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Longhorn to be Released in 2006, Sans WinFS
skillio writes "Everyone's favorite OS maven, Bill Gates, announced a release date for Longhorn on Friday. He confirms what many had suspected - Microsoft will attempt to complete this release in calendar year 2006. The most notable element of this announcement was Gates' admission that WinFS, Microsoft's next-generation file system, would not be complete in time for this release - surprising, since this was the most hyped component of the next iteration of Windows."
You'll get all your upgrades anyway.
Many of the components in longhorn will be rolled out as individual services prior to the official release.
(Of course, Microsoft will package the official longhorn release with a few bells and whisltes to grab consumer interests.)
SP2 is a great example of this. The pop-up blocker and buffer overrun protection were all original longhorn ideas.
Why don't you read the article?
"Longhorn will include new graphics technology, code-named Avalon, to present advanced graphics effects and three- dimensional images."
Longhorn almost certainly won't be the name, XP iirc was codnamed whistler, they use the names of places near redmond in seatle apparently.
woah... sorry to duplicate. I kept getting errors when I originally tried to post this so I thought that it didn't go through.
Anyway, to keep from wasting space... here is the original slashdot article about longhorn meeting XP
Here's an article discussing that several aspects of longhorn are actually in SP2.
Grandparent poster may have been referring to this, regardless of what CNN says.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
WinFS is simply the latest itteration of the concept of a database based file system that Microsoft has been touting as the next great thing to be included with Windows, since they started promoting the upcomming Windows 2000. (possibly earlier). The fact that Microsoft has not come up with a workable solution tells me that non-file related features are of greater importance to the marketing people than getting something out the door.
You never know...
Another article on Longhorn from today's Washington Post:
New Windows Planned for 2006
featuring the amusing subhead "Microsoft Dumping Features to Meet Deadline"
This has all been part of the plan. Microsoft is slowly but surely dumping their crap interfaces and driving well-engineered, object-orientated .Net interfaces to all the low level stuff and providing well-managed, high-level interfaces that really leverage developer productivity at the OS API level rather than in the developer tools the way they had to do it on top of COM crap. If they manage to do it all before 2010, I'll be impressed.
What was it - Cairo? Chicago? They ended up dumping them, and putting the "doable" stuff into their next "mainstream" product.
Cairo and Chicago both became mainstream products.
Neptune (WinME successor, for consumers) and Odyssey (2000 successor, for business) were merged together to create Whistler, which wound up becoming Windows XP.
...and that's all there is to it.
Ok, lets get this straight, once and for all - WinFS IS NOT A NEW FILESYSTEM!
It's a set of technologies that allow you to store metadata in a SQL-like database, and query for that information.
Think of it as content indexing on steroids.
So you winamp album metadata could be put in WinFS and then winamp (or WMP, or Soniq, or iTunes) could build virtual playlists from that metadata.
Or your picture keywords could be put in and you'd be able to search that metadata using a single common API.
It's NOT a new filesystem.
The goal is to make their hard disk search easier, handling all types of data. Another goal is to be like open source, by giving proprietary software more reason not to re-invent the wheel, because they can access the data through another application. They will use meta data to define everything so any application can use any data.
The problem is that 3rd parties all have to agree on a standard, and no doubt patents will be involved, licensing, preventing applications from working well with one another to gain an edge, viruses will have a MUCH easier time doing silly things with your data (this could make distributed data mining a reality if a worm spreads enough), who knows if it will work in practice as well as it should in theory.
This is why WinFS doesn't replace NTFS but cooperates with it, it's a layer of meta data. Needless to say MS have a huge task on their hands.
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
Nope, it's not a rewrite. Longhorn is going to be based on Windows XP SP2. (It was going to be Server 2003, but they went with SP2 instead.)
Supposedly it now stands for "Future storage". Just like NT and .NET once stood for something and then got real nebulous (NT was once "new technology", while .NET was going to be used on everything from servers to toilet paper).
Well, not exactly. I can see how I'd explain this to my grandmother ("Nana, type 'vacation photos from our trip to Italy'" instead of "Nana, search for files with the name DSCITALY001...") That's the ideal implementation any way.
I could also see this being a boon for business. Often when I'm on the phone with someone, I like to pull up all of our email coorespondance. They could do a "spokewheel" implementation: each person would be an axle and various spokes would link to business contact info, personal information, photos of them, etc. Think calling a client, having it pop up and asking "Oh, how was your son's birthday last week?" Again, ideal implementation.
The dream is to create a "star trek" like computer. Why should I remember the filepath to a file (or in my case wich computer). That is not how I pick a book from the shelf is it. I don't need to remember the exactly title of the linux o'reilly guide. I can find it very fast by the general size and color even feel and the fact it is most likely near my desk.
The ultimate idea is for you to instantly be able to find what you want without having to remember weird filenames and paths. Even better to be able to find things when you got no idea what the filename is. If you ever had to search for something on a windows shares network you know how hard it is.
I got one simple example that is very hard to organize. Manga/anime. How do you name the file? Japanese name? Japanese but in roman characters? Translated name? Official licensed translated name? I can always use locate (I store mine on a linux san) but that requires me to know the name. I can't search for a series "about a boy visited by a goddess" I need to search for "ah! my goddess" "oh! my goddess" "ah! megami-sama" etc etc. The only common character is the !
The ideal search system would allow me to find all the files belonging or related to the series with a simple description. It would show me related series, give me the mp3's with the box covers. Tell me I got the dvd's.
Not sure if this is what they are trying with winfs but there sure could be a market for the perfect search system. Your 30 level directory works very good for a simple 1 way search system. Kinda like a file cabinet. You can sort the personal records by name. But put it in a database and you can search by anything you want. Even combinations.
But it is going to very hard to do. All the databases I seen work on the principle: crap in crap out. The trick is not in creating a database file system. The trick is in writing code that can insert content into the database and get meaningfull info on it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Q: what's with the code-name Whistler'?
A: They were "Odyssey," "Neptune," "Mars", and before that they were using city names "Chicago," "Detroit," "Memphis". But now they've turned to mountain names: Whistler and Blackcomb are popular ski resorts a few hours from Seattle, located in British Columbia.
http://milkshake.dexy.org
NX (No eXecute) bit for CPU has been around for a while (for Alpha, and Sun's SPARC, for instance), and is not an AMD invention. On the other hand, AMD should be given credit for introducing such a security featuer in their new CPU. Intel has steadfastly refuced to implement such security features on x86, until forced by AMD.
"WinFS however allows more then just searching, it is attempting to allow the sharing of data between applications, like a data soup (the Newton reborn on the desktop :-)."
;) It's all in there.
Righto. And that's what CoreData in the 10.4 Preview allows.
WinFS is NOT a file system. It is a way of describing and sharing meta data so applications can use ANY data format used on the hard drive that is supported by installed applications.
NTFS is still used, WinFS runs on top, providing the meta data. WinFS has absolutely nothing to do with data being corrupted on the hard drive. In fact, it will perhaps prevent this, as data will be accessed through the program that created it, so the chances of corruption will be that much lower (as opposed to a 3rd party application trying to manipulate a proprietary format).
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
Now they have little incentive to bring out upgrades since they will get that revenue stream regardless, no matter what.
Tell me about it. I work for a small/medium business, and we got burned on SQL Server 2000. The single CPU license with Software Assurance was like six grand, or 50% more than the license without SA.
Microsoft (or one of their contractors) called us and asked about renewing our various SA agreements. The droid was seriously confused that I didn't want to take advantage of such a good deal after having been burned once already.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Whistler (canada, BC) is the ski resort of choice for microsoft. No surprise here its probably the best in the world. Their code names are almost always based on the Whistler region. XP was Whistler, Blackcomb (neightbour village) was their backoffice server and at the foot of the main whistler slope is the Longhorn bar.
Most file utils want you to boot to DOS, Knoppix boots you to Linux, and if you're lucky, you can read, but not write.
It drives me up a freaking wall. I've forced Knoppix to mount an NTFS volume r/w, and made a change to boot.ini once, and I got off lucky.
you do realise knoppix includes a util called captive-ntfs, which allows you to mount ntfs partitions using certian windows files (which it gets from the ntfs partition) for full read/write access? I've used this quite a lot since i found out about it and never had any problems; I'd trust it a whole lot more than I trust the hack-job reverse engineered ntfs write support from the kernel.
TIAEAE!
Don't forget that Dominic Giampaolo is behind spotlight on the Apple team.
Wake up.
I used it for many years and never had any problems with loss of data or file system corruption.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Here's a slighly more detailed list of changed plans:
:-S
- No WinFS
- WinFX, the new API to replace Win32 will also be released for Windows 2000 and XP.
- Indigo, the new communications infrastructure for Longhorn will be released for Windows 2000 and XP.
- Avalon, the presentational subsystem in Longhorn will be released for Windows 2000 and XP.
So, in essence, it seems like the difference will be as great as that between Windows 2000 and XP -- a bit of polish and a new interface, maybe semi-3D this time. And that's when Microsoft is working hard? I have no idea why I should check out Longhorn as Windows XP will be far more mature at the time (and maturity plays a huge role in Microsoft's products), and Longhorn seemingly won't even bring any major new features.
I have no idea why they're backporting a lot of key features to XP and 2000 either. I would understand it better if they developed under an open source model, but this company should want profit from selling licenses! Huh?
By the way, WinFS was never a file system, it's supposed to be an extension to NTFS. So one of the links that say "more than a file system" is horribly incorrect.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Isn't all information potential file data? Is Microsoft really doing something different than has been done before?
:-P
Not really, WinFS is a service that runs in the background to help in categorizing and searching for files that are stored in the good ol' NTFS file system. WinFS internally uses NTFS streams to store metadata. NTFS streams are already present and fully supported in both Windows 2000 and XP already, but not that widely used by these operating systems.
You can make some basic use of streams by right clicking on a file in Windows XP, selecting Properties, and then selecting the Summary tab. The information you type in there is associated with the file as streams. There's a program at Sysinternals.com to display and set any streams for any file.
Similarly, NTFS supports hard links, junctions (to mount drives as folders), sparse files and more "cool" stuff that the OS doesn't have graphical interfaces for. A bit funny.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
No, not near Redmond (unless you consider B.C. Canada near Redmond).
Whistler is a ski resort in BC.
Longhorn is a bar in Whistler, BC.
Popular with the execs on the project, apparently.
I wonder why not more effort has been put into it
Lot's of effort has been put into it. It's just an extraordinarily difficult thing to do. The amount of effort to reverse engineer/document the internal structures to support read access must have been huge.
The reason NTFS write access is so difficult to develop is not because because of the NTFS structures themselves, but because the algorithms that the file system driver uses are unknown.
For example, the details of balancing/re-balancing the b+trees that maintain the indexes. The file system driver has a bunch of criteria as to how many indexes should be in a node, what the maximum depth of the leaf nodes is, and etc.
That's just one of the algorithms that needs to be figured out in order to have safe write access. There are others (creating/maintaining the data runs, managing resident and non-resident attributes, etc) Figuring these out, with all their special cases and boundary conditions, is difficult. You can either try to make a bazillion tests and hope you catch all the weird corner cases (which is hard, slow, and you never know when you're done) or you can completely reverse engineer the file system driver (also not too easy).
The consequences of screwing it up are also hard to fully figure out. At best, maybe you just get sucky performance, at worst you completely destroy directories and files.
It's a tough job just to implement a read, so it makes sense that writes haven't come as far.
I'll buy that, but I got the impression that the OP was referring specifically to XP. XP was the first consumer branch of the NT line. It did include a point rev of the kernel, but it's not directly in the 'server' path. As such it's the first consumer edition that had a large internal change since 95.
Sure, if you'd abandoned the 9x consumer line and had been running 2k it wasn't that much of a change. But that wasn't the situation for most consumers.
What this does not do is inherently make life simpler. For security and other reasons, files will still have to placed in proper directories.Whoever is saving the file will still have to remember to associate the metadata. Most people will find their labels are useless because they will not apply labels consistantly, or perhaps will misspell words. At the end of the day I will still get calls asking where certain files are.
What would be revolutionary, and more useful, is to use the data of the file to generate metadata. MS has some ability to do this, as we saw with clippy. 'It seems you are writing a letter to Alice about meeting her tonight for a quickie, and where you might do so away from your wife and friends. Would you like to file this under affairs:general, affairs:current, affairs:alice, and encrypt it with your personal password?"
The current icons in file cabinents system is not bad. it is just that people don't use it, or the OS won't let you use it effectively. The same will be true for meta-data.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black