New MS Shell Will Not Be In Longhorn

sootman writes "Remember that new Windows shell? Looks like it'll be yet another technology that won't make it into Longhorn. 'It will take three to five years to fully develop and deliver,' said Microsoft Senior Vice President Bob Muglia this week at Tech Ed 2005. However, it's not dead yet--despite not shipping in Longhorn in 2006 or Longhorn Server in 2007, the article says 'Exchange 12 administration functions will be built atop Monad, which would enable users to do everything from the command line that can be done from the graphical interface.'"

Comments

Re:Where

[TripMaster Monkey]

OK...here's a quote from the BetaNews article referenced in the summary:

Monad was slated to replace the command line in Windows with an object-oriented technology that rivals shells found on Unix systems. Beta versions of the software have been available to testers since early Longhorn alpha releases, but now Microsoft is looking further down the road with Monad.

You know, if you would just RTFA, things would be a lot clearer...

Re:Inquiring minds want to know!

[TCM]

But what is bash without /bin/*, /sbin/*, /usr/bin/*, /usr/sbin/* and so on? Just a nice frontend.

The main reason why a shell for Windows 1) takes insanely long to develop 2) will suck anyway is that the whole system beneath it is completely rotten, non-elegant and a pain to use.

Take the 'ipv6' command for example, if you installed the IPv6 stack on XP. They use dash options (-p), where most of the "DOS" tools use slash options (which AFAIK are the reason they have backslashes instead of slashes in paths). The notion of an 'interface' with that ipv6 command is completely awkward. Since their real identifiers are nicely hidden away below the shiny Network control panel, you have to use 'ipv6 if' to retrieve an integer that corresponds to the desired interface.

Examples of the current CLI sucking are:

1) a tab-complete in the middle of the line destroys the rest of the line
2) why does 'cd..' without a space even work?
3) as in 2), a 'cd...' or 'cd....' works as well in that it returns no error, it just doesn't do anything!
4) 'UNC' paths (\\server\path) are 'not supported' as the current directory. However, they are supported as args for commands (all commands?).

These are examples that lead me to believe that there actually is no structure below the surface of Windows and the tools it offers. I believe that Microsoft developers look at something and go implement it in a quick and dirty way, without ever having a bigger design goal in mind and without ever changing something once it has been hacked into place.

Re:Let's try making a list!

[Anonymous Coward]

People, let's try making a list of that which we do know that (for now at least) will be in Longhorn. Each person who replies just has to copy paste the previous list and add his content :P

Let me start with:

* RSOD (red screens of death)
* Dropping the prefix "My" from "My computer", "My network places", etc

I'll try my best:

* Avalon: a new user interface subsystem and API based on XML, .NET, and vector graphics.
* Indigo: a service-oriented messaging system to allow programs to interoperate as part of the .NET framework.
* WinFX: a new API replacing the current Win32 API (there's of course still Win32 + Win64)
* .NET framework 2.0 (the foundation for Longhorn)
* WGF - Windows Graphic Foundations
* DirectX 10 which will further merge pixel and vertex shaders and introduce new technologies for 3D rendering.
* Lower user privileges (IE 7 will run in these on Longhorn)
* Included compiler (msbuild)
* New driver model and improved kernel/driver loading (drivers get "unloaded" in realtime if they become unstable) - also drivers get loaded quicker in the boot process so you can enjoy higher res/color depth while booting - also improved is boot speed and install time.
* New MS Installer
* New document format competitive to PDF
* An application deployment engine ("ClickOnce")
* Improvements in the ClearType font rendering technology + new system fonts
* New desktop search capabillities
* Improved security through lower privileged accounts and services
* Full support for the "NX" (No-Execute) feature of processors.
* New graphic user interface (Aero) using vector graphics for rendering.

That's everything I could come up and google within 10 minutes. Those are pretty much the biggest improvements that we know about. Then there are of course a lot of improvements on the device drivers, the way Windows handles drivers, wireless conectivity etc. The main code branch is built upon Windows Server 2003 SP1.

This is still 2 years away from release so I'm sure they can come up with more stuff. Hell, AFAIK Monad and WinFS will be available as free add-ons later on (SP probably).

Re:Inquiring minds want to know!

[man_of_mr_e]

Remote Desktop and Remote Assistance, Shadow Copy Service, WebDAV (Web Client) Support, Concurrent Console Users (Fast User Switching), Camera and scanning wizard, System Restore Points, Driver Rollback, Side by Side DLL support, Windows Firewall, DualView (ability to have the display on both the screen and a projector or TV), Synchronization Manager, Automatic Update (this was later added to Win2k), and a bunch of other stuff I can't think of right now.