Slashdot Mirror
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."
since that file system will probably break compatibility with everything non-windows it's delay is good for everyone.
I wonder if they will decide to use it to lock out any third party application providers they dont like.
Likely each component will be rolled out seperately... and then it'll all be bundled (without the new file system) for the official longhorn release.
Of course, they will package the new release with new bells and whistles to give people a reason to upgrade... but most function will be able to be obtained before the official "longhorn" release.
SP2, for example, contains several aspects of longhorn that were forced to the users sooner. Examples are the pop-up blocker and the protected memory to prevent buffer overruns.
What was it - Cairo? Chicago? They ended up dumping them, and putting the "doable" stuff into their next "mainstream" product.
My guess is that WinFS was turning out to be one of those grand and glorious ideas that was falling short of "doable" - at least any time short of 2041.
Teen Angel - a Ghost Story
WinFS is an interesting, bold, and novel take on a file system, but I'm not sure why it's taking so long for them to implement. They've been working on it for a very long time. It's complicated, but it doesn't seem ten-years-by-a-dedicated-team complicated. I can't help but think that once Microsoft comes out with a reference model, there will be an open source reimplementation in months.
Microsoft has higher demands on it, and it's harder to develop it the first time, and presumably their implementation is optimized to within in an inch of its life, but I still don't see why a project they're working on now won't be ready for 2006.
Could it be that they want to adapt their applications to use the new features before they release it? That I could see taking forever, since everything from Word down to the format Spider Solitaire saves its games in would be affected. But I assume that they've implemented a Win32 filesystem API on top of it, and presumably with tolerable performance, so why not release it and adapt the apps later?
Microsoft, and in particular Bill Gates, have stated numerous times that Longhorn is the most expensive and time intensive project MS has embarked on and would be as complicated as the Apollo space program. With that in mind, WinFS was really the cornerstone and pride of the Longhorn project as MS would like to say it. With that in mind, this is akin to cutting the goals of the Apollo space program drastically ... like not landing on the moon at all!
Granted a system like WinFS can be extremely complicated but it is not a "selling" point to me for Longhorn. I will compare it against other features it offers and decide to buy it or continue to use XP.
A feature that solves no problem. An interesting idea placed in the wrong location. And I'm glad its shelved.
On paper, this sounds neat kind of in a thesis paper sort of way. But the practicality of it was way beyond what any desktop user would need. I had problems figuring out how to use it efficiently (after all you have to have meta data lined up). I couldn't even begin to figure out how to explain how WinFS would help grandma and grandpa.
I do see WinFS as an interesting tool for server applications but for a desktop it isn't feasible without a whole heck of a lot more tools. On a server I can see this being a powerful tool to help keep your web app file data sane because you can force metadata and relationships there. On a desktop it would have been a feature with cumbersome tools used once a month. This is the very definition of bloat. I am very glad it was shelved since the cost vs benifit of WinFS on the desktop was completely off.
I thought the buffer overrun protection was AMD's idea, with the NX page flag.
I think MS is going about this a bit more complicated than necessary. Mac OS 10.4 is said to have similar features. It's not as complicated as you think: simply attach XML metadata to every file (similar to how .NET and a host of other systems do now) and organize based on that.
The problem with MS's implementation is that they want to tie SQL to it. Noble (it'd vastly improve performance) but unnecessary.
It still remains to be seen how well Apple pulls this off (my guess: ok, but not perfect). While the implementation is easy, getting it to work as expected will be hard.
I'd personally be satisfied with just a "spokewheel" system: have every person and event as the axle of a spokewheel and have the files branching off it (business contacts, vacation photos, etc). Not too complicated: just define a person schema in XML, make each person the top key and work off that. I think MS originally wanted to take that approach (based on the MS research projects) but overdeveloped its complexity.
I dropped of those years ago, as microsoft wasnt putting out product often enough to make it cost effective. ( they go along with the MOLP agreements.. )
.. Then you have no software... Its a perpetual lease..
The other hidden problem that few people think about is that if you drop off the plan, ever, you loose the license to use what you have
Going retail prevents this problem.. Yes it costs more, and you don't get their 'enterprise support', but at least you are in control.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Prediction.. In a year and a half, Microsoft announces the real name of Longhorn:
Windows XP SP3
If XP is going to get Longhorn Technologies, and Longhorn isn't going to get the rest (best?) of the "Longhorn Technologies", then thats all it is. A new service pack, just like XP was.
I think what we're seeing is MS beginning to adapt to the release schedules of their OSS competitors.
.NET 2.0 Longhorn will have a two years beforehand, Indigo a year in advance, the free Yukon embeddable data engine two years beforehand and now a substantial slice of Avalon, not to mention at least 1 more media framework and substantially increased device support - XP is a completely different beast. Hopefully we'll get a new version of IE that isn't the equivelant of shoving a rod of Uranium 235 down your shorts too (and for those who don't think its important when you're using Firefox anyway... have you looked at how many apps mshtml.dll is embedded in?).
If you think of new paid MS desktop releases as whole number releases of Gnome/KDE (substantial changes, new environment), MS is in pickle trying to compete with the "minor" even numbered releases the Linux desktop teams are pushing out. Every six months, Gnome users get a little more - that's hard to fight when you only release new OS changes every 4 years.
Whenever people asked me why they should upgrade from Win2k to WinXP Pro, I always said "You'll get a new annoying cartoon interface and a couple nice internal things, but mainly, you go with XP because of the periodic updates that become available to it". I think if you look at XP that was released and compare that to the XP users have now (with journal tablet support, two new versions of the windows media framework, three revisions of built in wireless support, and now native bluetooth support all the other stuff tossed into SP2), I think that everyone has to agree (whether they like XP or not is a different story) that its a substantially changed product. This is ignoring the products that were pushed to all previous versions of windows (.NET Framework, IE and OE, DirectX 9, etc). Its also not just cosmetic features - The windows userland driver model is being deployed mid-XP release as opposed to in a new Windows version.
From the look of it, the changes keep coming - by the time Longhorn rolls out, XP users will also have the same major version of
It looks like WinFS follows the same strategy - don't buy Longhorn because its completely different from XP - buy it because its slightly different than XP at release, but also because you'll be eligible for a four years update cycle that will end with Longhorn being substantially different than XP's resting place.