NeoWin reports that they got their hands on a new leaked version of Windows Longhorn, the next big version of Windows. Commentary: The reporter insists that these are original shots. Lots of grandients are going on in the UI and while this is an alpha and the final version might look different (that’s what happened with XP’s Luna, MS only revealed XP’s final design only a few months before the release, while most betas used another theme), these shots showing there are just pretty ugly IMHO. Bad taste on colors, no easy distinction between elements, it all looks like a big bad web page.
NeoWin Exclusive: Longhorn Build 4008 Leaked
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
It’s alpha, not beta.
This really doesn’t get me very excited over the prospect of longhorn (marketing campaign “got the horn?”). The interface looks cluttered, and very samey to what exists now. Oh and that video really does suck.
I kinda think it looks cool… Especially the Screensaver picture. I’m already working on modifing that pic in GIMP for my desktop.
Looks ugly, luckily you can still change it back to default win2k style. And what’s with that sidebar? It takes up so much precious screen real estate. And not to mention the DRM crap that will be included. Yucks.
Looks like warmed over XP to me, and what is with that sidebar? At least the QNX sidebar is USEFUL, this just looks like more of the taskbar-but sideways.
While I’m a longtime Windows user, I can’t help but feel somewhat dismayed that all they’ve really been able to do is make it stable (Win2k, XP). This new alpha looks as though at best it will just be more bloatware.
I miss BeOS-functional and clean, and stripped down to the necessities. If only…but those sentiments are useless now.
What version of Internet Explorer is in this thing? Does it have tabs ?
hehe
Uhm, Longhorn is still far away from the End 2004 deadline. The interface is WIP. That hard to understand?
Sorry guys, as much as I still like NT4,W2K. XP and “Longhorn” remind me of a desktop Fisher Price would release if they were into user interfaces. I do not like UIs that have so much useless eye candy that you almost need quad Xenos running 3+GHz and the badest AGP8 video card to get any serious performance out of it.
Windows 2000 was the last decent OS Microsoft ever released. XP and Longhorn have way too much eye candy and its pipe performance is in the toilet.
Just my $.02 worth
It does look a little cluttered, but I really like the colors. It’s very much like the scheme I have set up for my Mandrake 8.2 desktop–goes to show I like bold color schemes. However, if this is real, remember that it’s just an alpha.
That wmv is adorable. I have a brighter lamp than whoever owns the one they show!
If that’s any serious kind of build, I’m sure they’re just in a transition, graphically. A couple more build numbers and it’ll have better theming etc is my guess. If not, that’s a big hint to anyone at MS who reads this: pay more attention to getting rid of ugliness.
How do you get screenshots of the installation? I’ve seen it done a lot, and am just wondering.
My guess would be – Video card fed into video capture card on another PC?
XP and “Longhorn” remind me of a desktop Fisher Price would release if they were into user interfaces.
Why do people keep bitching about the the default theme? If you don’t like it, change it, or better yet, DISABLE THEMES SUPPORT like I do and go back to the Win2k/9x ‘classic’ interface.
someone said :
Windows 2000 was the last decent OS Microsoft ever released. XP and Longhorn have way too much eye candy and its pipe performance is in the toilet.
Yeah. It is very difficult to click three or four options to turn off the fisher price like GUI. These kind of commentaries are so lame; like saying, I don’t know, shit, Windowmaker sucks, it is purple, I prefer black window manager… Stop judging an interface with the colours or themes, it is so not the point to take account to ( or in ? Sorry for my not so good English! )
Windows Xp, Windows2000, etc… ( in fact, every OS I know ! ) deserve some critics, but these ones just show how much you have nothing to say but “microsot = always shit, even if I don’t know what I am talking about”. Talk about Registring issues, bloated binaries file format everywhere, etc..
Looks like mostly the latter.
I see elements of Opera 7.0,Mandrake, KDE, various Linux window managers and themes.
Flattered we be ?
The easiest way to get “install-the-os” screenshots is to do the installation within a virtual machine!
I did see once at a client’s site a truly ancient device for taking screenshots. It was a real camera, with metal plate attachments for squaring off the monitor. I know that this is a bad description, it’s just very hard to describe something that funny-looking. I suppose this was a device a student at the college built. Hard to imagine that there’d be enough of a market for something like that to be produced commercially.
Yours truly,
Jeffrey Boulier
All mockups.
Just look with xmag or somthing like that, and you will notice.
Nicly done, but not enough attention to details.:)
The windows borders change in some screenies.
Also look at some dates like 1985-2006
or in that My Computer screenie one Tab is 1 px off:)
I don’t see anything that seems very exciting to me in terms of user interface. It seems as if microsoft is intent on releasing Longhorn as XP second edition. Is there a good source of info somewhere on the actual new “features” of the operating system? Is it XML based and how bad is the DRM?
“I miss BeOS-functional and clean, and stripped down to the necessities”
That concept is the first thing covered in UI 101, Microsoft must have been absent that day.
I wish Microsoft would release a refreshed “professional” theme with some of the UI tweaks done to Office XP. Someone said here the other day that it seems like the more “progress” Microsoft makes, the harder they have to work to make the OS like windows 2k. I have to agree. The Office 2003 UI is horrible as well. I guess people like my grandparents liked the XP theme so Microsoft standardised on it. Right now Microsoft has handed Bill the torch again and said run with it, ignore all who resist. As with any drastic changes some are good, some are bad. Take _other_ tools for example, at first when people are just little people the fisher price tools are the most appealing to use. As tastes mature people start to move to what gets the job done (2k PRO). You would think with more people picking up computers that Microsoft would move to a more “professional” design. Instead they are moving to a design that is more appealing to newer users and alienating the professional user base, you. Your opinion does not matter.
I actully thought it looked kinda nice, except for the side bar thing. I like the constant color look of it and the floating buttons. attually it reminds me of osx in a sence far as the look of the windows but in a differant color. Even with what we see, I’m still more interested in whats underneath that will make me want to upgrade. XP made most all the fixes in windows i wanted, stable, fast boot, and new GUI (since classic is painfully ugly). New features are nice but currently can’t think of what I might want added to windows. Is there any new news on the status of MS next file system that is suppose to go in longhorn?
WE WANT 3D!
wow, surely not even M$ can make a desktop look that bad, it must be a fake, please, tell me it is…..
Windows 2000 was the last decent OS Microsoft ever released. XP and Longhorn have way too much eye candy and its pipe performance is in the toilet.
Microsoft wants to copy Apple Mac OS X eye candy and keep the pace, in my humble opinion.
I still see no reason to update my very stable win 2000.
copy Apple Mac OS X eye candy
and Linux GUI choice, I forgot.
I agree, I spent a while looking at them and there are some mess ups. IMOP, they are fake. Very well done, but probley, fake.
I have to say I agree with you Qwertz, they look like mockups to me. The blocky artifacts around objects are perhaps explainable by either the JPEG compression and/or being captured off a video out, but there are too many other inconsistencies.
Like you said, the ‘Microsoft © 1985-2006’ on the desktop shot looks fishy, also the sidebar appears to be using ClearType font rendering, but the rest of the desktop isn’t. Indeed on some pictures different text elements within the same window are using ClearType but others aren’t. This certainly doesn’t happen in XP. Oh and some of the text seems to be terribly affected with compression artifacts, but some of it is razor-sharp. WTF?
I think the build versioning is way off too. NT4 was build 1381, then there was a little over 3 years of development leading to Windows 2000 – build 2195 – then a little under 2 years of development leading to XP, build 2600. And then they’ve jumped 1400 builds in 18 months? It seems to me from their previous releases that they do about a build a day, which seems sensible. They should be at about build 3000 by now.
This is at least reasonably consistent with the previous screenshots of Longhorn, but I wasn’t convinced by those either. I think the screenshots are either the work of an enthusiastic amateur, or they’re a half-baked attempt by Microsoft to throw people off the scent of what they’re really doing.
We had real screenshots here of a previous alpha and they looked alot better than this. That installation progress bar looks like a high school programming project.
I’m really not to concearned about the GUI. What I am really waiting to hear is a real ground breaking development like a much more modern slimmer kernel that doesn’t have its roots based on DOS and with every new OS release grows faster than a tumor. The amount of system resources it takes just to run the windows OS smoothly is really getting obscene, and it never stops! I wish they would finally make an OS not based on the idea of an in your face resource consuming monster and instead a lean interface that stays out of your face and actually fully utilizes the hardware you pay for to your programs! The biggest mistake windows made was not revamping the whole OS when they came out with win95. Even though it would have caused serious compatability problems it would have been easily accepted especially since MS was more of a monopoly then than ever. Besides, there already were plenty of incompatability issues going from 3.1 to 95. They may as well have made the transition worth it. The chances of any such move occuring now is hopeless. As far as I am concerned, the windows OS is doomed to be a sloppy ever-growing bloated mass of a system.
You got it marm…
‘Microsoft © 1985-2006’
No possible way. Copyrights are never shown extending for any time period beyond the present for legal reasons. This is a dead giveaway.
And then they’ve jumped 1400 builds in 18 months?
Again, no possible way. Microsoft does one build of the OS per day – maximum. That would mean no more than 600 builds.
Nice try though, I guess.
John,
Do you have any clue what your talking about? There is no DOS in winXP, NT series has no DOS!
Why are you talking about 3.1->95 that was 8 years ago, like anything about that matters at all. the whole 9x series doesn’t matter. MS is trying to close that chapter and get people to move on to the NT series.
I feel like I just wasted electrons typing this
Well, you could be very well right.
But on the copyright, since it isn’t something that is even released yet anyone working on it could have thrown that in there for the hell of it. Also they will want to have the date in there for when it’s launched, not now, since no one should be seeing this.
For the build, well maybe they have been working on it longer then 18 months. I don’t think winXP was worked on for 7-8 years to get to 2600.
I just noticed that banner ad for Dreammates here on OSNews.
They must think that lots of lonely, horny guys hang-out here I guess.
Gee…now why would they think that, I wonder?
My bad, i miss read you some, you were going 1400 builds from 2600 that is XP, even still it’s hard to say what other build s might be going on. MS likes to have many groups working on the same task, the group that does the best job is the one that has there work go into the product. So if there is say 4 groups working on the next version and each does builds they could add up fast.
Yeah. It is very difficult to click three or four options to turn off the fisher price like GUI. These kind of commentaries are so lame; like saying, I don’t know, shit, Windowmaker sucks, it is purple, I prefer black window manager… Stop judging an interface with the colours or themes, it is so not the point to take account to ( or in ? Sorry for my not so good English! )
But defaults matter. If Longhorn was released looking like that, I wouldn’t stop using Linux and go off and buy it, even if everything else satisfied me. (And the preposition you were looking for is ‘of’.)
Windows Xp, Windows2000, etc… ( in fact, every OS I know ! ) deserve some critics,
You mean ‘criticisms’.
but these ones just show how much you have nothing to say but “microsot = always shit, even if I don’t know what I am talking about”. Talk about Registring issues, bloated binaries file format everywhere, etc..
That’s not true. The interface is one of the most important parts of an operating system, because you have to interface with it. And defaults are important. I haven’t changed my GTK+/GTK+2 themes. The default (on my Gentoo box) looks good enough to deal with. I don’t use KDE apps partly because if I did, I’d have to change the theme to some much less ugly theme* (but also because I have other disagreements with the applications. Sure, they’re consistant, but I’d prefer inconsistant crap/goodness than consistant crap).
*Yeah, bright blue icons are really great looking in a UI. As are these gradiented buttons. The looks of buttons should stay more-or-less like GTK/Windows pre-XP buttons; there’s no need for them to change. To make an innovative OS, you change the way it works to get rid of crappy holdovers from the past, simplifying it! (But MS would never do that.)
1) it is an alpha, and from what it looks like, they’ve reached Milestone 4. Now, for all we know, Milestone 4 could be something completed unreated to the GUI. The GUI itself is probably only a prototype to test out the various features of what has been added. They are NOT concerned at this stage about looks, what they are concerned about is ensuring that many of the features they’ve added work, then they’ll move on to milestone 5.
2) The release is STILL 1year and 7months away AND they release date has only been been spouted by the legal department. What happens there and what happens in relatity are two completely different things. The release date won’t be known until all the milestones have been reached and Microsoft has a reasonable idea where they are and how long they require to stablise it for the market.
the windows OS is doomed to be a sloppy ever-growing bloated mass of a system.
I think the same about Linux (doomed).
________________
There is no DOS in winXP, NT series has no DOS!
Lately. Microsoft representitives said there would be a new shell on the Opearting System: with many admin comand line tools and better shell script support, no news since then … only GUI stuff.
(If this is a fake it’s not far from it’ll be anyway).
7 years * 365 builds per year = 2555 builds.
Now, remove all the days for weekends, assuming MSFT does not do builds on Saturdays, Sundays (and Holidays) and go all the way back to 1991-92 and I bet you get 2600 total.
I dunno about the (C)2006 thing, seeing as they project a late 2004 release, and the build is in no way (supposedly) intended for public viewing (and therefor any effort at all to copywrite stuff would be like saying, “well, JUST in case it gets out.”). The build number, though, is rediculous. There was a recent article either here, on /., or both, that had an MS guy saying it’s always taken 12 hours to build Windows, no matter the hardware improvements through NT history. So even if they managed 2 builds a day, hitting the button right as the previous compile ended, which they don’t, mind you, how far along could they possibly be?
MSFT has all coders submit an update of what they are working on before midnight (IIRC) every day and then the entire OS gets re-compiled overnight on some big server. MSFT is well known for religiously compiling every day and it takes all night to compile Windows.
NT undergoes 1 build per day, no more, no less.
On the system resources, if you add in all the animation also available on Windows 2000, I couldn’t find any huge performance difference. But if you add in ClearType, the difference, while barely noticible, is there. And on the UI, while I think the default colour looks too gaudy, Silver is actually rather nice. At least I much prefer it over Classic. I don’t like the icons though, not enough contrass between the colours and the background (in the default enviroment).
Besides, as a Windows XP user, you can change the theme to Classic. I remember somewhere you can download Windows 2000-look alike icons (the sad thing is that I don’t like Windows 2000 icons at all).
Very obvious that it is fake. The copyright for one is fake for sure. And the build number looks fishy in comparison with previous screenshots. But I like the colour scheme, much better than XP’s default. But it would be nice if they have something with more contrast, less flashyness, yet look rather nice. Like Photon, or BlueCurve. Simple and sweet.
But if they are going for the flashy crowd, this wouldn’t make it. Personally, I don’t like Aqua, but this one is far more worse.
Microsoft always does a masterful job of paralyzing the market, leaking these little subsets of the OS.
Bravo, Bill!
“I just noticed that banner ad for Dreammates here on OSNews. ”
I think you only get that ad if your geographical location is in a particular region of the the Pacific Northwest.
Apple sponsors the ad. Think of it as psychological warfare, part of the dirty underside of the “Switch” campaign.
🙂
–ms
Brad, I don’t care what you say about no dos being in winXP. Obviously there is no MSDOS mode, but there is a lot of legacy code in windows whether you want to admit it or not. The roots and base design of WinXP are garbage. And I don’t care what anyone says because for a company that makes billions upon billions and is able to tap such incredible resources, the kernel they have, the OS they produce, is PATHETIC. I use windows because thats all thats pratical to use due to software availability. The microsoft OS monopoly is probably one of the biggest reverse salients in the computer market today. The largest company in the world can’t even produce an OS that could rival the performance of BeOS. That, I am sorry, is just pathetic and warrants no excuse.
i just don’t understand when people say that xp and longhorn are too eye candy,linux and other unices are constantly trying to upgrade their GUI(through kde, gnome and so on..)and those are getting more eye candy as well..not to forget also bloated..so stop complaining, if these shots are for real,they are just in alpha stages not beta.
I 100% agree with you regarding Microsoft. As a holder of the desktop computing torch, they’ve done precious little to make it good for human beings. On the other hand, Microsoft has done very well at making it good for Microsoft shareholders.
Alas, the dark side.
One might also say the same thing about many large organizations that have no competition. They stop making things better for their customers.
Banks, media, law, telephones, utilities, governments, etc. Pretty much negative “good for people” organizations once they get big. Nothing new here; the same sort of thing as happened many times in the past.
Rousseau, ever the master of the gloss-over, proclaimed once upon a time that man was basically good. However, he forgot to mention that small sub-species of mankind that is 100% pure evil.
–ms
I am sure there are some cool new features and the UI will likely be changed to something more attractive, but for now, and for as far ahead as I can see, win2k is all the power, stability and features that i need. Heckm I don’t need this much power, but pre 2k windows systems arn’t up to par(stability). I will stick with what I have, thank you.
I can’t access that URL. Looks like NeoWin is down for now but I can’t access the site.
http://www.neowin.net/comments.php?category=main&id=9747&oc=1
http://www.xbetas.com/comments.php?id=1158&catid=1
Cool, thanks Excalibur
If this is suppose to be a “leaked” version of Windows, how come they allow activation? Activation wouldn’t work, or am I wrong?
My comment is based on the following:
http://www.xbetas.com/comments.php?id=1158&catid=1
Anyway, regarding the screen shots, this is what I have to say: “With great power comes great responsibility” Abuse your power and you will destroy yourself. I think that’s what looks where Microsoft is heading. After I’ve seen the screen shots of Office 11 and now the latest screen shots of Windows, looks like MS is heading for a disaster. Ahh well, they know what they are doing. Perhaps this is just a skin and it’s an early alpha release I guess. But yeah, default does matter as it creates a specific image of the operating system, its own look and feel. Honestly I don’t think this is gonna stay, I am almost certain it will change. It’s just an early release.
This could be a perfect fake. “If” it is a fake, who ever faked these images created this activation screens which normally woulnd’t exist in an alpha release? Were there any activation screens with Whistler? I don’t know. Also this could be Windows XP running with a different theme and a few VB.Net programs created on top of Windows XP. A new explorer-like program etc..you get my point. As far as I remember, OSNews posted a video of another leaked version of Longhorn and in the video it had like flying Windows and all of the menus were more office-xp-like menues.
I have been using win2k as well as xp. Win2k is far better stable OS than XP. Xp has many bugs and some times, even freezes on user switch over. Moreover as every body noticed, windows XP UI is too candy. Its too sweet which you dont like it at all. I agree that windows 2000 icons are not good, some of them are taken from Me. But win2k pro doesnt need at upgrade to windowsxp. A combination of windows 2000 pro with office xp does wonders for me. The only thing thats missing in win2k is msconfig. That any u can get it either from win98 or from net. I think windows 2000 is better as far as stability is concenrned. I think M$ ppl have to work over their OS stability and running background processes which hog memory a lot. Stability and fast response is one expects from a OS.
Amazing how people always seem to find reasons why Longhorn-screenshots aren’t real. We had the same with the screenshots from build 3683. If I didn’t have it running right now, I would have believed the people who said that they were fake. Indeed there were quite some reasons, but also I managed to find the ISO of build 3683, and installed it. I’m downloading 4008 right now, then I’ll see if it’s real or not.
It’s definately not fake. If it is then someone went through a great deal of trouble to create the 655MB iso and the graphical install screen I’m staring at right now.
There was a nice discussion starting up concerning one posters’ claim on the certification (by proving its consistency by induction) of xp’s kernel by microsoft research. I replied to that post, and stayed well within http://www.osnews.com/rules.php , yet the whole thread got moderated down for no apparent reason.
This was my first post ever on osnews, and it left me very dissapointed, for I thought that this site was meant for serious discussion. Apparently it’s not
More Screenshots
http://www.mister.de/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=289&mod…
Where’s the article? It’s a dead link.
My guess would be that between OSNews posting the link and you clicking on it, the article was removed. Look at Mister.de’s link, those screenshots are much better.
<<Quote: Windows 2000 was the last decent OS Microsoft ever released>>
I agree completely. Even in XP, if one configures the system for “Best Performance” (Control Panel-System- System Properties- Perfromance Options tab??) the..um.. “Look and feel is similar to Win 2000.
So does even MS indirectly agree that for Performance, they cannot better Win 2000?
If they are still building XP nightly, along with XP home, XP tablet, and XP Media Center, won’t those numbers add up quickly? Then Pocket PC. I could see the numbers as adding up correctly, of course if i’m wrong tell me so i won’t make the mistake again.
the most stable NT was 3.51
Bottom line, it’s just themed, obviously this person has hacked the version number and the copyright information to appear as they like. I thought the start menu was supposed to be different as well as all kinds of new UI features, this looks exactly like my friends XP box, he has the Longhorn Theme applied to it and I see almost no difference. Notice how in the activation the Next button does not blend properly with the rest of the UI? And that the activation Window is still using the old XP colors?
It’s quite evident, and I could point out probably 100 more things that make it an obvious theme/hack.
“It’s quite evident, and I could point out probably 100 more things that make it an obvious theme/hack.”
“Whee, whee, wheeee! Look everyone, I’m running Longhorn!”
*snort*
More screenshots of Longhorn are at http://www.ibelite.com/LH_screenies/page_01.htm
I hope you enjoy them, I will be adding more soon
You have no idea how wrong you are. I *could* easily point out a non-illegal place you could download this. Of course as soon as you start the download, it “becomes” illegal.
It’s nice that your running LongHorn but my question is, does it bare a resemblance to that ugly setup that the screenshots are based on?
Or do you have a legitimate release?
Please be a little more informative or stop wasting our time.
I didn’t know this thing is “downloadable” in that case it could be real after all I said but again it is my point of view only.
Sorry jbett, you misunderstood me completely. I was paraphrasing the people who say they are running Longhorn in mockery and supporting your statement with my “quote” while making an obnoxious ass of myself, as usual. 😉
However, I have spent the last couple of hours comparing these new build 4008 “screenshots” with the older build 3683 screenshots from the last leak of Longhorn from November (which was legit) and trying to figure out how MSFT’s build numbers work, etc.
After doing all this, I am now no longer so cocksure that this build 4008 is a fake anymore. It could very well be authentic as far as I can tell, especially if people are claiming to have actually downloaded and installed it. MSFT’s build numbering system does not seem to work the way I though it did either – I can’t figure out how it does work, actually.
Previous screenshots from Longhorn build 3683 (November 13, 2002) here:
http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/longhorn_alpha.asp
just my (admittedly useless) 2 cents. but if any of you have a USENET account just hop on and download it for yourself.
FYI there seems to be a flamewar in the newsgroup that posted it too. Seems like people don’t believe it either and they can download it!
but that’s not surprising because from the NG it appears that people are having a lot of trouble getting it installed!
who’d want to install alpha quality windows? production quality windows *cough XP* isn’t all that great to begin with…
I think there are other topics that are much more interesting about longhorn. Because of its alpha state, the GUI will keep changing. But what I would find interesting is the whole OS architecture. The new Object Filesystem (OFS), the SQL Server engine that will host the OS objects, what about .NET or C#, will be developed in part using those technologies?.
BTW, I didn’t moderate down anything on this thread. I am on vacations currently, in the mountains… We have 4-5 more moderators on board, not sure who did what.
whats with the new shell thing?
theres just ripping linux/freebsd off as always.
for example, after the framebuffer was introduced in linux xp used it to show a nice bootupanimation…
Mac OS X has the cleanest, smoothest GUI of any OS ever. No jaggies, lots of alpha blending and drop shadows make it great looking. Though, the pinstriping and choice of colors may not be the best. Windows XP looks horrible and cheap next to Mac OS X. Will Longhorn be any different?
Fake screenshots are easily made, it’s true. OTOH, compare the 95, NT, 2000 and XP interfaces and generally speaking there are little major changes. If you compare OS 9 and OS X then I could argue there are huge changes.
I feel the interface shown in this picture, which I am sure can be changed ( tweaked ), is too bulky and takes away desktop space. Eugenia is right, it does look like a big bad ugly web page.
buhu said : “whats with the new shell thing?
theres just ripping linux/freebsd off as always.
for example, after the framebuffer was introduced in linux xp used it to show a nice bootupanimation… ”
And ? Who cares ? Linux didn’t invent he shell eiteher. Is linux bad beacause it “stole” a lot of *nix ideas ? I don’t think so. Lack of good shell in Windows, for admin tasks, and for power users like most us here is a huge default, and it would be good if it changes. I don’t see the problem here.
Maybe microsoft must not use CPU, or screen, because unix did that before ? For exemple, Apple didn’t invent GUI either, but they introduced it in personnal computers. Big firms almost never invent something really new, but can give them to most people; that’s what the are good for.
Its real dudes, and its like a chewing gum os…. My Linux Box is much better 🙂
NO WAREZ links here please. Thanks.
But what I would find interesting is the whole OS architecture. The new Object Filesystem (OFS), the SQL Server engine that will host the OS objects, what about .NET or C#, will be developed in part using those technologies?.
Check http://www.reiserfs.org. ReiserFS 4 should be stable ’til June. So, Longhorn is not the first OS to have database based filesystem.
so get over the ‘its a fake’ posts, if you have any cop-on then you can download it too just like many already have, doesnt take much time either, burn the iso, install it, the install (setup) is pretty basic (and groggy) looking but its a two stage process, and once done (doesnt take too long) you have a very nice desktop which i must say i like. There is 14 days limit in which you have to activate it (thats standard for all MS pre-releases since XP) and after its activated you can use it for 180 days. Works the same way as Windows .NET Server 2003 (in terms of activation). I like it a lot 🙂 can’t wait for the finished product,
cheers
anyweb
[quote]Check http://www.reiserfs.org. ReiserFS 4 should be stable ’til June. So, Longhorn is not the first OS to have database based filesystem.[/quote]
Won’t be Linux either. Have a look at AIX’ filesystem.
Looks much better than the default theme WinXP IMHO.
See this little fun article for some XP hijinks.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/tech/weekly/1800158
what did Patrick Norton on TechTV say, as people get the gov’t they deserve, they get the OS they deserve. Boy, I can’t get over all the ringing endorsements for windows.
Why is it that this Alpha directX-enhanced, futuristic-and-superior, next greatest system from MS still doesn’t use ClearType for 80% of the text?
Anyone SURE this is the real deal? I’m looking at it, and it looks like something someone cooked up in stardock’s object desktop.
I don’t think it looks that bad, overall. The taskbar needs some work, like the giant clock, which reminds me of something froma desktopX theme saw somewhere….but it could be a useful tool in final form.
As far as themeing goes, heck, I can run litestep/winstp/
talisman and just be done with it once and for all.
What I care about is the underpinninngs…
I am running longhorn at home, of course its tweaked, so the only thing that its Longhorn is the text down in the corner saying:”Longhorn XP Proffesional, For testing purposes only. Build 4008.main.030219-1933″
The Iexplorer version is 6.05.4008.0
It seems a little sluggish on my p3 733/128Mb ram
but the look and feel is kinda like XP =)
And it is Milestone4 hence the M4 logo thing
The shell is a bit improved in this version (most people seem to hate Plex, but I actually like it), besides there are few changes.
64 Bit processors – I don’t know because I have none to test it. But I doubt it’s implemented.
WinFS – Nope. There’s a service that emulates it on top of NTFS, but that’s slow as hell. Most people disable it. But the search already received some improvements, you can easily search by artist/album/other for music or (visual) size of images, which is supposed to be a benefit of WinFS. By now it’s very slow.
TCPA/Palladium – Nothing yet, luckily.
As you can see, the setup has improved dramatically. It’s now running on WinPE rather than a standalone basic OS. Installing also requires much less time (around 15 minutes) which surprised me very much.
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Now, just in case you’re interested in shell improvements that are not (or not easily) visible on the screenshots.
Sidebar transparency has been removed in this version, don’t know why. Was working in build 3683.
In exchange, putting the taskbar into the sidebar works now, unlike in 3683. Applications then minimize to the sidebar, which looks a bit ugly, but works.
There’s a “new taskbar” setting which reduces the taskbar to a really slim line, removing all borders and wasted space and making the start button smaller. I expect to see more improvements here anyway – right now it’s not that much important.
My Pictures, My Music and other folders of the like (now called “Picture Library”, “Music library” and so on) have an already much discussed details area which shows information like title, album, year and a link for additional information (with music as an example).
The new display properties, which were usable but didn’t do anything in 3683 are removed in this build.
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And, as stated above, to all people who are bitching about every little error in the interface for being an indication for a fake: It is an alpha version! Yes, LH4008 identifies itself as Windows 2000 Professional. Nobody knows why, may be a bug. And yes, Plex is in no way perfect. There may be displaying errors, not matching gradients or whatever. Plex is not Avalon. The final version won’t even be close to this. And FYI, the boot screen is the one of Windows XP Professional. It’s not changed yet. Do you think a faker would leave that intact, which is the easiest component to change of all?