Apparently, the new version of Windows is going to have the same WinFS file system as XP. So… the whole stated motivation (and the big improvement that Windows really needed) for creating this new version is now… not in this version.
“Longhorn is going to stop being a whole new thing and more of an XP with a lot of good new stuff,” said one developer close to Microsoft, who requested anonymity.
Can anyone verify this story? Perhaps post a link to another site or something? It seems really bizarre to nix the central upgraded feature in a product.
I remember when my editor went to take an early look at “Windows 94” when I worked at COMPUTE! Magazine. He came back and was telling me about the whole new paradigm that MS was going to shift to – instead of the current “application” focus, Win 94 was going to let developers create OLE objects for everything, and users would be able to tie them all together in super-interesting ways, creating their own “WordExcelQuicken” kinds of programs.
Seems like the paradigm shifts don’t end up making it into the OS very often, though. Be interesting if this is true.
Longhorn was originally supposed to have three major changes: a new file system, WinFS; a new graphics and presentation engine known as Avalon; and Indigo, a Web services and communication architecture.
Microsoft is making changes to all three pillars. WinFS will be available as a beta when the Longhorn release comes out as a client. Avalon and Indigo will be part of Longhorn, but also made available separately at the time the client ships for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, sources said.
I’ve got an idea. How about rewriting Windows from scratch to be secure? I’ll give them 15 years for the new version.
Yes, because I mean, filesystems. Whoo-hoo. I mean, damn, look at all the things that the current filesystem can’t do, like… err…
Seriously, WinFS? I mean, I’m sure there are some database weenies going on a rampage and starting a petition, but wtf does it do for the rest of us developers, much less normal people.
Microsoft has gotten into a bad habit of late of hyping tech (Avalon?)
Long before its available
Right after they released the last version, which was supposed to fix all the problems
There’s a bunch of programmers looking for things to do, and a whole lack of push from the buying community, who can barely keep up with what Microsoft did 5 years ago.
The big thing winfs was going to give users was organization and the ability to do things with files within the file system that you currently need a seperate application to do. I saw a demo of the WinFS concept awhile back and it was clearly a killer feature.
The current one can do almost anything you want, but searching the hard drive for X file takes for-fucking-ever. Basically, the current system is capable, but the promised relational database file system (I think that’s what Longhorn was supposed to bring to the table, right?) would have been a vast improvement. And given the incredible increase in hard drive sizes, the increased performance of file searches and management would have been greatly appreciated.
But you’d normally only search for user files that would be stored in My Documents. There are tens of thousands of system and application-specific files on my system that I’d never want to search for. Those files are only required by their applications and have their paths hardcoded anyway.
IMO it would make more sense to provide a more powerful indexing & searching application for specific directories, i.e. My Documents, rather than adding a relational database on the system level.
Completely and deliberately ignoring Midnight Son, I instead post a link to Microsoft Monitor with the full story on Microsoft’s chopping up of Longhorn.
Sure, because it’s slow as a dog and scans my entire fucking hard disk all the time! A dedicated and improved indexing service for My Documents shouldn’t be too bad.
