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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."
Actually, it might be a blessing. The pressure on IT to roll out new versions puts a real burden on us. We just got XP and 2003 server rolled out everywhere and I have a feeling we are *way* ahead of most other places.
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.
Am I the only one who thinks that "Longhorn" doesn't sound like an operating system but rather a name for a porn star? I can already see the advertisements: "Before the new Microsoft OS goes Gold, install Long Horn Silver!" In the context of men wearing tight MSN butterfly-man suits, it seems somehow appropriate...
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.
Yep. Avalon, the new-fangled window manager was also cut for the final release. Windows version Copland?
news of further delays is a kind of marketing in itself. logic of anticipation. lets just call it "Windows Stillborn" and forget about it.
First it was HL2, Longhorn is second, what next? DNF??
The IT section color scheme sucks.
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
Allchin: Don't call it 'Shorthorn'
Well, now that you mention it. It seems like an apt moniker.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Do you remember back on July 12, 1979 at Chicago's Comiskey Park when radio jock Steve Dahl rode the rising setiment of anti-disco and held a promotional where if you brought a disco record to the game to be destroyed at half-time you would get an admission for only $0.98?
It got me thinking about a little project I think would be at the very least, ammusing.
Something like, a cordinated anti-MS day in about a year when LUGS all around the world get together on a certain day and destroy MS software as well as MS effigees to protest our discontent. I'm picturing piles of old win3.11 floppies and cds of 9x, NT, office, games, books, and hardware billowing thick tenticles of black smoke, smearing the sky with... I don't want to pollute the environment with smoke, especially with MS's taint, so make that piles of stuff to be blown up with demolitions and shattered with small arms fire.
Then we could build a huge effigee of Bill Gates and Steve Balmer bowing before the penguin. Then have the penguin announce in a booming voice that tyanny in the land of Microsoft has to end and that his cleansing fire clean MS of dishonesty, at which time the penguin effigee would belch a fire ball that consumes the Bill Gates and Steve Balmer effigee.
Heck, this could even be an annual event or a holiday comemerating a specific moment in history when man freed himself from one of the worst tyrranies this world has yet faced and to celebrate the general spirit of individuals who wish to free and those around them as well.
This suggestion is to be taken with a grain of salt, but in a lot of ways, I'm serious. At the very least, if one LUG were to host something like this ala Burning Man style, I'm sure there would be a huge draw with resulting publicity and maybe some eyeopening in Redmond. However, it's time for the people to take to it Microsoft instead of them doing it the other way around.
I doubt it if they are going to be putting it out in 2 years. So this is basically going to be Windows XP with a new UI, Avalon the new DirectX, Indigo a program "to allow software and services to work across networks and different devices." and some new programming tool WinFX that supports both XP and Longhorns UI.
Nothing special.
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Yep another Free IPods Link
hmm Be eningeers did not need several years to come up with a similar filesystem..what is taking MS so long?
Don't Tread on OpenSource
.. and I just used my last "giant system requirement" joke on the Half Life 2 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.
Pretty soon Gates will come out and say that the newly designed Kernel is not going to be complete, and they'll be selling XP Longhorn Edition. This is almost as bad as ID.
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artlu.net
Eek.... who would want to trust their data to a file system so complex that even Microsoft can't finish it after multiple years of development?
Microsoft has been doing this for too long for my taste now. Promising all remarkable and amazing things that keep us on our toes and when the product hits the shelves it's only ever so slightly different from its predecessor.
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...
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.
Just make a BFS driver. :P
My Systems
Another article on Longhorn from today's Washington Post:
New Windows Planned for 2006
featuring the amusing subhead "Microsoft Dumping Features to Meet Deadline"
Be nice to Microsoft, they still have to pay Fisher Price royalties for the color scheme they have in XP ;)
:)
But in a nutshell, yes. You get to pay MS to say "Hey look at me, I got that newfangled Winders! It's the Shoehorn version!"
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Call me a luddite if you will, but for the life of me, I cannot see the reason for a new filesystem. I'm all for metadata and so forth, but why rip up the tried and tested file and directory structure for this magical, cure all, search based filesystem. Search works well in Google because web pages are connect. My files aren't connected, so I don't think search on my filesystem will ever be half as good as search on the web.
As far as I can tell, MS (and GNOME 2.6 it would seem), seem to envision a filesystem where every file is simply dumped to one / or c:\ directory and this uber search finds all the files I'll ever need for me? Is this a joke? In this senario, ~50% of all the metadata will be the same for every file. I made it, with my privilages, with my settings etc... . After a while, even the simplest of searches will bring back a dozen matches. I can't see this working.
The reason given for this is novice users, who don't know where to put their files. they rely on their default program settings and just dump their files anywhere and then complain when they cannot find them. Fair enough, they are novices, but essentially hey are keeping a messy hard disc. WinFS would help these people only in the initial stages. As soon as too many files named 'Picture of Aunt Tilly' are present, the system will fall on its ass.
Metadata/Search based filesystems are based on the assumption that users do not know where their files are. I do, you do and for those who don't, no amount of programming wizardry is going to help them in the long run. Ultimatly they will have to learn how to organise their files, just like they have to learn to type,use the mouse and browse the web. And in reality, most people do eventually learn how to organise their files, if they use computers enough. And if they don't, our regular searches will be of use to them with only minor improvements. It's tough, but consider the search results that 'Find my Accounts for Acme Corp. for the third quarter of last year' brings up on the shared drive for even a medium sized accounting department after only a year.
Give me nested directories 30 levels deep!! And no spatial browsing please!
I did wast an entry in my journal on this stuff. maybe now someone will read it?
May the Maths Be with you!
...wich is not a surprise. Making those available in all the relevant windows platforms they'll tempt developers to *use* them (the same binary using avalon features may work without modifications in longhorn *and* XP SP$SOMETHING - compare that to avalon only being available for longhorn. Everyone would use just XP features and no longhorn features because fo the extra work needed). It looks to me like they though that everyone would jumpo to Longhorn because of their coolness, but they realized that they would lost what they call "the api wars". Now that they realized that Longhorn can't be 100% true they need to retain people in their new APIs - putting them available for XP is a good way to do that. I'd call that "conserving upwards compatibility" a different version of one of the reasons they're everywhere: "conserving backwards compatibility"
You don't seriously think that Microsoft had any intention of shipping WinFS with Longhorn did you? That's one of their standard reasons why you shouldn't switch to an alternative operating system - because [x] fancy feature is coming out Real Soon Now. Once they've held onto you long enough to get over the hype surrounding their competitors, and once the release date looms nearer, they drop the pretense that they are going to ship with the fancy new feature. WinFS is vapourware.
"In other cases, vaporware is announced by companies in order to damage the development or marketability of more real products by competitors"
Remember when Windows 95 was supposed to be uncrashable because of 32-bit memory protection? Did Windows 95 actually deliver on that promise? Did the half-dozen or so operating systems that Microsoft released after Windows 95 deliver on that promise? How long do you realistically think it will take them to deliver WinFS?
... I was actually interested to see what WinFS would be like. From what I understand, it is supposed to be different from the traditional heirarchical filesystem. If the filesystem worked like a database, then folders would be the equivalent of tables and SQL statement results, if it actually used folders.
I know that Apple's upcoming release of Spotlight with OS X "Tiger" is probably what WinFS would appear to be like from the GUI perspective, but its underlying filesystem is still heirarchical since they're not changing it. I presume it would work similar to the way iTunes displays libraries and playlists like a database, yet stores the actual files in a heirarchical arrangement only visible to a user who manually browses the filesystem. Data displayed from WinFS would be a direct representation, rather than indirect one of data stored heirarchically.
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.
Isn't all information potential file data? Is Microsoft really doing something different than has been done before?
The article also states "WinFS uses a direct acyclic graph of items (DAG)."
The math goes back to the 1970's, as referenced by MathWorld Old math can be used in new ways. Is his a new way when it's used in the FS that Microsoft is attempting?
The articles also says: " the WinFS data model provides the following concepts to describe data structures and organizations: * Types and subtypes. * Properties and fields. * Relationships. * Constraints. * Extensibility. "
Does the new Reiser4 file system support any of these concepts? -- Is WinFS really as new and exciting as the marketing and media says it is?
Thanks.
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 ----
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.
This vaporware evaporation is a good example of how Microsoft inhibits innovation. Not due to some malicious plot by Bill Gates. Rather the inability of his giant, complicated organization to nimbly publish new technologies, because of the ramifications of any change to their monolithic system. If their architecture were simpler or more elegant, they could point their billions of dollars and thousands of programmers at any new tech, armed with the inside expertise of the other Windows systems with which it must interoperate, and roll out something new in a few months. WinFS has been announced so many times, and would do so much good for Microsoft, that it's obvious Microsoft's execs want to put it out. The captain of the Titanic wanted to turn away from the iceberg, too, but his ponderous state-of-the-art craft couldn't avoid the sudden obstacle. Let's just hope there are enough lifeboats to save the hundreds of millions of Windows users, and the rest of us don't get sucked down in the whirlpool.
"Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence."
- Unix fortune teller
--
make install -not war
The one area that I would say Microsoft is at a disadvantage is the very rabid and outspoken communities that other OSes have. Linux has an advantage due to sheer numbers of how many programmers work on various components at any one time. Apple has users that are creating some very cool software (Konfabulator) and then Apple takes that idea and runs with it (yes, i know the story behind the new widget system). Microsoft is very seperated from the user base and what it's users want/need. Apple listens to its users, and Linux is the users. I would say there is a clear advantage there.
This smells a lot like the failed WindowsME. As i recall it was supposed to be the next grand thing in computing. A step as big as the one from Win3.1 to 95. It ended up as a mere add-on for Windows98 with more crashes-prone features than you can point a "shrug and reboot" attitude at!
:-)
If they keep droping ground breaking feature like that, in 2006 they'll be releasing a "Windows XP longhorn edition"!
-- If you actually say LOL instead of laughing, maybe it's time to go outside! --
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!
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.
I used it for many years and never had any problems with loss of data or file system corruption.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Tell me about it. The sad part is that this filesystem sounds like IBM's jfs/jfs2, which has been around for eternity. It's being hyped up to the cazillion degree like it's something special. It's NOT. So the order goes...
FAT16
FAT32
NTFS
NTFS5
WINFS
But they didn't have to integrate it with the legacy Windows code base. Apple did OS X more or less from scratch. Windows never had a foundation for this type of thing.
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
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.
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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.
The only Microsoft 3d desktop demonstration I can recall seeing was some obscure handycam video of some guy moving 2d windows around inside a WindowsXP mod called SphereXP. Not to bash the guy's efforts but by comparison it looked hacked together and confusing (especially for "Aunt Tillie"). I'm looking at research.microsoft.com right now and the video of Microsoft guys talking about a 3d desktop... Then they show their implementation of one. It. Is. A. Mess. It is beyond description. You really have to see it for yourself. Nobody would want this. If you thought people's Windows desktops now were cluttered, organizational trainwrecks, you should see this thing. It would make Aunt Tillie's head spin--if it didn't give her motion sickness first.
I'm inclined to agree with you that Microsoft may already have lost its position of leadership. Listening to the guys in the research.microsoft.com video, it sounds like MSFT is mostly populated by PHB's now.