelerated, and will sport a whole new interface codenamed Aero Glass. Video drivers will be pushed into userspace (finally), and various other major core architecture changes will take place.
Note that the features in this article being made available for Windows XP are APIs. Those can be easily backported. Longhorn itself, however, is a major architectural change.
Okay, so I know that is the kind of thing that the FLOSS zealots say all the time. But it is so obviously true in this case.
MS is betting the company on Longhorn. No really. Their two major revenue streams, and the foundation of the modern MS is Windows and Office. Windows is a twisty maze of backwards compatibility all alike to keep both users and developers favorable to the platform. Office is packed full of enterprise features that Joe User never needs because Joe CEO does.
MS down to it's ancient roots with custom programming languages and tools, is firmly in the realm of the rich client. Linux and BSD and OS X (and SkyOS and BeOS, and Syllable and . . . ) are becoming more prevalent because suddenly fully half of a users apps are portable! No not Office or Photoshop, but Yahoo and Google. Thin clients!
The gigahertz war between AMD and Intel last left MS with a glut of processing power and no software capable of using it. Once MS caught up with the processor, they drove home the power of the rich client, and reestablished their platform as the primary environment for building them.
It's happened again. Processor power is far beyond what 90% of the increasingly computer literate public needs, just like when x86 procs hit 1Ghz. But this time there is a growing base of truly alternative development and user platforms (not just OS/2 and MacOS 8, but the various POSIX and embedded platforms) while on the other side, the thin client has a solid hold in several key applications (email, dictionaries, encyclopedias, hell, even video games).
MS wants to emulate the success of Windows 95. They want to bring an enterprise technology to the masses (NT, XP was really just a dry run for that), show users that there is a reason for all this new hardware, and reestablish themselves as THE application development environment for rich clients. It's not just getting users to upgrade (though that would make them super happy) its getting developers to use the technology.
And they've realized that they can't bet on a huge upgrade kick to make Avalon and Indigo dominant, XP taught and continues to teach them that. So bringing these heavy investment technologies to a wider audience is the only way that MS can continue to be the largest software company in the world, and see any kind of rapid return on Longorn. If they loose this battle, they become the desktop version of Sun Microsystems. A giant, who still does good work, and whose technologies still have some milage, but ultimately in it's final days
The name of Longhorn is pretty easy to track if you look at the previous version of Windows (Whistler) and the blue-sky version of Windows (Blackcomb), and know a bit about the Pacific Northwest (specifically, the Whistler ski resort up in Canada). At the Whistler resort, there are two mountains, Whistler and Blackcomb. Between the lifts for the two mountains, there is a tavern called Longhorn. The initial plan for Windows was supposed to have Longhorn be a small release between XP (Whistler) and Blackcomb, with Blackcomb coming around 2006 or 2007. Thus, Longhorn, because it's a stop on your way from Whistler to Blackcomb. Somewhere along the line, Longhorn became a much more prominant release, so the codename is no longer as appropriate, but that's the root of the name.
Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows has an entry in the XP FAQ (near the top, scroll down about 1/5th of the page) and in the Longhorn FAQ (near the bottom) that mention this in lesser detail, though he gets the location of Longhorn wrong. The Garibaldi Lift Co. is the tavern at the base of Whistler. Quite a nice little tavern, too, if you've got friends who are into skiing or mountain biking and you're not.
wow. who would've thought that a year ago, the already infamous "Longhorn" would be just yet another junkyard os. pesh. MS began saying that Longhorn wasn't driven by release date, but by technology advancement.. even if it meant it coming out in 2010. what happened to this? lol. it seems as though they've slowly scaled back every god damn thing that they could.. until now its just another _enhancement_ to windows xp. im impressed, honestly, impressed. /end rant
in reality, i care not. for my soul hath been liberated. whurd up.
If the reality of NT experience means constant rebooting and reinstalling, I don't much care what the specs claim. If constant fuckups in a beautifully designed system didn't matter we'd all be using Amigas still.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack