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Microsoft Uncertain About WinFS for XP
Ant writes "As a follow-up to WinFS to be available in WinXP story from a few days ago, BetaNews reports that Microsoft (MS) stopped short of confirming reports that it plans to back-port its next-generation WinFS file system architecture to Windows XP. MS tells BetaNews it is only evaluating the move while also acknowledging WinFS is still years off. "We are currently evaluating making the WinFS storage subsystem available on this platform and will make the decision based on what is best for customers." a Microsoft spokesperson told BetaNews."
All it would do is make locating files easier, at least that's pretty much how they were shopping it around. You could do that without adding another layer to the HDD by simply having an element of the OS scan in the background efficiently.
Conversely, though, I wonder if the reason they're starting to back off of WinFS now is because including it would mean that all of those obscure file locations where companies like to hide setup files would be that much easier and faster for people to locate. I've lost count of the number of times I've needed to hunt through hidden folders to find some stupid file to edit or delete. And the search taking 30+ minutes didn't help.
Maybe instead of working on WinFS, they should focus on coming up with an alternative to the registry.
That never stopped them before!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Steve?
Its in consumer's best interests to force them to upgrade lest they be left behind and forgotten.
Normally this is standard MS mentality but I disagree in this case. Here's why:
Hard drive space is friggin' cheap. Look closely there. The 80GB unit is $55 while the 40GB unit is $48. Wow... For that kind of bang/buck, manufacturers might want to start bundling Linux with Windows in a dual-boot configuration. And coming soon, virtualization - you'll be able to run Linux and Windows simultaneously on the same damn PC.
What better method of migrating people from Windows?
WinFS, however, throws a monkey wrench in that. While linux NTFS is coming along nicely, Microsoft is fearing the loss of the proprietary-ness that has locked them in for so long.
Linux on the desktop is close (though ever so frustrating at this point). WinFS is Microsoft's last ditch at thwarting it for another couple years.
More
I heard recently that you might be after a 'white whale'. As it so happens I have a few harpoons from my last job at HP, I would be happy to sell them to you on the cheap.
Drop me a line if your interested.
Carly Fiorina
How is this standard MS mentality to force people to upgrade? They just recently discontinued support for NT4. From 1994. XP is still freely patched since 2001. 2K too. Most new developments (IE, .net, ActiveX, etc) are often still available for older versions of their OS.
How is Linux support for Linux from 2001? Yeah, yeah, theoretically you could download all the source and compile from scratch, yadda yadda...but even Red Hat recently killed stuff that was less than a year old.
How is APPLE support for their products from 2001? Hell, most new programs require 2 or more paid upgrades for X to even function.
This is standard mentality for pretty much anyone but MS. They support and back-port things for free quite regularly. Say what you will about their other business practices or security, but they are far and away the best in the industry (of major OSes at least) at updating things for free.
With all the delays for Longhorn, I wonder if Microsoft fans don't feel like Apple fans during the late 90's, eternally waiting for Copland. During the wait for Copland, Microsoft was basically ahead of Apple, since it already had a true preemptively multitasking OS and Apple fans had to put up with cooperative multitasking and frequent crashes. Now, while Apple is poised to ship OS 10.4 Tiger with Spotlight (aka all the functionality of WinFS) and CoreImage (aka all the functionality of Avalon) before July, Microsoft faces delay after delay. Of course, Microsoft OSes are frequently late (who can forget the many delays of Windows 95?), but though the release came fast and furious for 98, ME, 2000, and XP, Microsoft has been stagnating since then. Even a simple service pack has turned into a huge production for MS to produce and ship.
I think all of these signs point to MS's code base being too big and unwieldy. I don't think anyone doubts that IE is too bloated to fix. Just compare the time between the release of 5 and the release 6 to the time between the release of 6 and now. If Microsoft could implement full CSS selector support and non-broken PNG display, I'm sure they would have by now, but IE is just too tangled to fix quickly anymore.
So, if MS is wandering in a Copland-esque desert, what's to be done? As unbelievable as a suggestion as it may seem, maybe they should take the OS X route and just buy a competitor and cut their loses. Starting over from (not quite) scratch will give Windows a shot in the arm. WINE has already proven that backwards compatibility with Windows applications doesn't have to be dependent on using their existing OS code. They should just buy out Be (a good choice since they already have a metadata filesystem) or someone else with a Unix-like underpinning, and rewrite Windows the right way. It will take another 3 or 4 years, but at this rate, they're going to need that much time anyway. Spinning their wheels on Longhorn won't get MS anywhere. If MS wants to innovate (and that's a reasonable question), it's time to take a chance, kill Copland, and try something new.
To be perfectly honest, do you really think that the average consumer has the ability or the desire to decide what is "best" for themselves? People, as a whole, look at computers as an appliance that either works or doesn't; there's so much that we take for granted that they don't even know exists.
No offense meant, but I think that your post is "a wonderful example of the difference between Microsoft and the OSS movement". While I agree fully with the OSS movement in theory, there is a lot more to a computing experience than the sum of the components. There is the overall presentation to the user, THAT is what Microsoft gets right, and THAT is what the OSS movement needs before it can ever truly be mainstream.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
The translation of MS's statement: We can't get the damn thing working, so fuck it.
In that case, that's about half of what WinFS is supposed to be. It will make greater use of metadata, probably through the already existing NTFS streams in e.g. Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Yes, you can already store and search true file system-level metadata in those operating systems, an almost as little known fact as that you can mount devices in Windows XP to "folders", similar to how it works in Linux. I can for example mount my DVD-ROM at E: to C:\Devices\DVD. Anyway, that combined with the WinFS service running on top of NTFS helping out with indexing to allow instant database-style searches, should offer something similar to Spotlight functionality, if I understand Spotlight right.
However, there's more to it than fast database searches in WinFS. It also aims to change how we look on stored files altogether, taking away system-related concepts like "hard drives" and physical "folders" when navigating your stored data. Instead, your data will be organized into more abstract libraries of data. You'd for example store your games in your Game library, whose contents wouldn't be tied to one folder on one hard drive. You'd go to your Game library, and double-click on Doom III, instead of going to C:\Games\Doom III. Actually, C: wouldn't even be a concept seen by the user anymore.
It's even supposed to seamlessly work through network shares, however last thing I heard is that won't be in the initial release of WinFS.
So it's a new data model, and a new way to look at how you store data altogether.
All this is how it may look to the user. However, to Windows, it's a storage engine running as a service on top of NTFS.
Very early stages of WinFS could be found in the already released/leaked Longhorn alpha versions. Although you couldn't really say it was anything near functioning, you could see the concepts, and that was likely the intention at this early alpha stage.
Here are some quotes from Paul Thurrot's site:
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Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!