More on Longhorn (new Microsoft OS)

Slashdot.org ^ | Friday, November 29, 2002 | Anonymous reader/Seattle P-I

[Eala]

Friday, November 29, 2002

Next Microsoft operating system will be radical change from XP

By DAN RICHMANM
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Windows XP has been on the market for a year now, so naturally everyone is clamoring for details on the next version of the world's most popular operating system -- or so Microsoft Corp. hopes.

Details are dribbling out, but Microsoft won't say a word on the record, declining to comment for this story. Analysts and software developers haven't been briefed, either.

But here's what has leaked out so far.

The next version of the world's most popular desktop operating system, code-named "Longhorn," is due out in test form next year and in final form in 2004. It will have a new look and feel, very different from Windows XP's. Its guts will also be radically different from Windows XP's, because they're based on XML -- extensible markup language, the emerging lingua franca of the Internet. And it will be the first version that won't function fully without new hardware.

"With the possible exception of Windows NT, which was a change from the ground up, this could be the biggest change ever" to Windows, said Giga analyst Rob Enderle.

Observers believe that Longhorn will:

Create a new file system that replaces FAT, FAT32 (an acronym for File Allocation Table) and even the newer NTFS (the Windows NT file system), the most modern ways of storing data in Windows. To make life easier for computer users, it will simplify locating data by using the file name or content, regardless of whether data is contained in a spreadsheet, a word-processing document or an e-mail. After-market products do this now, but they impose a performance penalty.

Enderle said the new file system will also function efficiently with hard drives holding at least one terabyte of data. That's 1,000 gigabytes, or well over 1,000 compressed movies, or more than 700,000 novels the size of "War and Peace." Such drives are expected to hit the market by 2004.

Creating such a file system is an extraordinarily difficult task, one that has been attempted for years by database companies, including Microsoft, but that has never reached fruition.

The guts of the new file system are being engineered mainly in conjunction with "Yukon," Microsoft's code name for the next version of its SQL Server relational database management system.

But a beta version of Yukon isn't due out until mid-2003, which makes some onlookers wonder how the file-systems team in the Windows division can get started on adapting that technology for more general-purpose use.

"Evidence they're making some progress would be a professional developers' conference explaining it, so developers can know what they need to know to use it," said Michael Cherry, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft in Kirkland. "I don't even see a date scheduled for one."

Even if such a file system can be achieved, it would have to be thoroughly tested before use, as converting data to the new system would be necessary -- but could destroy the data.

Present a single, unified way of interacting with programs. Microsoft doesn't think computer users should have to use one program to read and write a word-processing file, another to use a spreadsheet, and a third to correspond via e-mail. Rather, the company thinks, a single program should handle it all.

Obviously this means a thorough overhaul of not just Windows but also the Office software suite, Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has confirmed in published computer-industry reports

However attractive and effective such a new interface might be, the company may be overestimating users' willingness to change their habits, some analysts say.

Once it's understood where certain tasks must be performed, many users are content to go there, even if the set-up is -- as computer geeks would say -- sub-optimal. Whether users will be willing to learn a new way of using their computers just because it's "better" is open to question.

Not to mention the expense of installing new software, says Cherry.

"There will have to be compelling reasons" to install the new operating system, because "it costs corporations a fortune to roll it out," he said.

Include enhanced security. Longhorn will be the first operating system designed for use with PCI Express, the motherboard design that will succeed the PCI standard currently in force, Enderle said. In addition to providing a performance boost of up to eight times current speeds, the new design is required to harness the increased security features of Longhorn, which Enderle said are embodied in Microsoft's "Palladium"-branded trustworthy-computing initiative.

"Neither Linux nor Unix ties the operating system to hardware," he said.

"This could bring a higher level of security than anything we've ever seen. It will almost completely prevent the platform from being compromised."

To those "facts" about Longhorn, add the hopes of other analysts. Ideally, Longhorn will "fundamentally integrate" audio, video and images in a "visually stunning" manner, much like the Mac's OS X, said Tim Bajarin, president of the Campbell, Calif., research firm Creative Strategies Inc.

It should also be able to synchronize the multiple PCs, personal digital assistants and computer-equipped cell phones -- Microsoft calls them SmartPhones -- many people will own, Bajarin said.

But getting Longhorn out the door at Microsoft could be a challenge. The company is struggling to get .Net Server -- the first server version of Windows XP -- shipped. It also has service packs for Windows 2000 and Windows XP to produce on an ongoing basis. And a new operating system takes at least 20 months, sometimes 40 months, Cherry said.

"I'd like to see Microsoft act like the operating-system leader it is, not promising scores of new features or letting rumors fly but stepping forward and saying, 'We will have X, Y and Z features and not A, B and C,' " he said.

"That would be leadership, especially when so many people are dependent on you."

P-I reporter Dan Richman can be reached at 206-448-8032 or danrichman@seattlepi.com

What a boon to the Linux world!

[Eala]

ping

[lelio]

My take on this is that the new MS OS will only run on "secure" hardware and the various industry orgs (like RIAA) will sponsor it as they think they're doomed without hardware locks.
Surprisingly, the reference docs for this new hardware will only be available to closed source shops like MS for purposes of Information Security. Linux will be left out in the code, as you know its the OS for commies.
And this thing about making one program to rule them all is an excuse to change the file formats again so that other programs can't read em. Make it complicated enough and you can't reverse engineer it.
MS is back to its usual route: changing file formats, making drivers a barrier to entry, and abusing their monopoly status.

[chance33_98]

[lelio]

Forgot to quote my favorite part of the article:
"Neither Linux nor Unix ties the operating system to hardware," he said.
Yes that's right, and that's a good thing. Its akin to saying that an automobile can only accept one type of stereo system (that's almost true with newer cars though) or that you can never buy a third party tool for any job, you have to get one that's been "approved."
Its amusing that MS can't make a case why the consumer would want this. Its only purpose is for the industry.
At least this shows that MS is scared of Linux as Microsoft realizes that a lot of their domiance is due to their OS, and with a commodity OS like Linux their goose is cooked on that front, unless they can change the rules.

[PokeyJoe]

Hate to say this, but the AOL users (akin to a "just put gas in it and go" type of car owner) will make this strategy a success in the consumer market.

Techies and academics will use a variant of Unix (OS X included) and will still retain information sharing via BBS (just like the old days).

[Astronaut]

"Hate to say this, but the AOL users (akin to a "just put gas in it and go" type of car owner) will make this strategy a success in the consumer market."

I keep hoping that Big Brother Gates' tactics will spark a consumer revolt, and people will abandon Microsoft for alternatives like the Macintosh or Linux. However, I fear that you are probably correct, and the sheeple will just go along with Longhorn, Palladium, and whatever else causes them to lose control of their computers, and of the flow of information itself. Its a terrifying prospect.

For me, I will continue to enjoy Microsoft free-computing with OS X. The Macintosh provides freedom from a Gates-dominated vision of computing.

[boris]

"Hate to say this, but the AOL users (akin to a "just put gas in it and go" type of car owner) will make this strategy a success in the consumer market."

Are they the ones who love the Mac, as in the "I'm so dumb I can't use a PC" TV ads? I did not know all Mac users were also AOL users, or that all AOL'ers were Macophiles.

--Boris

[Billy_bob_bob]

Posting this reply from an Imac running OS X 10.2.2 using the iCab browser. No Micro$oft products on this machine! I've had it with the whole Wintel paradigm, and I'm not spending another penny on anything related to that platform. OS X rocks, it is truly the nicest system I've ever used, and I've used a whole bunch going back to when Carter was President.

If anyone out there is considering a new Mac, do yourself a favor and go check one out for yourself. Bring your digital camera or camcorder and plug it in to the USB or Firewire port just so see how easy it is to use with the Mac. I love my Apple computers and I'm never going back to Wintel machines again.

[Billy_bob_bob]

S/B "...just TO see how easy it is to use with the Mac." OOPS!

[Southack]

We live in an Internet Age. Nobody cares about the OS anymore. What people care about is the browser.

Look at FreeRepublic. People with all types of OS's surf here. Likewise, the Robinson's write code not for all of those OS's, but for their browsers. So long as you have a modern browser, then you can do whatever you want online, and the type of OS that you have installed has no impact on that fact.

But the type of browser that you have DOES have such an impact...

[sixmil]

XML is not a language, it is a format, and a damn cool one. I used to think ini files were good for storing data, but you are unable to nest with out resorting to tricks. I recently started using Star Office, which stores documents in a single zip of XML files. Very cool, and I heard that MS Office is following suit. Pretty soon we will all be storing data the same way, then it will only be a matter of having good apps to parse it all out.

[dwollmann]

XML is a language, by definition, but it's a markup language, not a programming language.

[Cicero]

Well, one of the reasons why Macs work pretty smoothly is that they use proprietary software on proprietary hardware. Apples makes both. For a while they considered licensing the computers out, but they repented that thought.

If Apple had more than 10% of the market, this would be seen as more monopolistic than anything Microsoft has done up to now. Since it's only a small share, they can get away with it.

I disapprove of some of the things Microsoft has done to prevent copying and enforce licensing, especially with Office 2000 and Office XP. Maybe Longhorn will have similar problems. But so far, Microsoft is more open to a variety of hardware makers and software makers than Apple is.

[BoomerBob]

You make an excellent point, Cicero. Mac users constantly belittle the performance of Windows and toot the horn of Apple. Yet when Microsoft, possibly, makes a move to tie its software to the hardware we hear the usual cries of, "Monopoly!". Apple is what it is precisely because they choose not to interface with thousands of different hardware and software vendors. Great, good for Apple... but don't whine and complain when Microsoft goes the same route.

[lelio]

I hope that's the way things are going. Storing your data in XML and displaying it using CSS. Seperate the data from the presentation.
Course I'm saying this while CSS isn't truely cross-platform. I hope that it catches on and HTML dies off.

[krb]

XML is not a language, it is a format

It's actually a language, which by its definition and the nature of XML is almost not a format. It is akin to an almost-abstract base class in C++.

There are only about 5 rules in the language:

• You gotta start the stream with the <?XML ... > tag
• There is precisely one root node defined in the stream
• Tags have to be paired with end tags (unlike in HTML)
• Nesting has to be done properly;
• There set of characters that are valid for tag and attribute names is specified and the colon is asked to be reserved by convention to implement namespaces, if you want them

And that's close to being about it. The point of XML is you can then derive your own language to describe your data. In a way it's just a semantic argument here; "format" is just the computer-data-esque way of saying "language used to describe data".

But it really is important to think of XML derived languages as languages because of how it all fits together. You derive your XML "dialect" from the XML base class and add your own tags and concoct a meaning for them yourself. But since everyone has to follow the few simple rules of the base class, you can add to data and if you see a tag you don't recognize, you skip ahead (to the matching end tag) and continue without even burping.

That's, of course, a minor beauty of the simplicity. The Big Deal is the ability to do transformations from one XML dialect into another. Using another XML language called XSLT (XML Stylesheet Language for Transformations) you can write code that executes on XML data and outputs presentation code for the data, without having to disturb the data.

Have you ever tried to get data out of a web page but found that you had to sift through the source and get rid of all of the HTML tags to get to the meat, or found that the browser doesn't really implement copy-and-paste properly when you select data out of a frame or table or what-not? Or worse yet, have you ever owned a process that relied upon getting data from some website and you had to continually monitor it to see if the bastards changed the format of the webpage, then you have to update your perl scripts or whatever to find where the data went?

That's often because the data is mixed with the presentation code. With XML and XSLT you write the XSLT program to know how to read the XML tags for your data, and you have the XSLT transform them into another XML language, say XHTML (the XML webpage language). So your data is left alone as data, and it's the XSL program that knows about things like tables, pictures, paragraphs, fonts, etc. Another XML language you will be hearing a lot about soon is SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). It's an XML language that is more graphically powerful than XHTML, and if you want to transform your data into something that has more graphics punch than pure HTML, then you'll want to use this one. Think of it as XML to a PDF almost...

Anyway, sorry to nitpick about the semantics; you are right, it is damn cool. And Star Office (I use OpenOffice, is that the same thing?) promises to do great things with XML.

First, Microsoft was brilliant at realizing that the GUI/OS would make the computer, and the grabbed share. Then, they realized that the browser would make the computer as they integrated a great browser/explorer control into almost every facet of the computing experience, making it easier to use the computer and easier to program for it (in addition to the whole web experience). And they managed to defend their leadership position with that change.

Now with the excitement over XML it appears that data/content is going to make the computer. It looks like Microsoft sees this and is steering its ship towards taking advantage of early adoption here, too.

Let's hope the Linux/OpenOffice folks don't let MS become the de-facto XML goto-guys. Already, though, Internet Explorer supports XML much better than Mozilla or any of the browsers that come with Linux distributions (that I have seen).

I've been messing around with some XML stuff here:

My XML doodling...

And I can't get anything other than MS IE 6.0 to make it show up correctly.

[krb]

The Macintosh provides freedom from a Gates-dominated vision of computing.

Didn't Gates give $150 million to Apple a few years back? I don't think that Apple is pure non-Gates anymore...

[ThinkDifferent]

Didn't Gates give $150 million to Apple a few years back?

Microsoft bought $150 million of non-voting Apple stock around 5 years ago, which they have since sold (for a decent profit). Rumors are that Apple had found proof that MS had illegally used Apple code, and MS agreed to make a public show of support for Apple in exchange for not being sued.

[lelio]

Have you looked at SOAP and WSDL at all? In my opinion that's the Next Big Thing in computing.
You send your SOAP request, which to me is just a SOAP wrapper around some XML code, which contains your request and your arguments. You get back your answer.
That doesn't sound that interesting until you consider that it is completely application-neutral. Its all just XML. So your COBOL backend code can be used by a java / perl / VB client by just putting a front end on it like Apache Axis.
If you write your server code in java it is almost a no-step process to have Axis make your code available on the net. Plus you can query Axis and have it hand back a WSDL file which tells you what parameters to send.
I've been playing around with Amazon's "Web Services" and it is pretty easy to use once you get the hang of it.