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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.'"
So the question on everyone's minds at this point is: What *will* Longhorn actually have in it? Avalon, Indigo, and WinFX are all being backported to XP/2003, WinFS has been dropped for the release, and now Monad (I love that name) is being cut. I'm not quite sure how Microsoft plans to sell the OS on such exciting features as "Better DRM!" and "We've got the security thing right this time. Promise!"
;-)
"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.
*Jaw hits the floor*
Five years? Whoa. Five years ago, Windows 2000 was brand new. Five years ago, Mac users were still stuck with OS 9. Five years ago, the tech boom was still on. Five years ago, Bill Clinton was still President. Even worse is that Win32 is only ten years old!
If it takes Microsoft five years to get something out the door, I think they will soon find themselves becoming irrelevant in the desktop market. Confidence can be a good thing, but over-confidence can mean disaster. The bright side to this is that users will win when Microsoft is forced to go back to being an applications vendor instead of an OS vendor. Maybe they'll even get around to making another BASIC that doesn't suck.
On a slightly different topic, I really think that Microsoft is really on the wrong track with their combined Desktop/Server codebase bent. As technology marches on, Microsoft will quickly find that their competitors are taking advantage of technological solutions that only make sense on one side of the fence. I have to wonder if some of the delay that we're seeing isn't caused by Microsoft attempting to make all of their technology work in both arenas.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
graphics characters input and output, except for a now pleasing RSOD, which has been shown to be %20 more frightening.
42
Microsoft = Yesterday's technology.. tomorrow!
Monad, which would enable users to do everything from the command line that can be done from the graphical interface
Yet another innovation from microsoft? first borrow the windows paradigm and now the cli paradigm.
What the fuck are you talking about? Do you listen to yourself when you talk or do you just drift in and out? Exactly what "bug" are you talking about. My LINUX box would like to know since it must be out of the loop because it's been running without reboot for over 4 months. I've heard of this bug existing in WinNT but not in LINUX.
Don't give up hope just yet. It may still be ready for the Longhorn release!
Yup, five years. So what I'm lead to wonder is which we'll see first:
1) A good command line for Windows
2) A good GUI for Linux
I also have to wonder if Microsoft would be putting an ounce of effort into developing a command line if that wasn't something beneficial in Linux.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Dude. It was funny the first time. Made me smile the second.
It's long since stopped being funny, and just makes stories on Slashdot annoying as hell to read as we scroll past your 8 pages of the same joke.
Remember, breveity is the essence of wit.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
The word's ancient (and Greek) and does not imply functional programming. The Monad shell follows an object oriented approach. The Wikipedia article on MSH explains this. There's an external link to what might just be a video I've seen before: a developer demos Monad and the way objects, rather than plain text, are piped between commands... or whatever; I'm not the one to explain this.
Longhorn will simply be Windows XP SP2 with a modified skin. All new actual features and enhancements have been canned. You will of course pay substantially for this new OS. ;-)
It is not necessarily a bad thing that you can't configure everything from the command-line.
Yes, it is. *nix users have understood that for decades. And that's why the "Windows" response to a problem is to reinstall the OS.
1. Microsoft is looking at implementing a subscription model instead of standard box sales in the near future.
2. Microsoft takes, on average, 5 years plus between major revisions of their operating system.
3. Microsoft's next operating system will not have the cool whiz-bang features they promised us, in spite of its six year lead time.
4. Microsoft's Windows operating system does not come bundled with any useful applications. Their video editing application has a featureset close to zero, and MSPaint is simply unchanged since 1990, having not so much as a smudge tool. WordPad is a completely inferior word processor compared to ANY other currently available.
5. Microsoft's operating systems cost a minimum of 99 US dollars, double that for anything useful in a business or network.
In conclusion, Microsoft's "option" will cost you a yearly cost for a product that is improved minimally every five years, with a smaller feature set than you were promised, and you have to buy any applications separately if you'd like to do anything WITH your computer.
Oh, Microsoft stock? SIGN ME UP!
Why didn't they just look at what was available elsewhere, and copy the VMS shell (which Digital released for the VAX machines in 1978)? Clean, simple, and with command and option names that are actually possible to remember.
One of the most advertised aspects when Windows NT came out was that it was "designed by the people who wrote VMS". If this was true, does anyone know why they forgot to include the only part of VMS that's actually visible to normal users?
Sorry for ranting. I really loved the VMS command line. :-)
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
How about a shorter list... features that aren't going to end up in XP anyway, and features that actually have value.
.NET, and vector graphics.
.NET framework 2.0 (the foundation for Longhorn)
Avalon: a new user interface subsystem and API based on XML,
Which will also be available for XP. Scratch one.
WinFX: a new API replacing the current Win32 API (there's of course still Win32 + Win64)
That's two (or is it three) new APIs. New APIs by themselves have negative value. What can you do with them... that's the important bit.
Lower user privileges (IE 7 will run in these on Longhorn)
Fixing the wrong problem. The only reason to run IE in some kind of sandbox is because of its broken active content model. Instead they should fix IE by backing that out and split off a local HTML scripting environment (like Dashboard, but without the stupid UI), and making IE into a normal browser... a purely web aplication that has no ability to download applets and automatically* run them with full local rights.
Included compiler (msbuild)
Ah, finally catching on to what every UNIX vendor figured out by the early '90s. Even SCO ecentually "got" that. Of course you can download SFU and get an included compiler AND a decent shell, RIGHT NOW... so this is also available for XP and Windows 2000.
New document format competitive to PDF
Something else with negative value.
An application deployment engine ("ClickOnce")
Sounds Linspired. I hope they've actually thought about security this time.
New desktop search capabillities
Already available for XP, not a Longhorn feature.
Improved security through lower privileged accounts and services
You're repeating yourself.
* popping up a routine dialog box that people are used to clicking OK on is hardly better than running it with no warning.