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WinFS to be available in WinXP
ScooterMcGoo writes "According to a Microsoft Watch blog, WinFS is being back ported for Windows XP.
From TFA: WinFS isn't dead, Tom Rizzo, Microsoft's director of product management for SQL Server, recently told Microsoft Watch. In fact, Microsoft is planning to provide an update on the technology at this year's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in September, he said.
Rizzo said that Microsoft is busily back-porting the WinFS file-system technology to Windows XP.
It's unclear if Microsoft also is porting WinFS to Windows Server 2003, but such a move would be likely, given that the Redmond software vendor is doing so with Avalon and Indigo."
One hopes that this has not been rushed out?
Instead one fervently hopes that XP etc are simply to be used as testing OS'.
Why is this so important?
I thought the Bill-Gates-as-borg icon had a slightly wider smile today ...
I'll believe it when I see it... my sources inside MS (and no, I ain't giving any proof, so believe me or not, I don't give a shit), say that there are very hard deadlines for Longhorn, with features being left out if they don't meet certain benchmarks, etc... so to hear that they are now taking something, and wasting resources back porting it? Especially when they first said it would be dropped from longhorn? I call Bull..
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
I'd love to be able to use a filesystem that can be seen in a dual-boot environment; that's better than FAT32 or FAT16; but those are really the only choices now.
I don't know about you, but NTFS is fine for me. I mean, jesus, its a file system, not a damn search engine.
WinFS announcements are one of Microsoft's most popular products. Thanks for the upgrade!
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make install -not war
If everything will be back-ported to XP and Windows 2003, how does Microsoft plan to make any money off Longhorn, which has cost the company a lot in development time and money?
Do they plan on back-porting the first versions of Avalon, Indigo and WinFS, and then providing feature updates to Longhorn only, forcing customers to update? Or is Longhorn really just XP SP3?
It seems to me that every major component that Microsoft has promoted for Longhorn is eventually being backported to Windows XP. What's going to be new in Longhorn?
They've always maintained that it was dropped from Longhorn because of deadline constraints - it's always been the plan to put it in at a later (as far as I know unspecified) date.
ext2 and ext3 are supported by third-party drivers; I imagine the same is true for reiser.
And now what reason do I have to upgrade to longhorn?
Oh Wait
1. Slower Performance. Why would I acctually want free system resources?
2. DRM, Who doesn't want their rights managed by M$
3. Spending More Money. Who doesn't want to give their money to M$, really?
So is Longhorn dead, or just going to become another pointless upgrade if MS keeps back porting everything to XP.
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Frankie Avalon and The Indigo Girls?
Duh, nevermind. Flame away. ;)
It's important to Microsoft as a way of preventing Google Desktop Search and Copernic from gaining mindshare and installed base before they introduce their final version in Longhorn
Incidentally, Copernic 1.5 beta now supports Mozilla Thunderbirds email and contacts and Firefox history and bookmarks - and does it well. This is a double threat to Microsoft, as their vision sees WinFS as a factor which ties people to Outlook and IE6/7
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Seems they want to throw all their pre-release stuff in their desktops (XP) to protect the "stability" of their "servers" (NT, longhorn)?
After all, they probably want to give people an incentive to migrate their servers, but realize that servers with WinFS will be adopted more quickly if the large installed base of WinXP clients can work with it. But if Server 2003 can support it as well, then there goes one reason to migrate.
I can't wait this is going to be awsome to develop on. If it is everything they are making it out to be, which is doubtful at this time, I would love querying my file system with SQL, and attaching XML meta data to the files.
"No WinFS in Longhorn" to "WinFS in WinXP"?
So is, like, WinFS just going to like stop working as soon as Longhorn arrives, or what?
Could we please stop using the word "technology" when "component" or "chunk o' software" would do fine. It's Microsoft speak.
Not for Reiser4. Reiser4 is still pretty bleeding-edge.
Windows Server 2003
WinXP
Different products. What's the issue?
The article also says (on the first line):
Microsoft is back-porting its WinFS file-system technology to Windows XP.
Maybe WinFS is only being ported to WinXP, and not to Server 2003.
Perhaps this means that Longhorn will be delayed for a far greater period than initially expected. Microsoft can make some brownie points by releasing this hyped file system for free, heading off the negative press over the postponment of longhorn or allow them to abandon it (by saying the majority of features will be backported to XP) in favor of another OS.
Depending on when this arrives, this could possibly be an attempt to take the wind out of the sails of Apple's Tiger release-- probably to arrive sometime before midyear-- which lists as one of its major selling points a new feature called "spotlight". Spotlight is a system service that has been described as offering similar functionality to WinFS, but does it without filesystem changes. I don't know exactly how accurate this description is, of course, since though Microsoft seems to talk an awful lot about WinFS and talk about its hypothetical technical capabilities, they never seem to give specifics on exactly how it works for the end user and what it means for the end user...
Of course, the above assumes Microsoft still actually cares about what Apple does, which isn't all that likely.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I think that the most important Question here is ... is microsoft going to provide an specification for the fs?, and, in case they do, will it be licensed in a GPL-compatible way?
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I guess the question here is "for what reason does MS want to leave the impression WinFS will be available before longhorn"?
There's another File System structure Microsoft worked on: WebDAV. They built a couple of file management suites on it. It's gone, largely, nowhere.
It's JUST enough to make the things that aren't supported a royal pain to implement. Dropping another filesystem in your OS just Must Always Work. Otherwise, no one will use it. We've got a Sharepoint Portal Server that sits largely idle because it didn;t have 100% backing from Microsoft.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Longhorn is dead, long live longhorn.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Apple releases Tiger with Spotlight
MS adds WinFS to XP, says "Hey, we can do that too, you don't need to wait for Longhorn!"
...and that's all there is to it.
Why would this be a troll? It's a really important question.
After seeing how completely incompetent and pants-wetting funny awful Microsoft is at file searching with the little doggie, I can't wait to experience having a few more unnecessary, superfluous, extravagant, and bloated layers HELPING me.
Longhorn won't come out until 2010 or so, and Microsoft will be able to charge for "Windows 98^K^KXP Special Edition".
Not a bad idea.
If you have the ability to put off the release of another OS for years, you can save loads of money on development, but still have a steady income stream from copies bundled with computers (every dell, etc from 2001 to 2006, and those of us who had beta copies of windows 97 all know how the 2006 date will work) and the occasional consumer retail purchase.
Look, I'm not saying that MS isn't innovating anything, but compared to everyone else, they move at a glacial pace.
Since there really isn't any competition (and I use this word as "an OS that could hurt significantly MS financially", so please, no flames), they can sit back and release stuff whenever they feel like, but still have a pretty much guaranteed income stream.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Yes, I'm a UNIX-type person but keeping files in a logical directory structure along with copious use of find and grep commands seems to be good enough on most of the systems I work on. I even use WinGrep on Windows for that level of text searching...
The Registry is a database and definitely a weak point of Windows when it comes to resilience. NTFS seems to do a reasonable job of keeping the filesystem intact, why add a risk of introducing resilience problems into the filesystem by linking it to a database? Unless it's just a marketing ploy to sell you an MSSQL license at the same time.
Whatever anyone says about UNIX/Linux, the concept of keeping operating system tools simple and doing a good job of one specific task has allowed it to earn the stability and resilience reputation. Sure, you've got to spend time shell-scripting to unleash its full power but that's half the fun of it.
I'd love someone to give me a definitive answer as to why the concept of WinFS is so good - I genuinely don't understand all the hoohah about it.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
OSX's Spotlight functionality... I think you can find a demo on their site.
I'm not defending WinFS, but the "search engine in OS" idea is pretty powerful if done right.
Sooo.. this is a FS with "MS Office FindFast" built in -- grreat. More slowness.
Would there be any way to turn the damn thing off?
"So there he is, risen from the dead. Like that fella, E. T." - Father Ted Crilly
People have known about this for a while. Welcome to quite a long time ago, slashdot.
I like Windows XP Home Edition.
It is the most powerful operating-system for Pee Cees. It looks not as gay as Mac OS X by Steve B10 Jobs and has 1,0000,0000 times more softwares that the Linus-operating-system.
Plus, it comes with every Pee Cee for free. People who have grown acusstomt to paying RatHat 699 $$$ or more can hardly beleive this when I consult them with my proffesional Internet- and Network-Service-Center-Bureau.
Wehn I have a new customer, I take him to the back-room to show him the "alternative" to XP Home, which is Suse Linux 9.0.
I have set-up an old Pentium 133Hz and a small monochrome monitor to show teh customer what Linux looks and feels like.
I have it set-up so it runs a fullscreen-Flash-splash-screen on the KDE3.3beta-desktop. It takes 13 min until the mouse cursor responds.
The customer will them make a sound like: "BAH!"
Then I tell them: "See, this is how it is if we let the communists make software."
Then we have a good laugh, wich is psycologicallish valuable for the customer-relatively.
I always tell them:
"Windows XP Home Edition is all you can do to embiggen the producationality of your human resourcers and empower to leverage the outcome-bottomlime of your stickholder
My customers usually are like: "OMG!"
You should really try it one day; it has a very nice light-reddish color theme to hit your tastes.
Thank you!
It would the first major file system upgrade since including FAT32 in Win95C.
Sooo... what's up with WinXP essentially forcing the use of this NTFS thingy, then?
From my understanding, WinFS is not a file system at all just a database API sitting on top of what is essentially NTFS http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=winfs+ntfs
Linux already has the technologies that comprise WinFS: generic metadata (e.g., ReiserFS 4), file alternation monitoring (e.g., FAM, dnotify), and higher level functionality being built on it (e.g., rlocate, Beagle, Dashboard, etc.).
Which of these "stick" on the Linux platform in the end will be decided by users. I think indexing and search will be popular, but more complex metadata schemes won't be.
It beats me why it is taking Microsoft so long to get their act together on this one.
Getting WinFS out there means they can work out more kinks before release of Longhorn and at the same time provide the "benefits" of WinFS to people earlier. Separating out key pieces of the OS is always good for the still changing OS. Similar to the Linux/UNIX FSes, after all. This will make the transition to Longhorn "smoother".
WebDAV is used by .Mac iDisks.
Considering that iDisks are used for backups and hosting Web sites by a large number of people, I don't think the technology has "gone no where."
There's even an iDisk client for Windows XP.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Well, considering that Linux does not officially support Reiser 4 yet, I'd say you can cross that off the list of filesystems you could access from Windows.
Any such system has to be powerful indeed. With peoples habits of keeping old copies around - alternating which copy they update - poorly naming things - and misspelling half of their document...
It's a wonder if we can find anything at all. Throw an abstraction on top - searching will just take longer.
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
Not Reiser4, but there are some tools to access Reiser3 from Windows: RFSTool, and YAReG, a graphical frontend for RFSTool.
One major problem with NTFS is the fact that it's still prone to fragmenting. Every so often I have to run a defragmenter or my system just starts churning when I need to do any disk access. I've never had to do this on a Linux box becaue the filesystem is designed to avoid that.
So, will WinFS finally get this figured out or are they just going to make something more complex and bug prone without fixing a fundamental design issue from their previous filesystem?
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
More ways to control the content on MY computer.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'd love to be able to use a filesystem that can be seen in a dual-boot environment;
The "captive NTFS" driver that was easily installable in a kanotix environment seemed to work well enough, even for writing. I am not spending much time on intel linux so YMMV.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
I don't think that Microsoft is concerned about users wanting to upgrade Win XP and Server 2003.
What Microsoft is concerned about, I think, is to evolve their product to remain competitive with the alternatives, such as Linux, so that the new desktop or server that someone buys, will run windows.
The days when people upgraded the OS on their servers and desktops because a new version was out are over.
So they don't need to motivate why a user should upgrade from XP to Longhorn, with the cost that that entails. What they need is a product that is sufficiently more attractive than Linux for most users.
So, assuming that they can keep the market share, their second priority comes to focus. Which I believe is to have features which are attractive, and will attract developers, but which won't work on Linux.
So, spending an enormous amount of money on a file system which is unique to windows. And lock in applications to Windows is very important.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
AFAIR, WinFS' killing feature was searching files faster. Please note, it is _searching_, and not accessing, faster!
Now with a bunch of desktop search tools available for the same including one from MS, do they still need WinFS?
I'm intrigued by the idea, but I'm very sceptical that Microsoft can ever deliver this product in a form people will want to use. Consider their previous attempt to deliver hierarchical data management: the Windows Registry. In order to get it to do what you want, you have to deal with all kinds of obscure APIs and specifications. And even you can figure out how it's supposed to work, you run into problems because somebody in Redmond has kludged in some undocumented functionality that conflicts with what you're trying to do. If WinFS is at all similar, developers will spend a few months banging their heads against it, then decide it's not worth the trouble.
Otherwise they'd be suing you for your sources. Not trying to troll, just pointing out how people talk about Microsoft rumours all time without worry about getting sued.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Perhaps - but since 90% of my time is in Linux, I'd much rather the bulk of my data be on a well supported file system (yeah, I know Rieser4's still under debate if it's officially supported, but Hans does a good job).
Y'all seem surprised at this move, but IIRC many of the features that were new in Win95 were also back-ported to Win3.1. I know that for a long time I was able to run pretty much any Win95 app on Win3.1 after I installed the win32 dlls (complete with FreeCell as a demo).
On a bit of a smaller scale, I also remember most of the new 98 features being back-ported to 95. Most of the magazine articles at the time, in fact, were touting 98 as 95 with a bunch of patches.
I can't comment on 98 <->XP - I was a heavy linux user during that changeover.
Yes, Windows most likely can support that. I mean, it does support ext3, ReiserFS, and even ext2 with write support. So I think there's nothing technically in the way. The problem is probably being lack of driver developers. ;-)
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Is WinFS covered by patents? MS can't get Longhorn out over the short term and is starting to feel a little competitive heat, so rushing this out may be an effort to break Linux compatibility with Windows filesystems.
Sue anyone who codes WinFS for Linux, and then declare that switching to Linux means compatibility headaches.
they are independent. learn some set theory.
Ahahahaha. Let's review.
1) Run a file search on Windows. Go get a coffee and then see the results. Realize that you can only search on basic attributes of the file, like name/dates/raw content.
2) Run a file search on OS X. Click your heels twice and then see the results. Still, you're limited to some basic attributes.
Some months (or years) from now...
3) Run a file search on WinFS. In theory you get hits pretty damn quickly, if they ever finish this technology. I'm not sure yet what extra file info you'll be able to search on.
4) Run a file search on OS X Tiger. Not only is your search blindingly fast, but you can search on arbitrary file metadata. Also, you can save stock searches which will automatically update when new matches appear in the FS. I believe this technology was brought over with BeOS coders.
I am so used to the OS X file search speed and Mail.app search speed that on my work Windows laptop I was forced to buy X1.com's search tool to get around the incredibly annoying (when you're not desensitized to it) delay when searching in either Windows Explorer or Outlook. The market for this utility should frankly not even exist. It should be the responsibility of the OS to help you find things as quickly as possible, and it should have been done YESTERDAY. I mean Jesus, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to embed something like a SQLite engine in your email client code.
I'm glad that Microsoft is finally getting around to this (someday) but in the meantime I will be quite happy when Apple's Tiger shows up on my doorstep early this summer.
Ahahahaha. Let's review.
1) Run a file search on Windows. Go get a coffee and then see the results. Realize that you can only search on basic attributes of the file, like name/dates/raw content.
2) Run a file search on OS X. Click your heels twice and then see the results. Still, you're limited to some basic attributes.
Some months (or years, in the case of WinFS) from now...
3) Run a file search on WinFS. In theory you get hits pretty damn quickly, if they ever finish this technology. I'm not sure yet what extra file info you'll be able to search on, but I imagine it's more than the basics.
4) Run a file search on OS X Tiger. Not only is your search blindingly fast, but you can search on arbitrary file metadata (it will index things like EXIF data, ID3 tags etc). Also, you can save stock searches which will automatically update when new matches appear in the FS. I believe this technology was brought over with BeOS coders.
I am so used to the OS X file search speed and Mail.app search speed that on my work Windows laptop I was forced to buy X1.com's search tool to get around the incredibly annoying (when you're not desensitized to it) delay when searching in either Windows Explorer or Outlook. The market for this utility should frankly not even exist. It should be the responsibility of the OS to help you find things as quickly as possible, and it should have been done YESTERDAY. I mean Jesus, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to embed something like a SQLite engine in your email client code.
I'm glad that Microsoft is finally getting around to this (someday) but in the meantime I will be quite happy when Apple's Tiger shows up on my doorstep early this summer.
Half a year after Apple releases Mac OS X Tiger.
If everything will be back-ported to XP and Windows 2003, how does Microsoft plan to make any money off Longhorn, which has cost the company a lot in development time and money?
Maybe finally selling upgrades to all the people who never upgraded from Windows 2000 because there was no reason?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Please mod parent down. My browser fucked up and this became a double-post (see following post that is nearly identical but not quite). My bad (and terrible form on my part!)
Provide winfs to winxp because long horn won't have a large install base. Winxp will be there for years. Which means people will not develop stuff for winfs, and it'll dye. Another point is that it's a search thing, so not much incentive for people to move to long horn because of it. Then, there's the M$ thing they always want to do:
Without winfs, how to make people pay maintainance to XP if it's going to be there for years?
As you know, without a dirty shot, long horn won't be that big (just like 2003, millenium, etc). It'll be big, but not in the 40% of market. Ok, so, let people use long horn, even avalone, or whatever it is in xp, then boom, MS no longer support update of winfs or avalone in xp. People have to move to long horn then. It's M$ well known dirty jab.
What all of these press releases are leaving out is the fact that MS is going into the litigation business, and right this minute Bill himself is in negotations with Darl McBride to form a software-litigation firm known as MSCO. Also, Longhorn was originally code-named "big long horn right up yer you-know-what", but that was thrown out because it had too many words & was difficult for the top execs to remember.
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy
I'd love to be able to use a filesystem that can be seen in a dual-boot environment
Well now you can as long as you're dual booting Longhorn and WinXP.
And now what reason do I have to upgrade to longhorn?
Probably the clincher will be that final service pack that everyone has to install into XP that makes it turn into XPME that will drive everyone to buy the Longhorn "upgrade"
Now with 20% MORE Clippy!
Can someone give me the short answer as to why we can't support filesystems like ext3 or reiser under windows?
I imagine the problem is that it can't plug in to the windows kernel well enough but I'm still curious. Seems like it would be a really neat idea if it were possible.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
What about Windows shares? Since WinFS is a database that stores metadata about each file, this means that each copy of XP must serve up this metadata for anyone trying to share the file. I read somewhere that performance problems with this is one of the reasons for the delays....
I don't understand how this is a good decision for Microsoft. Sure WinFS would be a nice feature on XP - but why would they backport the only thing that makes Longhorn worthwhile to XP? Don't they want Longhorn to stand out?
or else!
In other words, there isn't a single reason to upgrade to Longhorn.
.NET? Available for XP.
1.)
2.) Avalon? Available for XP.
3.) Indigo? Available for XP.
And now...
4.) WinFS? Available for XP.
Apparently, the only thing Longhorn will offer over Windows XP is a Direct3D interface that requires you to upgrade your computer in order to run it.
Perhaps Longhorn always should have been just a collection of technologies released for existing versions of Windows rather than a whole upgrade. Because I don't see many people upgrading with all of Longhorn's technologies being made available for Windows XP anyway.
Heh, kind of like trying to share files between mac and windows. :)
http://blog.hackedbrain.com/archive/2004/12/13/277 .aspx
One of the monumental problems organizations face today is aggregating information that's stored in disparate formats. Knowledge workers have long wanted to be able to search for content independent of format. WinFS allows the user to perform searches based on the metadata of the stored item, regardless of what type of file it is or which application created it.
Being a GNU/Linux user with a light well-organised Gentoo system at home, I often wondered about statements like this. But in the last few years I have had to use M$ Windoze systems at work, so I begin to understand the search requirement: it is because Windoze systems are horrendously organized! The directory structure resembles a junk yard. Writable system files, sloppy application installations, bizarre naming conventions, the scourge of the Windoze registery. It is no wonder M$ feels the need to add a search capability. Navigating a Windoze file system is next to impossible.
an ill wind that blows no good
You should really check into 'locate'. I pretty much forgot how to use 'find' after discovering it.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
WinFS is not a different filesystem. Think of it as a.. plugin, an extension, for NTFS.
Sorry buddy, but there's no file system upgrade here. WinFS is a Windows Service that runs on top of NTFS - the same version of NTFS, incidentally, that is present in Windows XP.
In fact, Microsoft is planning to provide an update on the technology at this year's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in September, he said.
Meanwhile, I'll actually be USING such technology on my Mac mini.
Seriously, it's taken Microsoft a decade to get this off the ground, and Apple decides to implement it between OS X updates and gets it out the door. What's up at Microsoft?
How would this lock it up since WinFS is just a system service running in the background that works on NTFS drives?
WinFS uses NTFS.
This is just a response to kill the buzz on Apple's Spotlight, which is actually shipping. When some competitor starts to make gains, Microsoft just lets loose that they're "working" on things sometime in the future to make the shareholders happy and to keep their name in the press.
Your pal, :)
Comic Book Guy
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Fire up Google and search for something. The results are instant.
Now, pretend you have, like I do, over 200GB of files. Instead of drilling through folders and scrolling endlessly with my mouse, why can't I search my own hard drive as quickly as I search the entire Internet and get the file I was looking for in less than a second?
You're thinking way too closed-minded. Desktop search combined with smart folders will be the new way to fish through your years of files as hard drives increase in size yearly. Go ahead and keep on clicking through your folder heirarchy. The rest of us will just type a search term in a text field and get our file(s) instantly.
WinGZ is being backported to WinQE using XYZ. WinGZ is not dead, IIRC GQRT FLRO JDF lfkhfh lhhdglksd...
I know it might make you seem a little less 1337, but could you give just a tiny bit of background so I know whether or not to read TFA? Like, WTF is WinFS?
I think the traditional concept of a filesystem with data organized within directories is beginning to show its age.
Why bolt on things like DB functionality and version control features (this is coming eventually...) to a traditional filesystem model when these features fit neatly with the concept of a more generalized persistent object store system?
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
People were saying the same thing when IE4 came out. Why would you want win98 when win95 + IE4 was the same thing? 98 seems to have done well anyhow.
boldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse
"meta data about files that the OS can store with the files and search on" ... I believe IBM's OS/2 version of its HPFS filesystem called that "Extended Attributes".
"plus ca change..."
The only change that most users will notice is how does it look. And it will the main motivation to some users to upgrade from XP to Longhorn, as it was for many people I know that upgraded to XP.
For most users, the main difference between 2000 and XP is not about the integrated firewall. It's not the damn activation thing. It's the bigger and blueish tittle bar, the candy looking widgets and the wallpaper that looks like it's taken straight from Teletubbyland.
I was really looking forward to this being called "ActiveFS" or "Active File System" or something trendy like that... but then again, that was pretty 90's wasn't it. I think someone suggested it would be called "Logical Search and Structure File System" (LoSS for short) but I haven't heard if they have decided on that or not... so maybe.
I don't see any need for this. And beyond need is want -- who wants this? I can kinda see an "abstraction layer" that could run on top of your existing file system services that could obscure the actual name and location of a file in the system, but I don't see the point in making data recovery that much more difficult.... oh yeah I do... Microsoft keeps moving the target.
The book you're talking about is "Practical File System Design with the Be file system".
Here's the slashdot article on it and here's a pdf of the book direct from the author's site.
It looks interesting, but it's been on my to-read list for a while.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Ok reading the posts there may be some pro's and cons to the winfs(big surprise there huh?) but my will question is, whose gonna be the brave souls to implement this first when it does finally get released?
Lets see M$ wanted a new OS based on 4 key pillars. They are down to one - security and reliability. I think the past record of MS will indicate how well the implment the security and reliability of Longhorn.
I would expect that SP1 or SP2 will be the version of Longhorn that will really start to use the four main pillars it was to be based upon. But by releaseing a sub-standard version off the start they will hurt their market share even more.
MS is in a position that it could hold off release for a year and make things right. The bad PR from introducting an marginal OS will hurt them. It would be best if they waited and released something that was actually ground breaking. I guess they had two choices - early release so that Linux or some other OS does not gain too much Market share or release late and try to regain the market share. I would tend to think they would get more market share if they actually released something that worked correctly the first time rahter than saying.... aaaaahhhh just wait for the patch.
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
So is this the new development plan for Longhorn? Rolling it out in chunks instead of one coherent release?
It kind of makes sense to me. This way, they'll have some field testing of the key technologies and they'll be able to use the longer development cycle to work out more bugs.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
I'm not that Uber-knowledgeable about how it all works, but it seems to me that the end effect will be no different than the current combo of plain old NTFS + Google Desktop Search.
As document many times over, Microsoft long ago sold those Apple shares.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Access for this is read-only,
aren't there anyone who got something better than
FAT32 working with dual-boot.
I recall my good ol' DOS times.
J OBG AMES\PLATFORM: \WIN95 -- my custom "WINDOWS" directory.
...
...
...
Here's more or less a list of my directories:
C:\DOCS
C:\DOCS\HOMEWORK
C:\DOCS\
C:\GAMES
C:\GAMES\3D
C:\GAMES\ADVENTUR
C:\
C:\LENG\BC
C:\LENG\TP
C:\PICS
C
C:\WIN98
C:\WP
So I could organize myself. Now, do you know what Microsoft did?
C:\Program Files\app 1
C:\Program Files\app 2
C:\Program Files\app 3
C:\Program Files\app 9,999
C:\Documents and Settings\me\My Documents\doc1
C:\Documents and Settings\me\My Documents\doc2
C:\Documents and Settings\me\My Documents\doc3
C:\Documents and Settings\me\My Documents\docN
C:\Documents and Settings\me\My Documents\My Images\img1
C:\Documents and Settings\me\My Documents\My Images\img2
C:\Documents and Settings\me\My Documents\My Images\imgN
Suddenly, the worst happens. My start menu is erased! Or my config got erased!
*cries* WAH!!! I lost one of my files! Where is it? They were on "My Documents", I swear!!
If Microsoft had ALLOWED the users to specify CATEGORIES for program installations... as in "Create Category", etc and made THIS feature an integral part of the system
("A certified WinXP application will present the "category" dialogue when installing something),
we wouldn't NEED WinFS at all.
Now that I think of it, here's a new motto for Microsoft:
"What do you want to hide today?"
Embiggen's not a word.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I think asking users to define metadata is a wasted effort. While users can tag data, it's a huge chore...
Spotlight I think has the best compromise. Modules that can define meta-data from document contents themselves. Most document formats that people would want to search already have a means of storing meta-data (like EXIF for pictures) so just let people modify this meta-data as appropriate with tools specific to the format, and encourage new app writers to generate documents with room for meta-data as well.
You don't need to store all files in a DB. Just make it easier for system services to have visibility to the meaningful data in documents across the system.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So is MS going to push everyone to Thunderbird?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
WinFS on my USB JumpDrive. Now there's a scary thought!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
WinFS is not just some sort of search. They already have that with MSN Search.
WinFS an API to store objects at a file system level, indexing and streaming potential to file-based data. WinFS data can be structured with an XML schema to explain meaning and purpose. Data can also be semi-structured or unstructured. You can extend the FS with your own properties. WinFS come with a set of services such as synchronization, notification, a unified store and a common security model. Data, and files can have types, properties, fields, relationships, even constraints.
You're no longer using files, you're using full blown objects.
Wasn't this announced a long time ago? I swear there was an article several months to a year ago, stating that MS was abandoning the WinFS and 3D-Windowing features of Longhorn in order to get it out sooner. There was talk of integrating it into XP at some point instead of holding it off until Longhorn was done, since LH's release date kept being shifted back. There was some other features they were moving to XP too I think.
Insert Sig Here
I believe that's his point -- to get you freaks to crawl out of your android dungeons.
I use colinux for this. It can use any filesystem linux can. I export the filesystem (which is on an image file on an NTFS partition) via Samba.
In native Linux you can mount the filesystem using the loopback device and you can write to it as well since writing to NTFS is supported as long as the filesize doesn't change. The size of the filesystem image will not change if you write to it.
I'd use a NTFS partition for data exchange only, of course! The Linux system should reside on a filesystem that is better supported like the ones in topic. XFS is working well for me.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
There was a story on theregister.co.uk (I think) a few days ago about XP64 for x86-64 machines being based off of Server 2003 rather than XP. Perhaps this is related somehow?
Either way, it's not like the task is as dramatic as backporting from the NT OS's to the 9x OS's...
Incidentally, Copernic 1.5 beta now supports Mozilla Thunderbirds email and contacts and Firefox history and bookmarks
As does Google Desktop 1.0. Nice work Google! Now get crackin' on that Mac OS X version...
~jeff
It's a perfectly cromulent word.
Backporting it from what, might I ask?
It's been phantom, "in development" software for years. Who wants to bet that Longhorn was never really going to exist in the first place, but was simply an experimental platform which they were using to slow down the migration to other platforms?
I can't see the appeal in this, at all. It'll be slow and fairly useless, IMO. I also suspect they'll charge for it.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
How's the IO speed compare in Windows on reiser compared to NTFS?
I don't know if it's the IO system that's doggedly slow, or just NTFS... either way, it's painful..
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Why bother? Tiger will be out in 3 to 4 months and will come with Spot Light. From what I've seen Spot Light is basically Google Desktop, but integrated into the OS.
-matt
Microsoft is now embracing Apple Computer's
use of the "Data" and "Resource" forks in
their OS, circa 1995? I am so impressed. NOT!
MSFT, as a convicted (and largely unpunished)
monopolist, might well back port the WinFS
support to XP and WS2003, if only for the
following reason:
Between MSFT's huge IP software patent portfolio
(largely bogus due to prior art), and the DMCA
they will be able to leverage their monopoly
OS and FS to short-circuit the advances made
by Kerberos/OpenLDAP/Samba at a time when linux
is gaining corporate mindshare. Expect MSFT to
furnish restricted API's and "MS Open Source"
in order to lock out competition.
No linux app explots extendend Attibutes due to limits in the Ext2 and Ext3 version Ie each fie can only have so much extendend Attibutes but other filesystems have unlimited Extendend Attibutes to search with.
Now the VFS how is it going to handle it.
This is not a problem for linux just they have had no reason to create it.
Note I can see a linux kernel plugin comming.
I am shocked that nobody has jumped on this by now. Windows 95B included FAT32 before 95c was out.
Data can also be semi-structured or unstructured. You can extend the FS with your own properties. WinFS come with a set of services such as synchronization, notification, a unified store and a common security model. Data, and files can have types, properties, fields, relationships, even constraints.
That should prove a speedy beast, especially when every third-party vendor starts giving new "properties" to their own files or any others they're concerned with whether you want them or not.
You're no longer using files, you're using full blown objects.
Hmm. That's one way of putting it, I suppose. It sounds as though the "full blown" part would certainly apply to the overhead.
A neurone is a fundamental basic of what's wrong with linux.
Of course, it doesn't work with the "spirit of the structure of the alimentary canal is the only refuge of the structure of the house and have access to all data and the sun's spots.
It is my word document.
If you want to see what filesystems are like when you add database features, look up some BeFS documentation from BeOS.
An awful lot of stuff [some of it more than a little nefarious] can be accomplished with NTFS streams.
Sadly, they are among the best kept secrets in all of M$FTdom; sometimes I even wonder whether any of the in-house developers at M$FT are aware that they exist.
I'd be more interested in a race; which comes out first, WinFS or ReiserFS plugins?
I'd say they're neck in neck on the OS Vaporware Challenge.
...and, given the fine job that they have displayed with every other release, what chance do I have actually trusting my data with it?
Let's face it: as long as they put profits before craftmanship, you are a fool to trust (or even try) this until about rev 4 or 5!
Fuck 'em; just fuck 'em!
2) On a system with lots and lots of files, the updatedb command can take hours or days! Why isn't there an API that can be hooked to, so that writing files to disk also updates the slocate database? Would it be possible to write something that reads the journal on an ext3 system for recent changes, avoiding the expensive, time-consuming poll of every single file on the system?
/home as dirty and have 499 free "dirty directory" slots.
-0x0d0a
I haven't thought of using the journal -- kind of an interesting idea, but (a) file-system dependent, and (b) the journal isn't guaranteed to stick around for long -- if you have a 95% full filesystem, you're going to miss changes.
It *would* be intelligent to have some mechanism to log changes (and trigger an update of the file when load drops). The main problem is that while Linux does have a mechanism (dnotify()) to monitor directories for changes, the dnotify() in Linux currently lacks recursive directory support. This means that it would take some ungodly number of filehandles to monitor an entire directory. This patch to enhance dnotify(), if ever merged, would free Linux users from the clutches of updatedb forever, as a daemon like FAM could run, use the enhanced dnotify mechanism to efficiently log changes, and then tell a slightly smarter updatedb to run on only the changed directories. By using recursive dirty flags ("rescan this directory and everything beneath it") a bounded-size list of modifications may be maintained, by simply sliding the directory flagged as dirty one up the tree (so if you have a max of 500 flagged dirty directories, and 500 of your user directories are dirty and another goes dirty, you just flag
want to get linux a toehold in enterprise? no chance until you can write to (NTFS) shares.
I was setting up a PC at a friends with Windows Media Centre Edition, and the only available formatting for the new hard drive was NTFS !
Didn't FAT also used to be available in XP ?
I sure feel happier accessing FAT partitions than NTFS ones from Linux. Is the write access still experimental ?
It didn't occur to me at the time, but I probably should have formatted the partition in FAT using Linux. Doh!
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
hmm, WinFS Is Not a FileSystem? Mod me redundant, I care not.
I have freaks! I did something right...
im not some sort of guru but ntfs is fine. i think instead of bill having all his slaves running around trying to make a new file system why dont they research into ntfs more and try to fully implement that, i mean it has functions that are not used when they could be like the Advanced Data Stream for example that has a good way of hiding files but windows just ignores this and treats it almost like a fat partition but with shinny knobs on
...doesn't require a full new filesystem.
The low-tech approach would be an augmented locate service, providing additional metadata. This still requires a periodic filesystem scan as with current locate/slocate.
The high-tech approach would be to add hooks to the filesystem driver allowing metadata (user/group, [ca]time dates, filename, permissions) to be written to an index. Need not change underlying filesystem symantics at all.
Microsoft, of course, prefer the spaghetti solution.
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?