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Next consumer Windows to be 98 derivative
ZDNET is confirming that an
NT-based consumer Windows is still 3 years down the road.
Given that Windows 98 was widely expected to be the last
release not based on NT, this is somewhat of a surprise,
and raises the question: is Microsoft retargetting Win 2000
purely at the enterprise market in an effort to maintain market
share? Thanks to znu for the link.
With the current attention on Linux, this is
not the sort of PR MS wants out. It's the
exact opposite of their usual vaporware promises.
They're doing more to help Linux achieve world
domination than any other company. Thank you
Bill!
Bryce
Altima -
Join the free online roleplaying game project.
From what I've seen of the 2000 beta, the plug and play seems to work fine (= as well as 98). The only niddling problem is old Win3.1 and DOS programs that don't like NT and the fact that they'd probably never get good DirectX performance from the NT Kernal. (It was only a year or two ago that all games were DOS.)
Since Win 98 is so tightly attach to the x86, Microsoft will not be able to deliver a consumer OS optimize for the Intel Merced. Only a server OS (and even that I'm doubtful). That explain why Intel is so eager to support alternative OS. Intel is probably afraid of an other failure like the Pentium Pro.
Reports are coming from Research Triangle park that there might yet be another Red Hat release using the Linux kernel in the year 2000.
"We tried using HURD but we figured out that nobody really wanted to make the transition," an Anonymous Red Hat employee leaked, "besides... we couldn't use the cute Penguin logo anymore."
Speculation abounds that Red Hat decided not to make the move to the HURD kernel out of device driver support and compatibility with older Red Hat binaries. Other distribution companies were also ready to release a Linux based Red Hat 2000 even if Red Hat didn't.
"Darnit. There goes our plan for a premium, $4.95, product." said someone at Cheapbytes, who said they would OEM Red Hat 2000 and sell it at $2.95 anyway.
What will that mean to IA-64? ... If they could really cleanup the legacy code from the old day in the future.
Should Intel keep shipping 32 bit CPU? Or they already have agreement on not to ship 64 bit CPU until NT migrate to consumer market?
I get it, MS is going to base the next big release, which will be 64 bit OS on a 32 bit OS which itself base on 16 bit. Nice
It's pretty stupid for any OS to be at consumer, workstation, and server levels at the same time.
Looks like M$ has too many troubles with the NT migration. Besides the incompatabilities, there is also the target audience issue.
This is a scam in a few different ways:
1. Developers have been counting on an NT-based W2k. Failing to deliver it hurts them, which benefits monopolist Microsoft.
2. OEMs and VARs will shell out yet more money for the "new OS version".
3. Foolish consumers will think they need to upgrade. In fact, they probably will --- as new versions of MS products will cease to work with W95/98.
4. Why do it at all? To maintain the illusion that people need to change OSes every two years, and to keep income up so as to please the stockholders (and keep the stock price inflated).
As stated previously, a lot can happen in 3 years.
This could be a way for M$ to remove itself from the frontlines of computing for a bit to figure out this whole open-source movement. I'd never trust that a company with that kind of power behind it to fold so quickly under the weight of a (thus far) short term trend in computing philosophy.
What would happen if three years down the road they decide to open source Winblows (remember it took them about 2 years to react to the internet in any half-assed way)? How would the open source community respond to that kind of play by our friends in Redmond?
rumor has it that in an early test of over 500 windows applications only 40% ran under Win-2000 without any problems. A 60% failure rate...
Says something about the quality of the code out there - both in the new OS and in that 3rd party stuff on the shelves.
Backwards compatibility is a killer for consumer OSs.
Of course Linux ain't anywhere near ready to be called a 'consumer' OS.
That is what linux is try to do.
*sigh* Working as tech support at a large ISP, I was hoping I'd finally get to support just one major version of a buggy product. My list has now grown to:
- Windows 3.1, 3.11
- Windows 95
- Windows NT4 SP3
- Windows 98
- Windows CE (all 17+ rewrites!)
And of course those fun Mac calls with ConfigPPP, FreePPP, Open Transport, PPP, and whatever other bad dialers they can throw in this week..
- Macintosh 7.5.3
- Macintosh 8.0, 8.1, 8.5
Last but not least, those rare OS/2 calls, and the fact that I am not allowed to support Linux in any way. That's progress for you!
Will the madness ever end? Maybe Microsoft will just give in and make mslinux to compete with mklinux, teehee.. =)
- EraseMe
I must have sent 12 emails or reponses to magazines
like PC Mag, commenting how '98 would not be the
last release in the DOS + Win32 interface
release.
You expect a MS to relinquish a GIANT cash cow
like Windows + DOS?
This is OLD news and anyone who is mildly
suprised at such a turn of events is not looking
2 feet in front of his/her head?
Those, who want to spend their regulary money
on Windows, will pay, those who want something
real, don't give a sh*t on Windows.
If Microsoft released Windows NT5^H^H^H2000^H^H^H^HNT5 as open source, then the game would be over. There's no way they could control Windows exclusively anymore.
No one seems to be looking at how the ole wife in the Wintel marriage plays into this. One big difference between 98 and NT is that the latter is cross-platform. If NT is the consumer OS, then consumers can opt for Alpha, StrongArm, PowerPC, etc. NT is Microsoft's declaration of independence. Intel's counter? Two moves - 1) Support other OS's. Invest in Red Hat and Be. 2) Build the infrastructure of the networked economy into the chip (Ids, encryption). Under the circumstances, MS may be capitulating to Andy. This smells to me like a Wintel rapproachment.
I read this article earlier today and was thinking that what /wasn't/ directly said might be the most important thing to notice about the information.
The reason that Microsoft is having problems figuring out how to make Windows 2000 (NT 5) into a Personal Edition consumer-oriented type operating system is that NT is very complicated, and getting features such as PnP working correctly is no easy task. As this article indicates, MS has dedicated a huge number of developers to the task of getting NT 5 out the door. Even with so many people working on the effort, development is delayed simply due to the massive size of the operating system. Additionally, I recently read that there are over 8000 documented bugs in Windows 98. NT 5 will be much more complex and larger than W98, so it is probably safe to assume that there will be a huge number of bugs in NT 5 (particularly since MS is rewriting major portions of NT for the 5.0 version).
In summary, the release of NT 5 is taxing Microsoft's capabilities to produce bug-free software on time simply due to its size and complexity.
Now, fast forward a year or two from now when IA-64 machines start coming out. Suddenly, Microsoft has to take this huge operating system and extend it with new features while at the same time adding support for 64-bit processors. I'm guessing that this may be pretty difficult.
And this could be Linux's golden opportunity.
Consider that Intel has pledged to help support the development of Linux on IA-64. It seems likely that with the number of companies rallying behind Linux, plus support from Intel, plus the large number of bright people already working on Linux, that Linux will be running on IA-64 soon after the release of the first machines.
Also consider that one of the main reasons why Microsoft was able to move forward with Windows in the first place (ca. 1989 with Windows 3.1) was that the Unix market was fragmented so badly. Each vendor had their own slightly (or not so slightly) incompatible version of Unix. But, now that many vendors are pledging support for Linux, that could very easily change. Since Linux belongs to no one vendor, companies are willing to support it on their own machines. So, I think you'll see vendors supporting "IRIX and Linux" or "HP/UX and Linux", etc. Thus, as a defacto standard, Linux could easily stand a chance to become the Grand Unified Unix, particularly on IA-64 boxes.
Thus, I think that if Linux, hardened by years of development and testing on IA-32, could be released on several different vendors' IA-64 boxes, earlier and more bug-free than Windows 2000, it could finally win over Windows.
Thoughts?
Back in '91, BEFORE WINDOWS 3.1, the word from MicroSoft was that this new "NT" was going to be the next version of Windows and there would be one system for home computers and workstations from them.
Well it is now eight years later and they still haven't done it.
They have even split off another version (CE).
That's it. They are finally defeated by their own design flaws. It should be fairly impossible to have all DOS, Win31, Win9x apps running on their upcoming versions of NT. I think this is the main problem of WINE too.
Under a non-exclusive license, AFAIK. If StrongArm were to eat into x86 market share, this would be a loss for Intel, even if most of it is *their* StrongArm. Admittedly, PowerPC doing so would be worse yet. In any case, none of this undermines my main point.
"So, you'll be supporting LInux? Bad boy!
Take. Now your NT machines won't be mainstream.
See your stock plummet.
[Dell et al., are you happy now? Good. No Linux then, OK?]."
From what I heard from NT5,0 beta testers ( Yes some of my bets friends are ;) it is such a mess that even relatively large bugs reports are returned with "Will Not Fix"
well, really, no. DOS is a 16-bit OS built for a 16-bit machine with a 20-bit address space.
then again, the 8088 had an 8-bit data path... but still, DOS is a 16-bit OS. don't confuse things.
FYI HURD can use Linux device drivers and is binary compatible with Linux software. I wouldn't be surprised if Red Hat made the transition to HURD in year 2000. In the Free Software world you able to choose the OS components based on their technical merits and not marketing FUD (like cute maskots [and what's wrong with the Gnu anyway?]).
You ain't seen nothing yet, baby!
The new windows is guranteed to break all those
older win98 applications so you will be forced
to pay a high upgrade price to the latest version
if you need to share your files with others. However, they will give you the latest windows free if you buy a new computer. This makes everyone happy, lots of money being spent of
new products that you didn't need. It would be better just to pay a Microsoft tax and let you
continue using your current hardware/software.
At least then you would not have to run around
buying and setting up everything.
I tried to be fair about it and give NT a fair shaek, but geez the poor thing could not even keep up with my mouse clicks. I'll stick with GNU/Linux for this and other, more important reasons.
I think this is because they are having so many problems with NT5/2000 that they cannot work on PnP for it.
Stock price! Microsoft need to pull something big within a year if they want to keep the stock price rate as it is. So technological decission is not on top of the list, but company overall strategy to drive up stock. (pay attention to their new price scheme)
Hence the urge from inside themself to hurry up and outdo the last product within a year or two, regardless if they have the ability to do it without sacrificing quality.
NT's cross platform capabilities are irrelevant. MS has dropped MIPS support, and Alpha and PPC ports are increasingly ignored. The last thing Intel needs to worry about is NT on other architectures.
Will
Ah, Windows NT, the operating system without a cause. How many DIFFERENT markets has WinNT been targeted at now? It's gonna replace Windows! No, wait, it's gonna replace high-end UNIX servers. No, that's not it, we're targeting Netware. Hold on, NT -IS- UNIX! Nah, WinNT will be the desktop of the FUTURE, replacing the current DOS-based windows! Hold it, didn't we already say that?
Windows NT is the pretender of many trades and the master of none. The more they stretch this godzilla operating system out, the more holes are going to be poked into it.
But this is exactly how the NT kernel DOES work. Drivers are demand loadable. (And demand installable - some programs install and load a driver when you run them, and stop and deinstall them when you quit.) The only reason so many installations make you reboot is a combination of inertia (MS haven't bothered removing superfluous reboots from a lot of driver installation code) and FUD - people writing their own drivers know that there's no good reason to reboot, but since everyone else does it they worry that they might have missed something, and besides there's probably no harm in it... (It's effectively superstition!) The vast majority of these problems are actually caused by the configuration and installation scripts and not by the drivers themselves. I've written several NT device drivers all of which could be safely installed, uninstalled, started, and stopped without requiring a single reboot or any other kind of interruption to service. It took a little thought to get the user-mode tools right, but that was all - there's never been a problem with the modularity at the kernel mode side.
Hell, you can even stop the networking stack, unload MS's TCP/IP driver, replace it with someone else's (yes you can do this, and yes there are other TCP/IP stacks) and restart it without needing to reboot! (The thing that will most often hamstring you here is that the stupid DCHP driver refuses to unload, having first registered dependencies on TCP/IP and everything beneath it, so if you're using DHCP you'll find that the entire network stack is no longer restartable... D'Oh!)
So the problem is not an architectural one with NT, it's entirely to do with whether MS have the will to actually exploit the inherent flexibility (and get rid of flies in the ointment that spoil it for everyone, like the DHCP driver and the excessively paranoid network configuration utility which tells you that you have to reboot if it thinks you've so much as looked at the LEDs on the back of your network card). It's only because nobody at MS seems to have had the will to tackle this issue head on and through to the finish that this is a problem - it's all surprisingly close to working properly...
>>"Ok, so one more time (for everyone who's been in a coma) - "
"I have an extra $89.95 - can M$ help?"
>>"M$ can help"
"I haven't upgraded my > $400.00 office suite in over a year... can M$ help?"
>>"M$ can help"
>>"M$ is an upgrade 18-wheeler, ready to break existing APIs and the resulting functionality to make you spend whether you want to or not. As a bonus, you get to re-write existing applications every two/three years, depending on how often we decide - and we make you install prior versions and a bloated web browser before you may upgrade."
>>"Read about it on M$N - the place where names and integration strategies change daily on the web"
Mortgage payment due?
Extra NT Server licenses for the new house?
Ha!
hasdi at bigfoot dot com
MS-DOS is a poor copy of CP/M. So one could .COM
argue that it is derived from an 8-bit OS. The
memory model and syscall model used by
executables on DOS is almost identical to that
used by CP/M executables. All the magic stuff
that lives below 0x0100, for example.
This reminds me of the crap Apple went through with Copland. And I think we've all seen how long it's taken Apple to finally get to the point to offer something they promised years ago. During that time, we've seen Windoze take up more and more of our market share, and now Linux is going to have their chance to tear up MS.
If the Linux companies can pull together, and give the everyday end-user the proper balance of ease of use and power, then Microsoft...Yer going DOWN!!!
come on - even before NT Microsoft was promising that everyone would use OS/2 some day.
Recall it at once. I told the Council that the unit was unreliable. We shall have to scrap it and start over.
I shall send a ship at once.
Or better yet, why does my server that sits locked away in a back room, need to be administered by a GUI at the console? Why does it need MSN installed?
Why should the "OS for Dummies" mentality of Win98 creep onto my servers?
If NT became the consumer Windows now, Intel would still be the platform of choice for well over 90% of the Installations.
Why?
1) It's so much cheaper due to mass-marketing
2) Most software requires Intel. Vendors have to ship Alpha, Sparc, Mips, PPC versions of their software. The NT IS may be cross-platform, but binary code isn't
microsoft qill probably offer windows 2000 as "professional edition" with no directx 5 or 6 support and all the consumers will se windows 2000 ans think hmmm 98windows98. The name still says windows so the product is just an upgrade to windows98 and al my games are suppose to run riiiggghhhttttt. What do I do? Microsoft says next month that windows2000 "personal edition will be out. Great I will throw another 200$ dollars to microsft to fix my problem (its only 400$ total) Hmmm microsoft just delayed the personal edition untill later this year rrrr. What microsoft just renamed it windows 2001 ....20002!!...20003.
I think consumers will be furious about this. Imagine waiting for 3 years and having a whole computer go obsolete, just to play video games. Windows2000 will be out by the end of the year. ITs just tat it wont support games or any pnp. Consumers will upgrade at any price. Even if its 1000 dollars, the consumers will pay for it. Microsoft will want to offer another verson of windows because it will shorten the shelf life of its products and increase the price. This is what James Love said about windows pricing. Its just that directx and other components wont be rady so it will be droped.
What do you think the effect of this on the price of MS stock will be? The CEO of the company dumps a large quantity of his stock (well, maybe not major for him) just after a major announcement of a change in future plans for their OS.
Wheeeeeheeee!
iffen you really want to nitpick.. DOS was based on CPM, which ran on lots of <16-bit systems.. ;)
ah yes, the beauty of dynamically linked kernels.. You only need the code you use, and the rest can sit there, and you've only lost disk space..
Remember in late 1995 when M$ started talking about what eventually became Win98? Code-named "Memphis", the next consumer OS was going to be a completely 32-bit system using the NT kernel, and IT WAS GOING TO BE RELEASED IN EARLY 1997!
Are these guys lying, scheming, vapor-peddlers or what?
I went and interviewed in the NT groups last weekend and asked this very question: "When will there be a consumer version of Win2000?" The guy I was interviewing with never really answered the question but alluded that there was still a Win98 group and they were still doing some work (sounds like Service Packs etc). Also, he mentioned a consumer group that would put out Win2000 being behind which sounds like they spurred this article.
Also, after come digging, a lot of the Shrug and Pray stuff is going to be pulled over from Win98, along with the driver base. Yech. There goes what little stability NT had.
Posting Anonymous 'cause I think I'm breaking my NDA.
Dont't forget Linus himself in the role of George Lucas...
there is a win98 OSR1 beta release floating around on the "usual" warez ftps, plus a Win2000 build.
:)
the w2000 seems to be FAR more unstable
so they'll do the same as with w95. release an w98 OSR to fix the bugs for their OEMs customers ONLY.
This news upsets me and gives a hint what is going on in Bill gates mind. With W2000 still to come out of shell, pressure to come bug-free in its 32-bit form, competition from Lunix..(MacOSX possibily in future with all its stable feature)....it is very tough and time consuming, with all new code in W2000. W2000 will take another 4-5 years to stablize if it makes in another year or two. Putting it in Enterprise waters and moving it to 64-bit is the REAL test where others have a head start already. Microsoft cant leave the consumer desktop market till then to anyone to grab. So the trick is to bring out few cosmetic versions of W95 and have the desktop consumers tied to them and keep pulling them till W2000 is ready... AND ALSO LAUGH ALL THE WAY TO BANK..got its $$$$ unless anyone upsets the desktop market and grabs the POWER with it also. I admire Bill for his marketing but hate his WindoZ.
A month ago IDT said that for every three copies of NT sold, one copy of Linux was sold. Linux already has a significant piece of the server market. (The press reports did not give quantity of Linux sales, but did give dollar total and dollar cost of Linux so division provides the number of Linux units)
Microsoft is learning a lesson which Apple learnt while creating Copland..Creating Enterprise OS is not easy and tech-people cannot be fooled just like desktop users ARE BEING done with desktop OS.
Apple is going cautiously step-by-step, taking its own time, without jumping in Enterprise waters. Apple and now MS know keeping backward compatibility without breaking old apps is up-mountain task with a buggy win-foundation.
SGI which relied heavily on W2k is DOOMED its future. Even it not late to CONTINUE and improve IRIX parallely(or even dump W2k INFAVOUR OF IRIX)
Intel is worried whether it can get to enterprise level with increased competion from AMD.
Most confused lot are the MS programmers who were already trying to get MCSE** certifiaction for W2k and MICROSOFT IS STILL THE WINNER LAUGHING AT USERS PAYING FOR ANOTHER BUG-FIX(?) VERSION!!
*****Iam just thinking of y2k disaster as W2k *****
Umm, the PII WAS the PPRO, basically...
I believe they have the same core.
Another thing that LINUX needs is better representation of on-screen fonts. Maybe I'm wrong but, the drawing of fonts is terrible. At least, it can't be denied that the fonts and their on screen look are horrible as shipped. That's an Xfree86 issue, of course; but so long as Linux is tied to X, it's also a LINUX issue. This is the only infrastructural issue I'm aware of that stands between LINUX and acceptance on the desktop. (Aside from the code maturity of Linux Desktops themselves.)
Nothing I'm about to say should be news to anybody, yet I can't help but feel that the need for improved font support cannot be overemphasized at this point in Linux's development. And before someone makes starts crowing that the functionality is there-- please don't direct my attention to so-and-so's page on Xfstt or whatever --I already know about it and sometime I'll find time to get into it; I'm talking about out-of-the-box look and functionality, which in the context of a commercial, desktop OS is all that matters.
The hardcore LINUX user/developer probably does not appreciate how important the look of the fonts is to the broader audience of Mac/Win people they might like to convert to Linux. Most "mainstream-OS" users base their entire estimation of the technical power and polish of software on the slickness of the graphical interface. If the look is crusty, they assume (I've seen this happen over and over) that the underlying software is Stone-Age old and clumsy. But Linux doesn't just need to get its foot in the door with better on-screen look. It's important --and probably difficult for some-- to realize that that "look" is also a essential function for millions and millions who use computers as word processors and for publishing. Given the immense size of this segment of the desktop market, better font support would seem a natural priority for LINUX distro's that care about growing their market. For if a "challenger" OS cannot do the job in the desktop document area, it will be passed by, and relegated to the server, no matter what its outstanding technical strengths. Managers want general solutions even if they don't always fill all the specific needs well. That's why a mediocre OS rules the world. Linux has the technical chops and price to take on the ruler, but it must get more sophisticated about its look.
-- Naked MoleRat
I don't know how linux automatically benefits from this because most games and other windows stuff don't run on linux either.
Linux's advantage is its tight kernel and multitude of device drivers. OK, so HURD can "borrow" Linux device drivers. It's still based on the (slow-ass) Mach microkernel (like Mac OS X). It could never compete with Linux's performance.
I admit HURD is an interesting project, but their web page hasn't been very active lately. Does anyone have any news on HURD?
> Thoughts?
Add MacOS X and MS has trouble in two fronts. By the time MS is struggling with IA-64 support and NT5. Apple has had two years time to push MacOS X to server and bussiness market. G5 will be the generation for PPC and G6 will be sampling already. This duo will be another strong opponent for MS besides Linux.
I would expect many people to "bother" with an open-sourced Windows, but that's not the point. The point is that Microsoft could not control it exclusively anymore, and thus could no longer dominate the OS market on their terms. Whether anyone would continue to use an open-sourced Windows is irrelevant to that issue.
With that said, I would see nothing useful in an open-sourced Windows, except a source of specs for compatibility tools such as Wine.
Imagine superior Vulcans saying "Most humans are inferior. They still use Windows3500 which needs 850 Pbytes(?) and 400 mega-terabytes of RAM(VROOoM?)
We have been using Vulnix for 2000 years now on our ships for everything, from warp controllers to atmosphere conditioners. you inferiors..."
I visualize this scenario !!!
Of course, stats like this understate Linux's share because they only include those who *paid* for the software (I'm sure most companies pay, but only for one disk per, let's say, department). We need a study that gives an average ratio of paid Linuxes to those actually installed, so we can quote more accurate (and impressive) stats. I'm sure the ratio of installed:paid is at least 3:1
Back in the 1980's, normal unix systems were
really slow. It was easy to be faster.
This is 1999. Monolithic kernels have trimmed
the fat. Microkernels can't compete anymore,
since they suffer from architectural flaws.
"back in the 1.1 days", DOS was using a 12-bit FAT without subdirectories, or support for anything more than 160k and 320k disks. Loadable device drivers were nonexistant.
Print spooling didn't come until 3. "large fixed disk" support was 4.01.
I think the buzz about a "multitasking DOS" didn't surface until late in 3.x (3.3 IIRC).
FYI,
You are wrong. Everyone I know who is doing anything with a NT system tends to reinstall at least once a year.
And single user enterprise workstations retain multiuser OS.
SIGH
Windows 95:
A 32-bit upgrade
To a 16-bit shell
Running on an 8-bit platform
Originally targeted for a 4-bit CPU
From a two-bit company
That can't stand one bit of competition.
...Sun (Mot68K -> Sparc), and DEC used to ship MIPS-based machines before alpha.
look at all these m$ doom-sayers!! bill is surely toast now!!
but then again... apple still hasn't died. maybe m$ will release a bondi blue version of windows (different colors each subsequent year of course) to (infinatly?) prolong the ineveitable.
didn't they also claim (in the trial) that
WEBTV was a competing platform with WINDOWS?
doesn't microsoft own WEBTV?
-ben
Mecred will never be consumer because of the high cost IBM actually had the first EPIC design but costs were so high it never went in to production the PII started at 1000 and the mecred is going to start at 10000 now who has a 20000 home computer save your time buy an AMD k7 or multiple core g4 with altivec much more cost effective and I don't see mecred coming out any ealier than 2002 because no one has seen it.
This reminds me of the Borg Cube getting hit from all sides, and doing anything and everything possible to stay in the fight.
The delays in release of NT 5.0 (oops Windows 2000) implies that they encountered more problems than they expected. If they drop the requirement for compatibility with old, nasty, hardware-manipulating code they can get it out the door faster. They need to release Win2000 by 2000, or Linux will eat their server market share for breakfast by 2001. If they do release by 2000, it may take until 2002 :-)
--------- Webmaster, http://www.cpureview.com and
One thing this article implied that people seem to be missing is that when Microsoft pulls engineers off Win2000 (NT 5) to work on the next version of Win9x, Win2000 will get delayed even more. Currently all MS OS programmers are working on Win2000, and they still can't get it out.
I'm thinking Win2000 may actually hit in 2001. Either that or Microsoft will push it out in Sept/Oct (like Win95/98) and it will be full of obvious bugs (like Win95/98).
--
Chris Stoffel
Webmaster - Positively Pixar
any bets on how long it will take until the world at large realizes that M$ just won't deliver?
maybe something called "nt 5" or "windows 2000" will actually be released some day, but it will be FAR from what has been promised in the previews starting 1996. they're just trying to blur the trail and confuse the customer in order to not make that TOO obvious.
let's hope there's at least a few journalist left who know someone who once met someone who has a clue.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Please say it isn't so... I'm sick fed up with buggy 95/98 machines.... at least NT based machines offered the promise of being nominally stable.
Well at least Linux & friends has been handed yet another stepping stone to world domination. The sooner the better.
Also, they said it would run on a 386 with 8 MB RAM. Don't believe everything you read, eh?
Modern operating systems, heck, even modern versions of very old operating systems (UNIX) have modern kernels which are fast, fairly compact, and tunable to all heck. Most support some sort of modules, so you literally can use the same *compile* of the kernel for two different purposes. Your server kernel can simply load the raid drivers, or gigabit ethernet drivers, and your client kernel can load the sound drivers.
The other silly stuff, the applications -- of course it makes sense to have different distributions with different applications (for server or desktop), if only so that you can install off of one CD.
Why the heck you would want to have a different core operating system (kernel), and a "mostly compatible" API, and "mostly compatible" libraries, I don't know. Oh wait -- yes, I do know -- that glorious god of backwards compatability.
Carry on being stupid, and incapable of writing a decent operating system M$, people will carry on migrating elsewhere.
Nope. It's only a bad desktop machine if you think all desktop machines should have a MS Windows look and feel to them...
"How would the open source community respond
to that kind of play by our friends in Redmond? "
With riotous laughter!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Anyway, they better rename Windows 2000 at this point or they're going to look like idiots in 2002 (pretty much like with Win95, in 1996). I'd just go with NT 5... Of course this is all futile, if RedHat gets any easier to install it's going to be a long, hard decade for MS.
What Linux REALLY needs is more game support, as dumb as that sounds, because we have nearly everything else.
-- The unsig...
So... NT was "renamed" windows 2000. Then they said that win98 will not be "NT" based for a while, which implies to me that windows 2000 is actually gonna be a bugfix for 98, cuz they're having so many difficulties with NT, they think that it's gonna be about 2001 or 2002 before version 5 (or whatever they're calling it now) gets out the door. Damn... I don't mean to criticize MS for being slow, cuz in the past they always released stuff too early and it sucked. Now they're gonna release stuff really late. I get the strong impression that it's gonna suck no matter how late it is, but I guess we'll find out eveeeeeeeeeeeentually.
--
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
as of August 30th Gates owned 551,633,542 shares of MS stock, in the last year he sold 18,515,000 shares of stock. He also gave away 5.3million shares in the last year.. he is clearly trying to get some money out of his sinking ship...
So all the trade rags were saying when it came out, remember?
We all know better than that.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Yes, at home I have Debian, PHT, 3 versions of RedHat, and Slackware 1.2.13 (and one running Linux box)
At work OTOH, we bought 1 copy of Caldera and installed it on about 10 machines.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
The features of the "Memphis" project got split up between 95-OSR2, 98, Outlook, and IE4. I still have an internal release of Memphis :)
The integration between NT and 95 (Cairo) should have been the latest version of both products though, yes.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
The VxD system which NT 4.0 and 98 use came from 95. Prior to that, NT = 3.51 still used OEMSETUP.INF just like WFW 3.11.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
First we find out that they've been caught forging evidence for the trial, now they come forward and admit that the consumer Windows "2000" will not be NT based and 9X is still alive afterall...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Intel and HP have said as much repeatedly.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Merced is expected to be in the $2000 price range. I think it'll take significantly longer than 6-18 mos. for that price to drop down to a consumer level price.
Basically, Merced is meant to be Intel's first real expedition into high-performance enterprise computing. Whereas the consumer market thinks of Intel as the high end (compared to competitors like AMD and Cyrix), the enterprise market thinks of Intel as the low end and Intel wants to change that.
--
Aaron Gaudio
"The fool finds ignorance all around him.
"Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots." - Jonathan Nolan, Memento Mori
QDOS was based on CPM. In fact, the only major difference was the main drive letter (C: in DOS and something like A: in CPM).
--
Aaron Gaudio
"The fool finds ignorance all around him.
"Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots." - Jonathan Nolan, Memento Mori
Or does M$ seem to begin to be collapsing in on their own OS weight? They talk the modularity game (OCX this, ActiveX that...) but they sure don't put out..
Oh well, more time for Linux 2.2.x to take over the world!!!
(Man, do I love that last part!)
I thought this quote was particularly interesting.
"I haven't heard anything on this [Windows 2000 Personal Edition] specifically. But you've got to wonder: How much Plug and Play and PCMCIA support can they get into NT? And the games compatibility issue could be huge [between the 9x and NT kernels]," said one Windows developer.
It seems they need to stop and think carefully in Redmond. It is not obvious, to at least the quoted Microsoft developer, and possibly to most Microsofians, that bloat will only burn them. If they limit what is in the NT kernel by default and allow users, or the system (or either) to load drivers as they need them, the drivers NT supports could be infinate, while not being impossiblly complex, huge, or slow.
Microsoft promised the world NT 5.0/Windows 2000 would be the solution. What will all those IT guys who staked the future of their networks on Windows 2000 do? Do you think this means MS is putting up the white flag in the war for control of the network OS? Alot can happen in three years.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
another $89.95
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Why?!? What a stupid, stupid thing to do. When Win95/98 are so crappy & buggy & full of security holes... If you've absolutely got to have Windoze, it ought to be NT. Having said that, the "Consumer" version of NT/win2k will probably be cut down to hell & expensive too. Talk about handing the world to Linux on a plate... Then again - great idea, Bill! *slaps Bill's back*
Microsoft seems to be it's own worst enemy.
Next thing you know, they'll be arguing that they don't have a monopoly because NT is competing with 9x!
Quite frankly, this doesn't do much to build confidence in "Windows 2000"...Or, should I say, "Windows 2003"? (Maybe it will be out by then...)
"What do you mean, invalid parameters? 9000Gigs of RAM and it can't answer a simple question!" -- Earthworm Jim
Heh, which explains why my Linux box can still run binaries I compiled in 1995 under Linux 1.0 (as long as I have a copy of libc4 installed), or binaries meant for several other x86 *nixes...
So much for backward compatibility. Oh, wait, that _IS_ backward compatibility. What were you saying?
Granted, programs which vulcan-mind-meld themselves to kernel specific APIs aren't typically cross-platform or cross-version compatible. (PPP, modules support, net tools, etc.) But applications typically don't have much of a problem.
Program Intellivision!
"The Emperor's New Clothes" - The PC Week tale. Once
9 9/February.html
upon a time, the Windows 2000 developers team faced the
threat that most non-Microsoft applications and virtually all
games does not work on NT aka Windows 2000 new kernel.
The problem is with DirectX, Plug and Play, PCMCIA and..
everything else. What to do? Windows 2000 consists of
server OS, the big fat pricy box that helps sysadmins to
centralize all bugs in the single place and small
client/consumer boxes where bleeding edge users try to run
uncertified applications, all at the same time! So why not to
drop few years of failed development and market old Windows
95 aka 98 box as Windows 2000, Personal Edition? Looks like
the Windows team finally decided to do that. So, Windows
2000 is dead.. Long live Windows 95!
http://www.ecsl.cs.sunysb.edu/~andrew/awards/19
Andrew
"USB scanners, seem to present big challenges for Windoze98" ;)
hmmm I just got finished installing a USB scanner on a 98 box.... worked like a charm. It better, it's an HP and none too cheap
That's C3PO... and you call yourself a nerd?
.
if my memory serves DOS was 8 bit at its inception.. or was it 4bit (intel 8086)
:) its dos for christs sake.
but fuck who cares.
is it just me or is this war between Linux and Microsoft like the war between the rebelion and the empire in star wars? The empire rises out of the choas of the Old Republic (NT taking over the unix market) and then its rebirth through the Rebelion. (Linux and the BSD unixs riseing from obscurity and becoming mainstream.)
Staring:
Richard Stallman as Obe Wan
Tux as Luke Skywaker
BSD Deamon as Han Solo
Bill Gates as the Emporer
That Fat idiot bald dude as Darth VadeR ( i cant remember the guys name)
Yasmine Bleath as The princess
Alan Cox as the Wookie
and Raster/Mandrake as 3cpo and R2D2
USE THE SOURCE LUKE!@#
I doubt Merced will ship for another few years yet. (It been just-around-the-corner for a while). Intel introducing the Xeon and later the P3 is evidence that they don't expect to ship anything soon.
The only reason that Merced won't be a consumer chip for a while is that it uses a different (nobody has been able to make work) technology called very-long-instruction-word.
Knowing intel, they will provide an x86 compatibility layer, but for software to run faster, it will have to be recompiled.
Apple is the only company who has successfully migrated a user base to a new processor.
BTW, Intel made quite a bit of money on the PPro so I wouldn't call it a failure.
Did you forget to notice that most commercial software is *not* written in assembler.
NT is written almost entirely in C as well.
Print "Accelerated for Merced" on the box so people will know the difference you commerical software is doing just great thankyou.
CE isn't another version of windows. It is Windows NT in an embedded system with a different shell.
Yes, you can buy an embedded version of NT with a Win32 subsystem (no GUI).
Actually, the memory manager is 64 bit, it always has been.
There's no reason you can't do 64-bit math (VC5 has a data type called __int64).
Ther strategy for making NT 64-bit is:
1) All APIs stay the smae and take 32 bit pointers (default is segment 0)
2) The memory region above 4GB is available for memory mapped files which are mapped through a new API.
This doesn't require a rewrite and is the stratedgy adopted by many UNIX vendors.
The NT Kernel can be recompiled for any process with a bit of glue logic. The reason microsoft wanted to drop teh other platforms is that they don't want to do driver support.
... (Yes it can run on a strongarm).
The reason the Alpha is still around is that it uses a PCI bus and PCI adapters as opposed to a proprietary bus.
CE is the NT kernel without most of the drivers required for a PC: multiple bus drivers, multiple file systems, midi devices, storage devices
OK, I'm definately not a MS lover, but this seems to be making a mountain out of a molehill. Microsoft stated quite clearly 2 years ago that the "unified" windows would not be until (what was then) NT 6.0 and would appear about 2002 or 2003. Looks like they're actually about on-schedule to do that.
It's no real surprise that there will be additional "updates" to Win98. Whether they are new OSR versions, or released as Service Packs is no real deal - we should expect MS to continue to try to keep up with the new hardware (and I'd like to hope they keep trying to fix all the damn bugs). So, in general, this is No News. It's just ZD trying to sell a story and sound important.
On another note, people, Intel does NOT expect Merced to be a consumer chip for several Years after it's introduction. That's why they have all those funky P2/P3 derivatives still in the works. Merced is (initially) really targeted at the UNIX/NT Enterprise server market - think of it as an Alpha from Intel. ;-)
I wouldn't expect Intel to try to push Merced down towards the desktop until at least one iteration after the initial release (probably 1.5 years or so later), after they've had a chance to look at the real-world results of the chip, and make any changes that improve it's marketability to the consumer/business desktop market. So, if they release Merced 2H/2000, that means they start pushing it towards the desktop in 2002. Just about when MS thinks NT 6.0/Windows 2000 Consumer is due. Coincidence?
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
The rename of NT 5 to Windows 2000 indicates to me that they genuinely expected NT 5 to be the mainstream, consumer Windows product only a few short months ago.
/is/ big news, a strong indication that NT 5 development is out of control.
So I would conclude that this
D
So what? Easier to play old DOS games...
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
Um, didn't DEC ultimately fail? What I mean is, it doesn't even exist as an independent company anymore. Not my idea of success.
Well, I won't say why it can't be done (it probably can), but I will say why it shouldn't...bloat. Why does my desktop OS need to have the code installed to run a 5000 station network? Why should my proxy server have to support the latest games? Why should my development PC support DVD movie decoding and TV tuning? Yes, you could write a "one size fits all" operating system, but it would be so unbelievably huge that it wouldn't do anything well. I believe that targeting the professional and consumer market with a single product shortchanges both. I personally feel that if Linux ever moves into the mainstream consumer market, we will see two "versions" emerge. One idiot proof version for Joe Six Pack to point and click his way around, and one standard version for server usage and for the command line lovers (aka, a watered down Linux vs. a real Linux).
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
Change for which car?
Did his un-crash tested Lamborghini (or whatever it was) ever make it out of customs?
This is the heart of it. Register and keep posting. A slowdown in major OS upgrades that push hardware/app upgrades will kill M$'s growth and revenue model and turn their reality distortion field (the size of which Steve Jobs can only dream of) over NT to dust. M$ is already facing a probable revenue lull due to companies turning their attention to Y2K, unless their recent shenanigans over registration revenue can compensate. Meanwhile, NT5/Win2000 is late and bloated but somehow, according to the press, a foregone success. If that isn't the definition of a monopoly freezing the trade press over obvious problems, I don't know what is. "Flat-earth" /.-ers can see the writing on the wall even if Jesse Berst and his fellow tertiary adjunct dwellers can't, but when Wall Street smells blood in Redmond, things will go bad fast.
Well with over 35 million lines of code, what do you expect?
=moJ
- - - - - -
Member in Good Standing,
I admit HURD is an interesting project, but their web page hasn't been very active lately. Does anyone have any news on HURD?
Nothing that's not on their site :-(
For those who want to know what it's all about, here is a link to the official page about the HURD project
A bit far fetched perhaps, but here is another connection between HURD and Windows:
http://www.hurd.com
;-)
PentiumPro/Pentium2 was also not a consumer chip to start with. About 6 to 18 months after release, you will probably be able to get a higher end home system with a merced chip.
Yes there is more than winnt/intel, but the fact is that they are not creating new ports of NT. They are abandoning the ports (do you think there is a MIPS or PPC beta of NT5?). If it wasn't for DEC's insistance, MS would have dropped the alpha port as well.
We use an Alpha 4000 5/300 with a 300mhz Alpha, running NT. I can tell you from direct experience that NT is not stable on this platform. NT has no true 64 bit support. What it does is rely on firmware to correct bit alignment on the fly. NT Alpha is only 32 bit, even though the alpha works in 64 bit. This is why NT needs a special X86 support BIOS chip to work on the Alphas. Putting NT on an ALPHA or PowerPC is a waste of good hardware
-Master Switch, one more element in the machine
Wow, this is SO unlike them. What will they do next? Raise the price of their OS?
Oh yeah? Here are my NT4 stats:
I average 2 reboots/day.
I average 1 complete reinstall every 9 months.
The reinstall is for when my system regularly becoms fubar.
Isn't Nt supposed to be a micro-kernel architecture?
Doesn't that make it easier to insert new code? Or am I just being mainstream (=Linux) in my expectation of how things work?
/fransg