Longhorn build 5048 is hugely disappointing from an end user perspective because it shows how far behind Microsoft is in delivering the next client version of Windows. Also, expectations were high that Microsoft would hit a home run with this build, because it was the first public Longhorn release in a year, says Paul Thurrot.
WinHEC afterthoughts: Windows Longhorn Build 5048 Review
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Eugenia Loli
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Wow – talk about a slam. Paul Thurott calling Apple’s Tiger a better OS than Windows? Not to mention his thorough thrashing of today’s Longhorn?
This is bad news for MS to have this stuff floating around in the press. They need to overcome the biggest competition of all – their own people using XP. Why would anyone want to upgrade at this point?
A review of an OS 2 years early? Hmm… OK.
Agreed, Brett. I think MS is cooking something up their sleeves. I think it is a good move that MS dumped the 4k build because they realized it was too unstable and started with the 5 series. I think that is a hint of things to come from Longhorn. I would rather Longhorn take a while and get it right the first time than be inundated with Service Packs and then have the OS mature. And with a lot of technologies from Longhorn being ported to XP my investment in XP is even more secure. Granted that right now Longhorn looks pretty silly but I bet that wont be the case pretty soon. That is the feeling I have. Of course I could be wrong but MS has been unusually aggressive lately when it comes to improving the quality of their products.
i realy hope longhorn comes out stable and strong. while i am not a huge fan of microsoft i do want longhorn to be a big sucess….it seems so odd a company with practicaly limitless resources is struggeling so much on this….what arnt they telling us…
win2k has an ugly “olde tyme” UI yet people praise its stability. in this case it looks like most of the criticism is based on the look of the UI, which will likely change rapidly.
in any case its a wash. longhorn will not change the economics of using a PC…99% of people will get it when they buy a new PC and not before. corporate users will likely let home users do the “post release beta” testing. MSFT stock will continue to flatline.
Longhorn build 5048 is not only disappointing from an end user perspective but even more from a developers perspective. Microsoft has clearly lost the race while Linux and Apple’s Tiger are becoming vastly popular.
One can only speculate if this outlook has prompted the first two major desktop vendors to announce termination of their contracts with Microsoft and plans to sell PCs with a choice of OS(Linux/Linspire?) at a significantly lower price to the consumer. This was about time and very likely we will see more vendors following.
I installed build 5048 a couple of days ago and was also *hugely* disappointed…it almost seems like an incomplete build, they left out IIS for one (actually, the entire add/remove windows components is disabled). I’ve heard it mentioned that this was a driver build (hence why it debuted at WinHEC), and actually that was the only plus I noticed…it picked up all of my hardware.
I’m hoping they pulled all the extra stuff from this build to keep it simple for the hardware devs out there…if not, then beta 1 will be a huge disappointment (and it’s due in late June??? there’s no way…). Oh well.
“One can only speculate…”
Apparently one can do much more than that.
“it almost seems like an incomplete build”
Yes, it almost seems like EXACTLY what they said it would be before during and after it’s release.
With my Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (student version) I get an operating system, full office suite, more capable instant messenger, more capable browser, no viruses, and little crashes all for US $25. You can get much the same with Ubuntu Linux for free.
Of course, you’re not being intellectually honest here:
1) Comparing the full retail price of Windows vs. the ‘student version’ of Redhat. Most people will either get Windows as an OEM package with their computer or an upgrade – $100 tops. How much is a non-student copy of Redhat anyway?
2) Pretty much all of the applications you mentioned are also available for Windows, with better alternatives existing (eg – Trillian) and some of them are even free.
As for Longhorn, it’s looking pretty shitty right now, but that doesn’t really matter. For what I’m using my computer for, it’ll take the open source crowd at least 5 years (if not more) to match the functionality of the apps I’m using right now, so it ain’t like I’m in a big hurry to jump ship.
Honestly, you guys think too much in terms of the operating system – like Apple has this nifty new search feature and the browser does RSS, so you think the rest of us are creaming our pants – not so.
I find the speed of MS’s development vary frustrating. They have 20,000? people working for them, yet their most of their products have been at a near standstill for the last five years. Much of the development since Windows and Office 2000 seems to have been merely cosmetic, and nearly equivalent to the programs and add-ins we see from small 1 man and free developers.
This is after all a build for HARDWARE manufacturers and driver writers. Take a look at this video with Nar Ganapathy, the lead of the IO subsystem group ( http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=62083 ). The main purpose of this build was to lock down the kernel-level changes in the new OS. What exactly do you expect? To see something much more exciting, look at the last couple minutes of the following video for video streaming onto rotating spheres ( http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=62621 ). I doubt the real utility of the last one, but it’s a good demo of the system’s capabilities.
“Windows costs almost $300 Canadian for the full retail box. That’s just an operating system, browser, and instant messenger.
With my Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (student version) I get an operating system, full office suite, more capable instant messenger, more capable browser, no viruses, and little crashes all for US $25. You can get much the same with Ubuntu Linux for free.”
Comparing Canadian vs USD won’t help you make a point, and like someone else said, don’t compare prices of student vs full. I do agree with you though, but I’m not changing my OS either way; OS X rules my computers.
And just so you don’t get you hopes up any higher than warranted, they’ve repeatedly said that beta 1 will only be 1/3 feature complete and still not feature the final Aero UI.
PS: Sorry if it seems I’m picking on you. I’m not, really. I’m looking forward to seeing what MS really has in store too and would love to see it sooner rather than later.
“Linux still hasn’t reached Win2k levels let alone XP. Linux isn’t for the desktop.”
Care to explain that? What levels? Stability, speed, user friendlyness, what? Also, care to back up your point? There are idiot proof linux distros, and it is very much ready for the desktop. Have you even tried linux and if you have did you try something like Gentoo or something else??
Side comment: Go OS X!
This is pretty damning, and for once, I feel that Paul is having to be 100% honest. He’s quite sarcastic through this article as well. Having read many of his articles over the years I’ve never actually got the impression that he’s a totally programmed MS drone, but of course, he is pro-Microsoft. Let’s face it, it’s his livelihood.
There are some gems in this article, that provide some rather ground-shaking clues – and by that I don’t mean the hype of Longhorn itself, quite the opposite:
The problem, I was told recently, was that the underpinnings of Longhorn–then based on the Windows XP code base–were struggling under the weight of all of the technologies that Microsoft planed to implement in this release.
I’ll make available an exclusive write-up about what happened next sometime in June 2005, but for now let’s just say that Longhorn’s architects went back to the drawing board. The 4000-series builds were scrapped, and the company started building Longhorn again from scratch, using the Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1, see my preview) code base
This tells me that Windows NT codebase is over as an operating system. It’s an ex-Parrot. It simply isn’t maintainable. God knows what Microsoft will do. The last company to decide that they had outgrown their OS codebase was Apple, and guess what they migrated to?
Only quite recently, early last year I think, Microsoft were actually basing Longhorn off Windows 2003 because they wanted that componentisation goal, and they probably wanted one Windows codebase understandably. They then realised that they weren’t able to do that, so they then forked off with the XP SP2 codebase. Now they’re forking back because XP is creaking under the stress?! One can only imagine what state Microsoft’s source code and bug tracking systems are in.
In contrast Apple have been able to implement umpteen features in Mac OS, including search and a Dashboard feature, with far less resources than Microsoft has. I fully realise that Microsoft are bound by the chains of backwards compatibility, but that simply doesn’t explain everything.
The 4000-series Sidebar is gone in build 5048 and Microsoft corporate vice president Joe Peterson said it’s probably gone for good.
I thought it would. It too up too much screen estate and it looked crap. Microsoft’s internal people probably told them to get rid of it.
In any event, once you present Setup with a disk it knows how to use, sit back and wait, because Longhorn build 5048 takes well over an hour to install.
My God. Considering that it’s a modified 2003/XP system, what on Earth is in there?
And if you try to do the right thing, security-wise, and add a password to the Administrator account and then create your own user account, build 5048 actually complains that it can’t log you on: The auto-logon is hard-coded in some way. Nice work, guys.
I think he’s actually been a bit harsh there. Microsoft’s duty is to provide a build of some description here, but it conjures up awful images of the kind of stuff that won’t work in Windows if you log in as an ordinary user – exactly as it was with NT 4, 2000 and XP. We’re not quite keen on that kind of backwards compatibility.
Instead of a pop-up All Programs sub-menu the All Program entry now triggers a visual change where the All Programs menu items replace the left side of the Start Menu (Figure). If you open a folder from there, the menu expands, causing a (gasp) scroll bar to appear (Figure). Ugly.
Wow, does anyone find those screenhots of the Start Menu familiar? That represents the exact same problems that Linux distributors and desktop environment have grappled with in terms of categorising and presenting applications!
I seriously doubt the utility of this feature, but whatever: Anyone who uses the mouse to select a search box, then types in an application name, and then once again uses the mouse to select the correct application from the search results list has long ago given up any semblance of trying to be efficient.
I think this is an attempt at Apple’s universal search system, covering applications, system preferences etc. There are obviously some major usability issues with that though.
Funnily enough, there is a discussion going on on the KDE usability mailing list right now about that very same application menu search feature!
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1) Comparing the full retail price of Windows vs. the ‘student version’ of Redhat. Most people will either get Windows as an OEM package with their computer or an upgrade – $100 tops. How much is a non-student copy of Redhat anyway?
=====
Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS is 179 USD for Basic Edition or 299 USD for Standard Edition. If you do not need the RedHat Support Hotline, then you can go after Fedora Linux (The Product Formerly Known As RedHat Linux) and download that for free from The Internet.
Let us make a price comparision.
Our customer John Doe is not a student/teacher/… John want to be able to do Office with his computer and to some extend he is interested in programming. John also owns a digital camera for which he needs a suitable application for photo editing (resize, crop, red-eye-removal).
John sits down and checks what he need to spend:
SuSE Linux ==> 95 USD
OpenOffice ==> 0 USD (included in SuSE/Linux)
The Gimp ==> 0 USD (included in SuSE/Linux)
KDevelop + GNU GCC => 0 USD (included in SuSE/Linux)
summarized ==> 95 USD
Microsoft Windows XP Professional w/ SP2 ==> 270 USD
Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 ==> 418 USD
Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 ==> 87 USD
Microsoft Visual C++ .NET Standard 2003 ==> 90 USD
summarized ==> 865 USD
I feel bad for those who expected so much from Longhorn. It was of course evident that Microsoft had not much new to offer. Their OS is not only good enough, but what else can it include really?
It can only add either modules to replace existing modules (GUI for example), or applications unbundlded so far (antivirus for example), or applications that finally work (File search, renamed desktop search).
The only thing that is missing is security but that would require a complete overhaul of Windows architecture, and a complete revisit of the API. So That won;t happen.
Microsoft is looking for ways to boost their revenues, but it’s not with Tablets or Longhorn that they will succeed. In a sense now that they have a monopoly on the OS side, they are strictly limited by the growth of the PC market, which is pretty flat now.
So the innovations wont come from the OS or the office applications. Not even an overhaul. Microsoft will however push Xbox, MSN, their consulting services, and their IP. Windows can not grow anymore, and so any huge expectations about Lonhorn or its successors won’t be delivered.
The only new things we will see on windows is more lock-in, like the WinFS thing if it ever materialise, or Ingigo and their web service API. These “innovations” will materiablise not becasue the market wants them, but becasue Microsoft needs to lock users and developers and businesses to its platform ever more.
Sad story.
Apple on the other hand needs to distinguish itself and with just 4% or the PC market, can only grow. Hence they will continue to innovate. Again and again. Apple is hungry. Apple’s OS improvements won’t be cosmetic a la Microsoft. That is for sure.
I wish the Linux side would be as innovative and dynamic. becasue when I look at my linux desktop 2+ years ago and now, other than the 2.6 kernel (which is targeted at servers, not desktops), and a few updates to applciations, there is not much new. If you put side by side a RedHat 9 and a fedora Core 3, the latter looks better, and applications have a few more features, but there is nothing I can do on the desktop with with FC3 that I could not do with RH9.
Anyway I will probbaly be moderated for criticising Microsoft….
“Funnily enough, there is a discussion going on on the KDE usability mailing list right now about that very same application menu search feature!”
And people wonder why MS doesn’t want to reveal the final Longhorn UI until as late as feasible.
You make it seem like they were hopping back and forth on codebases because the system just couldn’t handle it.
However, if you take a second to even think, you would realise that Win2k3 SP1 is built off of SP2’s codebase, and Longhorn is now built off of Win2k3 SP1’s codebase.
Imagine that, using the most recent stable codebase to use for your next version, whoulda thunk it?
Tom:
You dont seem to make any sense. For one, OpenOffice is also freely available on Windows, not to mention that MS Office is far more advanced, as well as The Gimp, which is also nowhere near as powerful as Photoshop. And your pricing for WinXP is absolutely outrageous. XP Pro lists for $129 at Amazon for the full version.
Not only does XP have the more powerful apps available for it, it also has these free alternatives that you list for Linux.
Can you say bias?
“The only thing that is missing is security but that would require a complete overhaul of Windows architecture, and a complete revisit of the API. So That won;t happen. ”
You maybe have missed the whole LUA thing
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dn…
No problem man…that’s what open forums are for.
That’s precisely my point though, they are trying to rush a beta out the door 1/3 complete? I’d rather wait until it’s feature complete…I thought that by definition beta means feature complete, and only bugfixes will be made. I’ve seen this happen time and time again on projects I’ve worked on…rush an incomplete product out the door due to <insert political force here> pressures, be it time, money…whatever. You end up alienating your users, and in this case they end up alienating their main source of revenues…developers like me. I don’t care how Longhorn is going to look (professionally speaking at least), I want the API to be there. It’s as easy as that. When I get a feature incomplete beta 1 and can’t build anything remotely functional, I’ll shrug and stick with the current API (in this case .Net). MS knows that it’s number one competitor is itself, if they can’t woo guys like me over to a new platform early on, I’ll just end up staying with my current toolset, which could ultimately cost them a license down the road. The more code that gets written for current platforms, the more their bottom line will get hurt down the line. I say either come correct, or don’t come at all. A 1/3 complete beta is still an alpha IMO.
Hardware guys don’t care about shiny eye-candy like fanboys. It’s not Avalon-enabled.
Microsoft betas never work that way.
Usually, they will become feature complete by beta 3, then they do release candidates.
Though, now, I think they are only going up to beta2’s, then release candidates.
The majority of the apps are written for windows and because of that MS enjoys the monopoly. It’s a vicious catch 22 situations once you get to this point because devs won’t move off of windows for fear of losing profits so they have to target it and people can’t buy non-windows apps because only windows apps are on the shelves. The further we get the harder is it going to be to break this cycle because people have already invested a lot into windows apps. The only two ways that this can be broken is by devs recreating those older apps for new os and developing new apps as well. But they won’t because of economics. And we know that we rely on commercial apps because they are made to fill our needs not developers like it’s done in FOSS circles.
Thus, even if Longhorn sucks the most it has nothing to do with its success since people need windows to run their apps on. Emulating the whole windows apis is insane and not realistic. MS also uses internal apis like windows controls we don’t have access to so MS apps won’t work under emulation.
I pretty much feel that with so much invested in windows apps that this battle of the oses has been irrelevant for years. I can see other oses running along side of windows but not replace it entirely. Our needs made what MS is today and many of the needs are perfectly justified in our economic driven world. It just so happens that we chose MS as our os provider since most development that meets our needs happens on that os.
What apps use these so called ‘internal’ API’s? Office? No, that runs under Wine. Maybe IE? That, too, runs under Wine. What apps use these supposed secret API’s?
Hell is frozen over since October 16, 2003: http://www.lynch.st/C1855200414/E1514118044/ 😉
John sits down and checks what he need to spend:
SuSE Linux ==> 95 USD
OpenOffice ==> 0 USD (included in SuSE/Linux)
The Gimp ==> 0 USD (included in SuSE/Linux)
KDevelop + GNU GCC => 0 USD (included in SuSE/Linux)
summarized ==> 95 USD
Microsoft Windows XP Professional w/ SP2 ==> 270 USD
Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 ==> 418 USD
Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 ==> 87 USD
Microsoft Visual C++ .NET Standard 2003 ==> 90 USD
summarized ==> 865 USD
Now, lets be fair.
OpenOffice is free for windows as well, Gimp runs on windows too, gcc, qt, or gtk+ and Eclipse with C/C++ plugin can replace Microsoft Visual C++ at zero cost.
But even so you compare a free download of Fedora or ubuntu
to over $200 of Microsoft software.
Is every single build for Longhorn going to be news, especially considering we’re constantly being told “this is not what Longhorn will look like” “This is not wht Longhorn will be like”?…then what’s the damn point of reminding us that MS has put out yet another build of an incomplete OS??
They are the world’s biggest software (and OS) company, so yes.
Beta is this summer. From there, only major milestone builds (Beta 1, Beta 2, RC 1, RC 2, RTM) should make news. Though there could be a couple of interim builds that make the news because they add or change something.
If you’re only concerned about the final UI, you could just ignore any Longhorn build posts until it reaches Release Candidate stage or RTM (Basically ignore all LH posts until mid to late 2006).
I went from Windows ME to Linux to Win XP (because it came with my new laptop) and I don’t feel there much of new in XP. Actually I missed KDE a lot… Feels like going back to use old software… I don’t plan to buy Longhorn and I don’t thing I’ll notice the difference. XP is BAD enough.
On unrelated news or… news from yesterday:
H264 is supported in Linux since well.. yesterday!!
——————
(May 5, 2005) You may have noticed that Apple’s QuickTime Player 7 is available for download. As of this writing, the player is only available for Mac OS X, and the latest QuickTime files are only viewable on that platform. That is, unless you are using an FFmpeg-derived multimedia application. Thanks to dedicated multimedia hackers from the FFmpeg and x264 projects, FFmpeg’s libavcodec can already decode the next-generation (buzzword alert!) H.264 video codec data inside the latest Apple QuickTime files. Along with the free, open source FAAD AAC decoding library (for the audio track) and a competent QuickTime file demuxer, open source software is already equipped to handle the newest multimedia files on the internet.
You’re welcome.
http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net/index.php
I wish the Linux side would be as innovative and dynamic. becasue when I look at my linux desktop 2+ years ago and now, other than the 2.6 kernel (which is targeted at servers, not desktops), and a few updates to applciations, there is not much new. If you put side by side a RedHat 9 and a fedora Core 3, the latter looks better, and applications have a few more features, but there is nothing I can do on the desktop with with FC3 that I could not do with RH9.
Still there are important changes. How about HAL, DBUS, Better Gnome VFS, NSF4, improved cross-toolkit ways to handle the trashcan, improvements in mime type handling. All changes that is not highly visible, but very necessary to create a Linux desktop where things just works.
I’ve reloaded windows countless number of times due to kernel errors, viruses, and the like. Windows is crap, and I am stuck with the damn system because I like playing games. I also program, and it’s not that hard to programs apps so that they can be availabe for several platforms, so why wont companies program comerical apps for linux? Easy, they fear that they wont sell because most of linux is free. Or could it be that, to easily make a commercial program for linux would require use of source that is under the GPL, which then, is seen as unfavorable to commercial apps.
With Darwin being open source, and ported to x86 computers, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple make OSX available for x86 computers around the time of Longhorn’s arrival.
I personally use Linux, FreeBSD, OS X, and Windows on a weekly basis, and I prefere OS X and Linux out of the bunch.
The OSS community does need to stop following Apple and MS, and start to lead the way in innovation, that is my take on it.
It seems to me that if MS did indeed switch gears after the 4000-series builds and “restart” on a fresh code base, then wouldn’t it stand to reason that things are going to take a while to catch up? I wouldn’t do a happy dance and sing “Ding Dong the Witch is gone” just yet. This has the makings of a B-rated horror flick where, just when you think the tyrannical evil beast is down, it gets up and takes a bit out of your arse.
Despite the delays, its way too early to predict how good or bad Longhorn is going to turn out.
an x86 version of OSX was mentioned! I thought it would happen sooner.
This will NEVER happen. Why can’t people realize that Apple is primarily a hardware vendor that makes a killer os for it HARDWARE.
I am about as hardcore Apple as they come, but I am not about to discuss Longhorn’s shortcoming until it is released. It is foolish to say anything at this point since a real release is at minimum one year away.
Ironically though, the posts at the beginning of this thread sound oddly like the talk of XP when it was first making the beta rounds… and look how long it took to get a sound copy of that on the streets.
It’s just a developers release. I’ll wait to see what the beta 1 relese is like before I start speculating.
Is It Shipping Yet?(tm)
In my opinion, Microsoft is dying in the OS market, and Longhorn is represented by an air-dried, sun-baked white skull. If it’s not shipping, what good are the articles about it?
moo.
Apple is pretty hush, and they have only made products for their line of computers. But Apple is a business, and they want to get a bigger piece of the market, more than the 4 percent they have now. They have opened their kernel, and it’s been ported to x86 systems, albeit, their is a lot of work that is needed to make it fully compatible before it could be released.
Now, if you are Apple, and your os is gaining ground, and getting good press, would you sieze the chance to enter the x86 market, and give yourself a chance to increase that 4 percent share rapidly?
i’m not saying that Apple will do this, they have made a lot of stupid decisions in the past, but, the time is right, and the ball is in their court. Don’t be surprised if they relase OS X for pc’s in a year….even if it’s just for 64 bit pc’s.
You may be right I just use Linux on my “Workstation” and my “Server”.
(I will now remove my tongue from my cheek.)
Yeah I think MS has been aggressive in trying to fix up holes in XP, coming out with a new browser that supposedly be making up for the lack of attention on IE 6. Also they are changing the security system to somewhat like the Linux and Unix boxes do with regular users not running as Administrators, then enabling WPA security in XP through a a little download, and these are things I am just recalling from the top of my head. I guess it would be better if I say that they have been more active than usual.
As for NT as a good kernel, my knowledge on that is limited but it does seem as a kernel to be quite capable. I dont think its so much the kernel that is a problem but rather the half assed code that people write on top of the code. And for people who say XP sucks, yeah it sucks if you odnt know how to use it and secure it and lock it up with help of third party tools. But you have to realize when XP came out there was not much of a security threat on the net with viruses and spam and spwyare and malware and so on. XP alwyas was foremost ease of use over security. Apple OSes previous to OS X was like that. They are a small company that is why they made a great move to Unix. MS just now has a harder task to come up with something just as good if not better. I am gonna wait and see what Longhorn finally looks like. I think it will be pretty cool. XAML, MONAD (I dont know if I got that right) and Avalon look mighty impressive to me. All I can say is time will tell what Longhorn will be like! There will be drastic improvements I know, like for example the WGF or the new Directx if you will is going to have a drastically less overhead than the existing graphics driver model which would mean in great boost in gaming performances and 3d performances as well. There are a lot of exciting things I think to look forward to…or in the end it could all just become a disaster. Once again, time will tell.
It has already been said before that this is just a developer build, and a lot of the issues that Paul brings up in his article can be explained away by saying, “this is just a developer build.”
I’d like to think that Paul deserves a little more credibility than that, I mean this is his livelihood isn’t it?
Isn’t it? I don’t know, I’m just guessing. But anyway, anyone can make a mistake, and perhaps he’s merely jumping the gun because he expected this build to be flashy amazingo powerz with a z, and instead it was basically crap.
Or perhaps he’s taking a chance and trying to gain creds with the anti-ms crowd. It seems to be working to an extent, I’ve seen a lot of comments about, “Wow, see how honest Paul is being? Man, if HE has problems with Winderz then you KNOW it was crap! I like Paul, now, and will buy his cereal.”
Honestly, like others have said, I’m going to wait until “Longhorn” is sitting on the shelf at Staples to see how it turns out.
“It has already been said before that this is just a developer build, and a lot of the issues that Paul brings up in his article can be explained away by saying, “this is just a developer build.””
Might this be the reason why he brings this just being a developer build up several times in his article, only to tell the reader why, though it is only a developer build, as he again mentions several times, he is disappointed none the less?
http://www.crazyapplerumors.com/archives/000453.html#000453
“I know that this pre-release release of the latest Canondale bike is meant for aftermarket manufacturers to have a chance to begin building their stuff for it, and as such, it’s not going to have all the bells and whistles, but, well, I dunno, I have a bad feeling about this next line of Canondales because the release they just released didn’t have all the bells and whistles.”
I am very well aware that Paul mentions several times in the article that it’s just a developer release, but then he goes on to complain about things that can be easily explained away when you ACKNOWLEDGE and UNDERSTAND and ACCEPT the fact that hey, it’s just a developer release.
I’m not a Microsoft apologist by any means, I’m struggling with getting my wireless card to work under Ubuntu so that I can ditch the, uh, w…itch? But don’t jump the gun here. Microsoft hands out plenty of reasons to call them out, for free (as in beer)! But this time, they have their duffs pretty well covered, considering the fact that it’s a stripped down developer build, and they said it would be exactly that, and lo and behold, it is exactly that.
Let us make a price comparision.
Our customer John Doe is not a student/teacher/… John want to be able to do Office with his computer and to some extend he is interested in programming. John also owns a digital camera for which he needs a suitable application for photo editing (resize, crop, red-eye-removal).
John sits down and checks what he need to spend:
SuSE Linux ==> 95 USD
OpenOffice ==> 0 USD (included in SuSE/Linux)
The Gimp ==> 0 USD (included in SuSE/Linux)
KDevelop + GNU GCC => 0 USD (included in SuSE/Linux)
summarized ==> 95 USD
Microsoft Windows XP Professional w/ SP2 ==> 270 USD
Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 ==> 418 USD
Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 ==> 87 USD
Microsoft Visual C++ .NET Standard 2003 ==> 90 USD
summarized ==> 865 USD
Of course, somebody has already pointed out that most/all of the Linux tools you mentioned are also available for Windows. (In all fairness though, he’s probably gonna end up with Paintshop Pro on Windows, since Gimp is about as user friendly as the hole in my ass.)
So what is your point? And what is about WinXP Pro? Unless you’re connecting to an NT domain, do you really need it over the Home version? And even supposing you do, if you have pretty much any previous version of Windows (down to and including Windows 95), you can get the upgrade for far less.
I’m not a Microsoft apologist by any means, I’m struggling with getting my wireless card to work under Ubuntu so that I can ditch the, uh, w…itch?
Ever heard of ndiswrapper?
Ironically though, the posts at the beginning of this thread sound oddly like the talk of XP when it was first making the beta rounds… and look how long it took to get a sound copy of that on the streets.
XP have propagated through the windows community at about the rate they change computers. Even today, a long time after the release of XP it only runs on about 2/3 of all windows computers. This indicate that people are not upgrading old machines, probably because an uppgrade doesn’t provide any additional value over their existing system.
As hardware prices are getting lower, you can expect a that it will be more common to ship computers with some other free OS to get a lower and more competitive price tag. This is allready starting to be quite common in Asia. E.g. Asus sell laptops with preinstalled Linux. This will trend will spread to the rest of the world. Nobody is willing to pay more than they have to. A couple of months ago there was a article saying that a baltic country the number of computers sold that way is almost 50% of the computers sold.
Some of these will be reinstalled with windows but far from all of them, especially now that Linux offers a quite good desktop environment. By the time Longhorn ships it will be even better. E.g. can we expect two new releases of Gnome and a major feature upgrade from the KDE camp. Anyway, the “people will reinstall with Microsoft” statements that are so common in Microsoft oriented press is probably canceled out by the fact that the most common way to get a Linux computer is to buy one with windows and replace the OS.
At the same time Microsoft hits down hard on unauthorized use of their software, e.g. by not providing servicepacks to unlicenced copies. That too will make windows less attractive e.g. to fammilies that can’t afford multiple copies of windows. This means that Microsoft will have fewer ambassadeurs telleing the world how wonderful Microsoft software is.
Another factor is that XP replaced a lot of DOS based systems (e.g. win95 and 98). They were insecure and didn’t really fit on the corporate desktop. XP on the other hand works fine and companies will have very little incentive to replace it for a very long time.
So all in all, I would expect the Longhorn uptake would be even slower than that of XP. The longer time it takes for people to switch, the more competition will face it from Apple and Linux. Longhorn will be a much harder to sell than XP.
I would not be surprised if the desktop market in 5 years would consist of about 50% Longhorn, 20% older windows versions, and the rest held by Apple and Linux with about 15% each.
Paul just keeps coming out with this trash. He went to a hardware conference and expects a GUI build. Its kinda ridiculous. He also seems to be a little irritated still that they asked him to take his screenshots down.
Some things that were in the 4000 builds are not there in the 5000 builds because there’s no reason for them to be there. That’s not how software development works. Many teams, modular programming, only some teams submitting for each build.
Some stuff looks exactly like it does in XP, and some icon sets look half updated, and that’s because the Icon Design Team didn’t have a deadline for this build, or the GUI team considered Avalon unstable at this particular moment of development. Other things would have introduced unnecessary bugs for a Hardware Build.
Architecturally, in many ways, OS X is just catching up to XP, which was released in 2001. They’re ahead in eye candy, and the ability to run as non-admin. That’s it. Nothing else. And all of that will change when we see the real Longhorn, not a crippled hardware build.
nothing to see here.
You make it seem like they were hopping back and forth on codebases because the system just couldn’t handle it.
That’s exactly what I’m saying.
However, if you take a second to even think, you would realise that Win2k3 SP1 is built off of SP2’s codebase, and Longhorn is now built off of Win2k3 SP1’s codebase.
Imagine that, using the most recent stable codebase to use for your next version, whoulda thunk it?
No, you don’t understand. What they were building with Longhorn they first tried with the 2003 codebase, then moved to XP SP2 and now they’ve apparently moved back to 2003. the 2003 SP1 and XP SP2 codebases are totally different branches of development.
It’s XP and 2003 we’re talking about here, not different service packs and evolutions of 2003.
Hardware guys don’t care about shiny eye-candy like fanboys. It’s not Avalon-enabled.
Wow, really? Since this build is based on 2003 which has zero graphics support, then it will not be Avalon-enabled for quite some time. It looks like they haven’t even started.
And as it’s for hardware guys, what about the graphics vendors that Microsoft is relying on for all of this? What’s in there for them to test? Indeed, what’s in there for any hardware vendor at all?
Since this build is based on 2003 which has zero graphics support, then it will not be Avalon-enabled for quite some time. It looks like they haven’t even started.
Paul’s mentioned that you can enable Avalon, its just buggy in that build. That’s why its off. None of the screenshots show any of Avalon, the primary GUI.
And as it’s for hardware guys, what about the graphics vendors that Microsoft is relying on for all of this? What’s in there for them to test? Indeed, what’s in there for any hardware vendor at all?
They could be working directly with nVidia and ATI with different Avalon builds for all we know. In fact, its quite likely they are.
“Architecturally, in many ways, OS X is just catching up to XP”
I call XP the spaghetti disaster, architecturally it couldn’t be worse.
M$ is tearing-down XP altogether, by doing this they confirm their failure with XP. M$ knows that they need to make a clean break and that’s why Longhorn takes so long.
First off, I will state that I am a hardcore Windows geek, as in the NT kernel systems internals, device driver writing type. Nothing against the hardcore Linux crowd, I actually think Linux is fine system, though significantly different in mindset and application than my preferred platform.
That said, for those of us in the Windows community with a clue, Paul Thurrot has been an aggravation for years. He is among the most pompous and obnoxious fools in the industry. He knows nothing about Windows internals beyond what he can regurgitate from internal MS folks nice enough to give him the time of day. He knows next to nothing about enterprise Windows environments and concerns. He is literally the wanna-be who plays with this stuff in his house with NO frame of reference. He has been so far out of his depth for so long, I simply don’t understand why Penton Publishing allows this fool to tarnish what is other wide an excellent publication (Windows IP Pro).
His recent ploy to appear more “technical” and more “agnostic” by praising MacOS X (which absolutely does deserve praise, just not from him) and Linux is just that, nothing but an attempt to make himself appear smarter and more “with it” than he really is.
As for his review of 5048, what doesn’t he understand about an Alpha quality preview build?! The cool graphical effects? The core DCE was included, it just isn’t supported on the hardware he used (only limited GPU support as of this build). So what is build 5048, exactly what people like me need; a stable preview of the underlying OS code base on which to test code. This was, after all, WinHEC, not Comdex, that he was visiting.
Finally, a quick clarification for those of you don’t understand the whole build process for the current iterations of the NT code base: Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 are themselves derivatives of the SAME code base, XP being a slightly older build. Take PE Explorer and pry open ntoskrnl.exe and you will see the resource bitmaps for Whistler Server (a.k.a. Windows Server 2003). On the same token, open up Windows Server 2003 RTM builds of ntoskrnl and you will see Windows XP bitmaps. Yes, that’s right, they are the same OS, split at birth for marketing reasons (in fact, up until the release candidates, Windows Server 2003 was branded 5.1 SP1 not 5.2).
When the 4000 builds were incremented to 5000 builds, no one “threw out” the existing Longhorn code, the modules of code were simply checked in and compiled with the latest feature complete source tree which was now 2003 SP1, not XP SP2. Of course, that description is not nearly so self serving and sensational a description as that used by Paul.
In the end, Longhorn may or may not be a successful product, but Paul’s bitching is founded in his own increasing isolation from Microsoft and loss of credibility among his core readership. He is, to put it simply, unimportant, and that drives him nuts.
And in the always-wrong-predictions fields, John C. DVORAK is his twin brother. But there are many idiots to listen to these not less idiots but self-proclaimed “experts”.
It’s always funny when an asshole says “Hey, I know what’s wrong with this company and I know what they should do” with as large companies than MS, Apple or Sun. Childish.
But maybe it’s also the Osnews core target, isn’t it?
I think i’ve probably said this before but even build 5048 has new bits under the hood that we just can’t see. It’s not all there, but the parts needed for devs to make drivers is there and that’s all they wanted.
Also at WinHEC they gave out 3 disks full of tools just so you can make apps and drivers.
Also ATi and I think soon Nvidia will have WGF 1.0 compatible drivers for their cards, though longhorn will have WGF 2.0 in it’s final builds for more advanced 3d things, the WGF 1.0 spec works with all of todays DX9 cards.
UI aside all the new code under the hood is going to be great, from the kernel to the sound system. The new UI is just a bonus IMO.
Man, the window’s fanboy crowd is out in full force. I will not judge Longhorn till it comes out, but, this isn’t the only negative review that I have read of it, so there are a few other so called “experts” who think that it is crap.
Paul was upset, and maybe he has the right to be upset. How many people who are posting, actually have a copy of this build? How many of you who talk like you know everything, like you are part of the Longhorn development team, how many of you have this build, or a build at all?
I’ve seen posts of fanboys knocking any other OS than windows, when they most likely have very little expierence with Linux, or OSX. Actually they probably have little expierence with Linux, and none with OS X (since it takes different architecture to run it).
It’s ok that you love windows, and thinks that it’s the greates thing on the market, that is your god-given right. But as for me, I know previous versions of Windows, and they suck. They are all crap, and have crap under the hood. The company making the product doesn’t give a crap about it’s product.
While Linux isn’t the best OS for the desktop at the moment, at least the people developing it takes pride in their products, and the quality of them.
“It’s ok that you love windows, and thinks that it’s the greates thing on the market, that is your god-given right. But as for me, I know previous versions of Windows, and they suck. They are all crap, and have crap under the hood. The company making the product doesn’t give a crap about it’s product.
While Linux isn’t the best OS for the desktop at the moment, at least the people developing it takes pride in their products, and the quality of them.”
What total nonsense! Have you used PE Explorer to disassemble Windows ntoskrnl? Have you done a live kernel debug session and watched how the system actually works? Do you know what an IRP or a DPC is? Have you done ANY kernel device driver development? Have you even read Mark Russinovich’s books or articles?
Windows (of the NT variety) is far from perfect. But it isn’t crap. You sir are nothing but another ignorant ABM’er. If you like Linux, great, but stop trashing something you know little or nothing about.
Windows costs almost $300 Canadian for the full retail box. That’s just an operating system, browser, and instant messenger.
You would have to be a dumb ass to give one more dollar when quality alternatives exist.
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There are a few more things, but I get your point. If Microsoft were to include much more people would start complaining that they are trying to force everyone out of business by including things by default. Include less and the same will bitch about not enough features included.
I’ll be sticking with Windows XP because for me, there are no quality alternatives. Stable, no viruses/spyware, and runs what I need.
Yes, but I’m not familiar at all with installing stuff in Linux via the command line, and I can’t understand the instructions.
Perhaps you could help me out with that, or at least point me in the direction of some instructions that have been written with the beginning Linux user in mind? IF there isn’t such a guide, and you or someone else was willing to help me, I would be more than happy to write a beginner’s guide (at least specific to my wireless card).
i think he is just frustrated with the progress of the longhorn build both in GUI term and developer term. i mean even less progress than last year and still no bright future for a couple years. and with Macosx tiger and linux developemnet what level of developement has ms brought to the windows world(winxp =2001)?
Longhorn will be the best operating system.
Sorry sir, but I have been using Microsoft programs since the early 80’s. I think I know what the hell I am talking about. And you can talk all the crap you want about the NT kernel, but it is crap. No it’s not perfect, and it’s not the worst thing out there.
And I bet that’s the only kernel you ever really examind that close, since you can’t make an honest comparison with any other kernel on the market.
Fanboy.
“Sorry sir, but I have been using Microsoft programs since the early 80’s. I think I know what the hell I am talking about. And you can talk all the crap you want about the NT kernel, but it is crap. No it’s not perfect, and it’s not the worst thing out there.
And I bet that’s the only kernel you ever really examind that close, since you can’t make an honest comparison with any other kernel on the market.
Fanboy.”
This is the best you can do?!! Frankly, you are in over your head and you know it. Just another trash talking, know-nothing, OSNews troll.
Again sir…how am I over my head. I challenged you to compare the inner workings of all the kernels. Again you fail to answer anything, and fall back on something you probably read before. At least I can post with my name, not as “anonymous”.
You are just a fanboy, who know’s nothing.
Prove me wrong…oh..that’s right, you will just go to your favorite fanboy website, and steal info from there.
Why do people fight over this stuff? Just use what you want to use and STFU.
I’ve seen posts of fanboys knocking any other OS than windows, when they most likely have very little expierence with Linux, or OSX. Actually they probably have little expierence with Linux, and none with OS X (since it takes different architecture to run it).
I have experience developing on Windows and on Linux. Windows is a HELL of a lot easier to develop for, and a better architecture based on my experience. The only part linux is better at is being able to be ported to just about any system. But that comes at a cost.
It’s ok that you love windows, and thinks that it’s the greates thing on the market, that is your god-given right. But as for me, I know previous versions of Windows, and they suck. They are all crap, and have crap under the hood. The company making the product doesn’t give a crap about it’s product.
You know what’s under the hood?! Wow, why are you holding back?! Post what you know!