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

Split reality

[ProfaneBaby]

While the standard DOS shell is nearly useless, WMI is still pretty damn powerful. It has problems (most people in production lock it down, which will break a lot of the truly useful uses for it), but it makes this statement:

Microsoft Watch reports that 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.

Almost redundant. You can already write scripts with WMI that will let you do MOST of the things in Exchange that you would want to do from the command line, and once it's in the script, it's at least semi-permanent.

Even in UNIX, I tend to write scripts when there's more than 5 commands (even if the commands are all piped together into a single command) - I may know it well enough not to see it later, but my assistant tends to find the scripts very useful for his learning and library.

1st thought: Good that it is comming...

[Spoing]

'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.'

2nd: The more time goes on, the more Windows takes on the features of unix.

3rd: Most every OS is some form of unix at this point except for Windows.

4th: Even Windows has a POSIX layer and unix-style command utilities for free as an add-on.

Longhorn will offer precisely... what?

[ShatteredDream]

It seems like every feature that was supposed to be cool except for the 3d-accelerated desktop is going to be either taken out of Longhorn or is going to be backported to XP to promote developers' use of it (like Avalon). Does anyone else see how this could end up with Microsoft effectively having no good reason for the average person to leave XP unless they buy a new PC? Why would a business want to move to Longhorn if it is a warmed over rehash of Windows XP?

So many people went to Windows XP because even those who used Windows 2000 saw a lot of good benefits in it. Despite what some people may say, Windows XP can be a lot faster than Windows 2000 on things like disk I/O. I remember ripping a DVD under Win2k and then doing it again under WinXP when I got XP and seeing significant performance gains to the tune of going from about 4000kb/sec to about 7500-8000kb/sec under XP. Then there were other enhancements, but we all truthfully know that XP was a big jump for the average user of Windows.

But why should people who like XP leave it for Longhorn? Unless Microsoft follows Be's upgrade path for BeOS and charges only $25-$50 for XP upgrade CDs, why should people switch? What does it do for them that can't be done just as easily with XP and which isn't negated by more hardware needs?

Monad the name?

[Dasein]

Okay, so it's called Monad -- I've only heard this name in one other context, and that's Haskell (http://www.haskell.org./ The interesting thing is that Simon Peyton Jones went to MSR a few years ago.

So, it seems that, either the name is unrealated, and that would suck. Or, that somehow, this is related. *IF* it is realated, I'm not sure how adoption will go. Functional Programming can be a little odd.

Anyone know?

Re:Inquiring minds want to know!

[tomjen]

True, but the problem is that in GNU/Linux most programs are designed to work on the commandline.

In Microsoft Windows, they are designed to work with the GUI. So they have to code a CLI, and add to all the apps. Plus Microsoft are beeing threaten on thiere two main incomes (office and windows) and facing a humilation on browser area.

Monad -- See Deleuze and Leibniz

[Will Shaw]

Here's where else you might've heard "monad" before.

See Gottfried Leibniz's "Monadology" - here, and with
background info here.

Then check out Gilles Delezue's The Fold -- here. Deleuze is a total nutjob, like so many other French "theorists" or "literary theorists" (whatever that means), but he writes almost cogently about Leibniz.

I assure you that Haskell is not the "one other context" for the concept of a "monad."

Re:Inquiring minds want to know!

[Ravnen]

They're trying to create an object-oriented shell, where all system components are accessible as objects. This is naturally much more complex than a shell and command-line tools based on manipulation of text streams, but includes a lot of theoretical advantages, if it works.

In general, I like the 'keep it simple' philosophy of traditional UNIX, but I'll try MSH, when it gets to a more mature stage, before deciding whether or not Microsoft have come up with a better CLI than the simple UNIX model.

It was bound to happen

[GomezAdams]

Little Billy Gates has to have all the world's attention focused on him and him alone and by doing that he is sinking his company. Look at what he is trying to do.

• Become the only operating system for desktops and servers.
• Become the only or most major game console and games provider.
• Become the most major search engine provider
• Become the only or most major embedded OS provider.
• Become the only offices productivity tools provider.
• Become the only or prevalent music download provider.
• Become the most major e-books provider.
• Become a major hardware provider for peripherals - keyboards and pointers.
• Become the most major progran development tool provider.
• Become the most major publishing tool provider.
• Become the most major browser provider.
• Become the most major media player provider.
• Become the most major media editor provider.

And this is just the list my poor tired old brain can come up with on short notice. I'm sure there's more. And all of it must be tied into the OS so he can claim "it's embedded and I can't get it removed with damaging my product".
Gates is spreading his resources out to the breaking point to cover every blasted computing use on the planet and to smother all his competition. Just like a rubber band that's streached too far, it will snap and get ugly quickly when the end comes.

Re:Inquiring minds want to know!

[MightyMartian]

Because there are a lot of tasks that require a good, programmable shell. WMI sucks big time and the primitive batch file methods of CMD.EXE are barely any better than the COMMAND.COM batch files of fifteen years ago. I gave the example a day or two ago of how easy it is to extract parts of the system date in Bash, which is really great when you've got automated scripts to move logs and put timestamp in the file name. It can be done in CMD.EXE batch files, but with the very odd FOR command.

Why reinvent the wheel ?

[TractorBarry]

Ho hum...

In direct contrast to Apple (who had the sense to realise a good thing when they saw it by using *BSD as the basis of OSX) Microsofts new mission statement seems to be to prove the adage:

"Those who don't understand UNIX are doomed to reinvent it, poorly."
--Henry Spencer

(apologies if the quote is attributed to the wrong person but I'm drunk and simply Googled for the first result...)

And I'm not saying humanity can't do better than *nix but, currently, it's still a hell of a good start (mind you I've worked on ICLs, now Fujitsus, VME which is simply a pure pleasure... a pure pleasure... File generations... Mmmm... recover that file from 10 edits ago before you made a complete balls up of everything...)

Re:Inquiring minds want to know!

[Ravnen]

I think AppleScript is more like the existing Windows Scripting technologies. The difference with MSH is that it's an attempt to merge that sort of thing into an interactive command-line environment, and include every aspect of the system that the GUI can manage. (I don't know if AppleScript covers every aspect of the system that is accessible from the GUI, but I know Windows Scripting doesn't.)