Microsoft’s new version of the Windows operating system, code named Longhorn, is scheduled for release in 2005/2006. I believe that this new version of Windows is Microsoft’s trump card in its, yet early, battle against Linux on the desktop and the Open Source Software (OSS) movement in general.
Editorial Notice: All opinions are those of the author and not necessarily those of osnews.com
I do not believe Microsoft would have had the motivation to purse many of the ideas presented at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference (PDC) had it not been for the competition Linux presents. I may be wrong about this, although this seems to be a typical strategy” of Mr. Gates’. Either way, the fact remains, Microsoft is now pursuing a course to “revolutionize” computing once again.
Longhorn is innovative in a number of ways. One of its major strengths is that it is almost entirely built upon an overarching and increasingly refined architecture called the .NET framework. The .NET framework is composed of the common language runtime (CLR) and a unified set of class libraries, providing developers with a core one-stop shop for all their programming needs.
According to Microsoft, the CLR “manages much of the plumbing involved in developing software, enabling developers to focus on the core business logic code”. The .NET framework supports over 20 programming languages which can be compiled to run via the CLR. In Microsoft parlance, this is called managed code. Of course most development for .NET is done with Microsoft’s own C# and Visual Basic (VB) languages. In this regard .NET is in competition with Sun System’s Java, where the CLR is basically equivalent to a Java Virtual Machine (JVM). In fact, IBM is in direct competition with Microsoft, offering an equivalent toolset centered around a Java-centric development environment called Eclipse, of course, running on Linux. Mind you, at first, it was Microsoft who was playing catch-up with Java, and the likely reason for the birth of .NET in the first place. But they have surpassed Java at this point. Additionally, there are, in fact, a number of other initiatives along these lines. Parrot is a VM being developed primarily for Perl6, and Ruby will eventually have RITE, and so forth.
It is interesting to note that one of the earliest general use VMs is called VP, which stands for Virtual Processor. VP was first developed in the 80’s, on the Amiga platform, and is a very low-level proprietary VM that is at the heart of the Intent Real Time Operating System (iRTOS) previously known as Taos, then later Elate. iRTOS underlies the very successful Intent Multimedia framework licensed to embedded developers by the Taos Group. It is very small, sometimes referred to as a nano-kernel, and very fast. It runs on a multitude of CPU architectures so that programs compiled to VP do not require recompile to run on any of the supported architectures. It is also inherently grid-enabled. And is (or at least was) a key component of the new Amiga. It is rather amazing technology. But it is not Open.
The .NET classes are extensive and are rather well developed and documented. These classes make it “easy” to “build, deploy, and administer secure, robust, and high-performing applications”. The classes include basic functionality such as input/output,
string manipulation, security management, network communications, thread management, text management, and user interface design features. Most notably they include the ADO.NET classes for interaction with data accessed in the form of XML through the OLE DB, ODBC, Oracle, and SQL Server interfaces. XML classes enable XML manipulation, searching, and translations; and the ASP.NET classes which support Web-based applications and Web services; and obviously the Windows Forms classes for desktop-based client applications. “Together, the class libraries provide a common, consistent development interface across all languages supported by the .NET Framework.”
On Linux we have many shared libraries to call upon, but nothing as unified and standardized as .NET. Although in many ways this is a strength of Linux and OSS, it is also it’s Achilles’ heel. A very large percentage of OSS development is unorganized and redundant. We may make fun of Microsoft’s slogan, “Where do you want to go today?” but OSS developers may wish to be a little less smug and consider the fact that they spend substantial amounts of time “reinventing the wheel”. The closet comparable entity that Linux and the OSS movement has to .NET falls under the GNU project. Indeed, it is a very respectable project consisting a wide range of standards, libraries and applications, genrally based around the GUI toolkit GTK+. These range from the component model
Bonobo and low-level APIs like GTK+, to complete applications like Gnumeric and Abiword and the full-on desktop environment Gnome. Ironically though, another similiar project, KDE, is more commonly used by Linux end-users, although it is based on a quasi-proprietary GUI toolkit, Qt. Commercial standards, it seems, do have their advantages.
Some of the important innovations that Longhorn is set to provide the industry, and the Windows
user at large, a few years from now, are:
- Pervasive use of XML as a single document markup systax and its related technologies.
- WinFS, a new file system based around relational database technology and natural language like meta-queries
- New user interface technologies based on DirectX, in place of the GDI interface.
Every window in the release version will be a 32-bit, z-buffered, 3D surface - A new presentation and UI design subsystem, codenamed “Avalon,” based around a declaretive markup
styntax, the Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) - A new communications architecture, codenamed “Indigo,” that is an enhanced
and integrated version of Microsoft’s .NET framework - “Improved” security and digital rights management with it’s Next-Generation Secure Computing Base
This is only a large overviewing selection of innovations.
There are many other Microsoft research project and sub-projects going into
Longhorn and certainly there may be more by the time 2006 rolls around. I have heard a number of voices
in the OSS community consider these things “old hat” and “what’s the big deal?” material.
This may be easy to say from this side of the time line, but when Longhorn rolls out, it WILL be a big deal.
And those same naysayers will eventually have to admit that this .NET Longhorn stuff is alright.
It is “alright” simply because it improves upon a number of end-user needs: it easies development and
deployment, enriches the end-user experience, and quells corporate concerns over digital rights,
just to name a few of the major addresses.
GNU/Linux, and OSS in general, does not lack for many of these innovations.
Although most are in early alpha stages, the ground work is present. The real problem lies in the
overall lack of unification of its many diverse camps, and the general approach that has been
taken toward competing with Windows. Thus far GNU/Linux has primarily approached competition
with Windows in two ways.
The most well known of these is called WINE. And it is essentially a development
project to directly emulate the functionality of Windows’ class libraries within Linux.
This allows an end-user the best of both worlds. They can run Linux applications
side-by-side with Windows applications. There is of course a severe draw back
to this. WINE development is always a step, or two or three, behind what is coming out of Redmond.
The real incentive of WINE is therefore to provide a means for users to migrate from older
versions of Windows to Linux without having to sacrifice certain functionality, i.e. applications,
to which they have grown accustomed. Obviously this is a double-edged sword. But we must give credit
to the WINE team, they have made amazing strides. Who would have even thought it possible?
WINE can even run intensive native Windows games like the SIMs. Truly an amazing
feet of backwards engineering.
The other approach is to indirectly emulate Microsoft Windows functionality in
native Linux libraries and applications. For example both Gnome and KDE include a emulation
of the Windows taskbar and systems tray. (This is not to argue that such icon menus did
not exist prior to Windows’ –that is not the point.), or the Control Panels that KDE and
other distributions now offer. This kind of development is being done across the board.
Although there is some innovation, a great deal of development is of a “we can do what you can do”
nature. Much of this work has similar goals to WINE, but differ by their focus on interoperability.
Samba is the tour de force example of this. Samba allows Linux system to communicate with,
and even centrally serve as, Windows networking systems. Again this improves migration.
A newer third way of competing with Windows has emerged, blatant indirect emulation.
This method is solely embodied in the Mono project. Mono intends to create a compatible .NET CLR
for Linux along with compatible versions of the majority of the .NET classes with various
levels of substitution targeting the GNU tools, such as GTK+ in place of Windows’ GDI.
Mono has the more ambitious goal of actually running “99ish% parallel” to Microsoft and the
.NET framework. Rather then enable end-users to run Windows application, or interoperate
with other Windows systems, Mono allows developers to easily migrate their .NET
applications to Linux with a minimal amount fuss. Like the WINE and Samba teams, the
Mono developers have made amazing strides. I was particularly impressed, upon visiting the
Mono website, with the amount of quality work that is coming out of this project. A number
of Mono compilers have already been written and a number of fairly functional applications
already exist. It does give one pause, as a developer, to make the move to Mono. But immediately
one considers moving back to Windows and using the real .NET! And there’s the rub.
Inherent in all three of these approaches, although admittedly wonderful technologies,
is one BIG FAT PROBLEM — They all play second fiddle to Microsoft Windows.
Like the little dog jumping over the back of of his Alpha-male buddy,
repeatedly begging for his kibbles-n-bits, none of these projects bring
anything particularly new to the table. On the whole, it is but a catch-up game,
day in and day out. There may be some migration advantages to this, but on the whole
it represents the single most devastating disadvantage of GNU/Linux.
Linux offers little compelling reason for users to switch platforms,
other then Linus Torvalds’ gift to the world of a rock solid and free OS kernel.
Yet most end-users have no idea what a kernel is, or even care, and rightly so.
The end-user only cares about what the system as a whole enables
him or her to do. If GNU/Linux is, for the most part, always working to catch up with Windows,
then the everyday end-user will be very much satisfied to keep with what they know.
Moreover, GNU/Linux will never be anything more the a Windows alternate, suitable only for those elite
citizens of the in the know Geekdom.
Only Redhat, and, to a lesser degree, a few other distributors such as SUSE, have really made any
strides in beating Windows on an equal footing. They have done this by focusing squarely
on a single important aspect for a narrower but lucrative area of the IT industry:
the Total Cost of Ownership of Enterprise Services. Many look to this
as the burgeoning proof of Linux’s ultimate success. But this success has quite a bit to do with
the Apache web server, for which Microsoft has had to play catch-up themselves and still remains second to,
although reportedly they are gaining! Others point to the growing embedded market,
where Linux share has done fairly well and continues to improve. But both of these are
essentially vertical markets –areas in which the market is comparatively narrow.
In this arena alternate systems have a much greater chance of success especially when backed
by strong supporting corporations.
Just the same, the ultimate power lies with the end-user. This is so simply because the
end-user is at the one at the end of the line in the use chain. If an end-user’s
clientware only functions optimally when served by the officially compatible serviceware,
the end-user will have little desire to pursue an alternative, nor will the Enterprise wish
to serve with anything but that which most enables their paying user-base.
This phenomena already exists on the Web where a number of sites do not work properly unless
accessed with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
Make no mistakes about it. Bill Gates is quite possibly the shrewdest business man
who ever was. Any testament of Openness on his part is just a means to pull open sourcers
away from Linux and ultimately OSS tools in general. When the time comes Mono will be pushed into a corner.
They will have difficulty staying on good terms with Microsoft. Microsoft will create a means,
if they haven’t already conceived of it, to use Mono to their advantage.
It may be as simple as requiring a licensing fee for every copy of Mono
distributed. Or it may be just subtle persistent changes to Windows, so that Mono clients don’t always
function correctly when accessing real .NET services. Any rational person who has kept abreast
of all Microsoft’s past activity knows something along these lines will happen.
And mind you, I’m not blaming Microsoft per se. They have every right to compete in the market.
It isn’t their fault if the the OSS community isn’t putting up much of a fight.
References:
ExtremeTech Preview of Lonoghorn, http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1368535,00.asp NGSCB, http://www.microsoft.com/resources/ngscb/default.mspx Microsoft .NET framework, http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/technologyinfo/default.aspx Taos Group, http://www.tao-group.com/ Amiga Anywhere, http://www.amiga-anywhere.com/ WINE, http://www.winehq.com/ The GNU Project and FSF, http://www.gnu.org/ Gnome, http://www.gnome.org/ Mono, http://www.go-mono.com/ KDE http://www.kde.org/ Samba, http://www.samba.org/ Apache, http://www.apache.org/
Sure, Linux is putting pressure on Microsoft to be a leader and to innovate. It’s actually SUN who innovated, and than Microsoft took up the market of middleware with .Net. Microsoft has a lot of resources, and it has paid off for them not to lead but to sit back and wait for someone else to generate the ideas. Than once a favorable idea was implemented, Microsoft was able to rush in with more resources than anyone else. This time Microsoft is actually being a true leader and innovating, however this is very far from being over and Linux is just begining to realize it’s potential.
> Microsoft will create a means, if they haven’t already
> conceived of it, to use Mono to their advantage. It may be
> as simple as requiring a licensing fee for every copy of
> Mono distributed.
<sarchasm>Yes, and I request a fee of $50.00 for every copy of Linux distributed.</sarchasm>
I’m sorry but business doesn’t work like this. I think having Microsoft rapidly change the .NET API to stumble Mono sounds like a more plausible possibility.
Ofcourse Linux should play their cards more intelligently, they should lead in a way that it would be difficult for Microsoft to compete with, and that is obviously through the source code. Linux should focus on making tools that help people leverage the source code and build new systems or maintain and integrate their current one.
Java has a VM that runs on tons of platforms..C# will run on windows……….
if you implement a dotGNU application, you have better portability since the windows forms in portable.net will run on windows, mac OS X, and Linux. however, you are still at the whim of MS for getting apps to run on windows because they can change how THEY run stuff so as to lock out portable.net applications.
C# was developed to have a solution for a nonexistent problem.
it does not have the write once run anyware-ness of Java, and it is more cumbersome to write OO code in than C++ and it is slower than C/C++, as is any managed code written in any supported language,
did it fill a hole for MS? sure, it gave them a marketing tool, but they could have built .net and managed APIs with out inventing C# or any language like it.
> I think having Microsoft rapidly change the .NET API to stumble Mono sounds like a more plausible possibility.
and thereby making all programs that use the same API incompatiable. Yeah, thats very plausible.
But I sorta agree with the writter of the article. GNU/Linux has seen little innovation that has gone directly to the user. Not saying things like NTPL arnt intellegent, but I am talking about revolutionary innovations. The reasons are fairly simple. We are talking about OpenSource!
1) Things move much slower in the open source world then they do in the non open source world. For a ‘standered’ to be adobted and estableshed and coded, and hammered out between 10 different projects. Or each projects goes its own way and we have 15 different incompatiable implementations of the same thing.
2) In OpenSource, unless the project in funded by a company, most projects are started as ‘pets’, hobbies, or reaserch type projects. Not many projects are started out as ‘OK, This and this is wrong, lets rewrite this from scratch’. This is because these projects usually start from groups of small developers, and they know that they dont have the man power to do all of that.
Also, there is no final goal in open source. Its just a mass jumble of projects that pull linux in a veraiaty of directions, hopfully making some sense. For example, a file system isnt designed to be made accessiable to the gui. Or a configuration file isnt made so that a nice configuration dialog can be done. Or a libraries apis are rarely made to fit-in with apis of simmilar libraries. These ‘cross project’ avenues are hardly traveled. And when they are, it is usually between VERY mature projects. Once again going back to the fact that things are slower in OSS.
Atleast my $ 0.02
WinFS, a new file system…
No. And it doesn’t stand for “Windows File System” for anyone jumping to contradict me. It is the Windows Future Storage. NTFS is still the file system.
I should just leave the rest of the errors to those more knowledgeable than myself. However, the entire theme of the article seems to present the idea that if Linux doesn’t work for 100% realtime interoperability with Windows application, they are not competing.
The real problem lies in the overall lack of unification of its many diverse camps, and the general approach that has been taken toward competing with Windows. Thus far GNU/Linux has primarily approached competition with Windows in two ways.
What? Maybe the Linux developer community has worked for interoperability with native Windows applications in two primary ways. But that’s because there are only two or three ways even possible! You can; emulate (WINE), run natively (VMware), or have a somewhat standardized codebase (Mono).
Linux is competing with Windows in an immeasurable number of areas. Far too many to be covered by this two page article. The author doesn’t seem knowledgeable enough about either Longhorn or Linux to make any claims. And I am admittedly fairly lacking in these areas myself.
Longhorn hasn’t “revolutionized” anything on the desktop yet. It won’t come out for several years, and it is ridiculous, ignorant, and foolish to try to claim either Apple, Linux, or Microsoft will have the most “super-duper-1337-MEGA-OS” in 2006. Stop the rampant speculation, and regurgitation of marketing hype.
Everyone is either waving their pompoms and jumping around like a 14 year old cheerleader, or saying “Longhorn sUxx0rz!!1!” based on a pre-beta release.
How about we just wait and see, kids? Thanks.
I agree that Micrsoft’s “roadmap” is a significant improvement if they can pull it off. An improvement over their existing designs more than anything else.
Little of it is really innovative, as plenty of people will point out. The author is correct in stating that the success of other systems is probably the only reason these changes are coming about.
But regardless of how other systems compare in the details, it’s Microsoft’s battle to win or lose. They dominated the industry, and now they have to fight to stay on top. Part of their strategy means that they will confine their progress to their own systems, and sooner or later their hold on the market will start to slip.
I like this one the best: “Linux offers little compelling reason for users to switch platforms, other then Linus Torvalds’ gift to the world of a rock solid and free OS kernel.”
How about linux offers LESS COST and NO LOCK-IN.
Yet another present reality vs Longhorn FUDWare article.
Having said that,
It *is* a shame that there’s not more OSS projects, like Apache, that _define_ a class of software. What can we do to bring the Next Great Thing to OSS? What is the next gret thing? It’s not WinFS, Avalon, Indigo, or Aero. Those things are just refinements and/or copies of what already exists, not anything new. It’s just a snazzier WIMP gui and some network services. .Net amounts to some new class libraries. Apache, on the other hand, sucessfully enabled a previous Next Great Thing — the world-wide web — and still runs two-thirds of the websites in existance and enjoys better security, portability, programmability and standards compliance than Microsoft’s wannabe product, IIS.
If we can predict what will really be important in 2006, and get there before MSFT, we’ll have another Apache.
Longhorn looks promising. Problem is, it’s vaporware (release date : 2005 – 2010 ?). Gone are the days when Microsoft could sabotage the competition (Novell, for instance) by describing the exciting features of their next OS (the yet to be conceived child will be the undisputed Heavyweight champion 25 years from now).
Now, no matter what antics Bill Gates resorts to, others will keep improving their favorite free OS. Microsoft executives say whatever comes to their mind because, like Madonna or Michael Jackson, publicity serves them well. Maybe they should remember that 3 years is an awful lot of time in the IT industry.
What should be discussed is the level of nuisance Longhorn will certainly introduce in our computing experience. Customers have come to believe that viruses, spyware, forced registration, …, ever changing specifications are inevitable. These malware are treated like acts of God. If this is how Microsoft revolutionized computing years ago, forgive me but I’ll pass on their second attempt to do the same thing.
Granted, Bill Gates et al. are shrewd businessmen. The problem is that some of their competitors don’t care about the amount of money they can extort from users.
Certainly Longhorn is still vaporware at the moment, but the author does do a good job of pointing out what needs to happen if the OSS community wants to make sure it is ahead by the time Longhorn comes around. OSS is splintered and disorganized. The falling release date of Longhorn is present a one in a million chance for OSS to get something killer out before the competition. I think the author is trying to point out that we shouldn’t squander this opportunity by remaining as fractured as ever.
What someone was saying earlier about the Next Big Thing is true. Certainly MS is keeping its eyes open for Big Things to get incorporated into Longhorn before it ships. Our task is to take advantage of the fact their they are having to remain mostly inactive in the interval, and to produce a system that competes with and hopefully supercedes what they have. While their work has to remain behind bars until Longhorn ships, we can have the new advancements out as soon as they’re ready.
I think that what OSS needs is a coherent set of objectives. They need not be official, only semi-official. Someone needs to keep a moderated list of desirable OSS features, to to encourage others to work on projects from the list. Fortunately Microsoft has given us some good goals. We know what we need to beat. Now, get coding.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994215
Microsoft’s old buddy and new technology (probably which won’t be out for a couple of years… just like Longhorn). Vanderpool, multiple OSes… You needs only one, right?
For sure, Microsoft is not dumb enough to totally eliminate the competition, and then be accused of being a monopoly, anti-competitive, slapped back to court for another antitrust lawsuit…
Linux as well as other OSS have 3 years to keep improving, and by then, hopefully it will have some sort of “3d interface” just like Longhorn and OSX… The new plans by whoever today on OGL accelerated X and stuff seems promising, if not a long time coming already.
Hype is what this article is… Post-PDC hype.
This “innovation” thing is very funny. Neither platform is terribly innovative. Its too dangerous put actual innovation into a commercial product. All of these technologies are fairly mature, proven, and already implemented in other systems. The CLR, for example, was developed by an outside company which Microsoft bought. So was DirectX and other technologies.
By the logic of the author, OSS should continually be playing catchup. Is that why Linux does some of Microsoft’s own “innovations” better than they do? KParts and COM/OLE are very similar. Yet, KParts is used much more extensively (and powerfully) than in KDE than OLE is used in Windows. Its embrace and extend all over again, except this time Microsoft is on the recieving end.
Technologically, Linux and its major desktops are ahead of Microsoft’s current offerings. There is no reason to believe that this won’t continue for the forseeable future.
“And mind you, I’m not blaming Microsoft per se. They have every right to compete in the market. It isn’t their fault if the the OSS community isn’t putting up much of a fight.”
I think it IS Microsoft’s fault. Questionable business tactics, undocumented API’s, changing undocumented file formats, all within the context of an established infrastructure. From where I stand, it’s rather impressive, given the circumstances, how much of a fight the OSS community is giving!
…although he underestimate the combined power of MS’s rivals, who are rallying under the Linux banner. I also take exception to this as well:
And mind you, I’m not blaming Microsoft per se. They have every right to compete in the market.
Yes they do. But they can’t abuse their monopoly position without suffering the consequences. They got away with a wrist slap the first time – they should’nt force their luck!
Basically all I have to say to the author is who cares! Adopting Windows Longhorn is only helping enforce a computerized control of the world. Free software will prevail I hope.
Every single release they put out == more bloat and slower system performance.
At least one the Linux kernel side every release seems to speed things up and clean up bloat.
As time marches on computers get cheaper. MS software keeps getting more expensive.
By the time 2005 rolls around will consumers still be willing to spend perhaps 2x to 4x more to outfit their new hardware with whatever set of MS packages they want?
>The .NET framework is composed of the common language >runtime (CLR) and a unified set of class libraries, >providing developers with a core one-stop shop for all >their programming needs.
This has already been done, they call it java (jäv, äh). Which Microsoft has been trying to “embrace and extend” since it’s inception.
>In this regard .NET is in competition with Sun System’s >Java, where the CLR is basically equivalent to a Java >Virtual Machine (JVM).
Oh, lookee. You already knew that. Well let’s look at some other “innovative new</>” features longhorn touts.
>Pervasive use of XML as a single document markup systax and its related technologies.
Which they didn’t invent and will no doubt mangle.
>WinFS, a new file system based around relational database technology and natural language like meta-queries
Which is, basically, NTFS with a mSQL backend. Hardly innovative. [i]But it’s worth bearing in mind that “Database Filesystems” are not a new idea – in fact, they’ve been in widespread use for many years. For a prime example, one need look no further than to IBM – their OS/400 operating system, which runs on the iSeries (previously known as the AS/400) minicomputers, features what can best be described as a “DB2 filesystem”. From http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=4992
>A new presentation and UI design subsystem, codenamed >”Avalon,” based around a declarative markup styntax, the >Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML)
Mozilla already invented this, it’s called XUL. There’s even a desktop that already uses it. http://www.oeone.com/
Let’s see, their flagship web browser was a clone of mosiac, the DOS filesystem was basically a rip-off of QDOS. Their NEW CLI, basically, reinvents the wheel (bourne, korn, csh, tcsh, perlsh, bash). Their .NET initiative sounds strangely similar to Sun Microsystems “Web Services” based on Java servlets, jps’s, etc (which nobody was particularly thrilled with. What makes you think everyone will jump on board with Microsoft’s implementation of old technology?)
Where exactly is the “innovation”? The revolutionary interface is just a slick wrapping over a box of shit. Their “new” technology has been around for years.
Since when did OSNews start running infomercials thinly veiled as news?
some of you guys don’t get it. this is a good article, at least for me
it resonates many of the things that have been in my mind regarding linux development. linux is really cool and i do hope it dominates the world in all areas of computing but there’s always the feeling of playing catch-up to microsoft, at least as far as the desktop is concerned.
gnome and KDE may have improved significantly over the last couple of years, but they just continue to ape the windows GUI for the most part. sure they have innovative stuff too (kparts mentioned in this article) but then who really uses them??? and gnome and KDE have so many things aesthetically in common yet a gnome app cannot run in KDE and vice versa. how pitiful. there’s always the reinventing the wheel syndrome.
i just don’t know how disparate OSS teams could be made to cooperate with each other across projects (it’s no problem having them cooperate within projects though). like i’d like to see the day when it won’t matter whether i have gnome or KDE coz all apps will run on either. X is also outmoded…i don’t know if it’s time to have something to replace this aging dinosaur.
i also hope that unique applications/ideas will come out of the open source camp. so many of the things that are present are just alternatives to commercial stuff. the day when we see really new things come out of OSS is the day that world domination will really begin
All this Longhorn speculation is useless. There is no point pitting Linux against an OS that doesn’t even exist yet. When Longhorn comes out, we can have discussions ’till we’re blue in the face about the technical details of Reiser4 vs NTFS. But until then, its just MS’s forward looking statements vs, well, vs, nothing, because OSS developers don’t make forward looking statements!
oh yeah, one more thing…micro$oft is far from an innovative company. they do seem to take others’ ideas and market them tremendously and gain lots of market share…dunno why that happens though
… lots of examples out there…their GUI, the web server, the database server, .NET, their filesystem, etc.
Personnally I think that alot of what is good and innovative in the GNU/Linux world is not being promoted. One of the comments pointed out that WinFS runs on top of NTFS. In GNU/Linux there is a wealth of robust innovate, new and fantastic file systems to chose from but not alot of people in Windows land would know about them.
The GNOME and KDE desktops also have some fantastic innnovations – and yes some of them are clones of functionality in Windows (and Mac) and some are original. Again promotion would seem to be lacking.
On the development front there is allot of inconsistancy. But the situation is not as bad as it used to be. If one looks around you can find ‘frameworks’ and various development tools. Finally projects like Mono are providing great development tools – again Mono was born out of .NET, but Microsoft itself got .NET from a bright young uni student who had just finished a greath PhD and then went an started a company. 5 seconds later MS offer more $ than he (they) had ever seen and a little polish and marketing latter and you have .NET.
I think MS is rather like old Ray Kroc and MacDonalds. Ray saw the MacDonald brothers and did not think Hamburgers were going to make him rich. He thought that real estate would. Micrsoft, to an extent, is like this. They know how to make something sound good to the market place, with a little bit of polishing. They might come up with the polish and the marketing, but if you examine their history they have come up with very few original ideas of their own. But they have a great formula – buy, polish and market – and it is a formula that is making them rich with a capital R.
What GNU/Linux needs is now a new project – not one centered around a new piece of software – but rather how to be the ultimate marketer and co-ordinator of open source projects that wish to participate so that the rest of the world knows that they are there.
Open source does have innovation, great products, documentation and support. It just needs some fantastic ideas to let the world know that it is out there, what it can do, and that people can trust it. It needs to look sexy. That, really, is what is setting MS apart from open source. I believe that open source can do this, and they don’t need billions to do it. Just some smart ideas.
gnome and KDE may have improved significantly over the last couple of years, but they just continue to ape the windows GUI for the most part.
>>>>>>>
Do you use GNOME or KDE? They don’t feel like Windows any more than BeOS feels like Windows. They’ve got a taskbar and a start menu, that’s about it. Does the Windows taskbar supports panel applets? Does it let you put panels anywhere on the desktop? Does it let you remove the menubar from the window and put it anywhere you want?
sure they have innovative stuff too (kparts mentioned in this article) but then who really uses them???
>>>>>>>
KDE users. Every day. KParts are pervasively used throughout KDE. Major apps like Konqueror and Kontact are just shells for KParts. Lower levels of the technology (DCOP) are used by literally every KDE app.
and gnome and KDE have so many things aesthetically in common yet a gnome app cannot run in KDE and vice versa. how pitiful. there’s always the reinventing the wheel syndrome.
>>>>>>>>>
Huh? Starts up Epiphany. Starts up Konqueror. Works for me!
X is also outmoded…i don’t know if it’s time to have something to replace this aging dinosaur.
>>>>>>>>>
Because you know *so much* about GUIs. You do realize that WinXP’s design is derived from VMS. Talk about a dinosaur. Oh wait, age has abso-f*ing-lutely nothing to do with quality!
Incompatible file formats would be a non issue if Linux was a leader, but they can not lead unless they innovate in areas that Microsoft can not bring it’s all powerful resources to market.
This area is the source code, so it makes no sense to take Redhat’s stand and say that in X number of years Linux will be ready, because they will never be ready unless they develop a strategy based on their stength, an area where they can compete with an advantage (competitive advantage). If the open source community focused on developing tools that made working with and understanding the source code easier, than the developers could lead through projects that are oriented to system implementation. Open source software can experiment and deploy much faster than a closed product because Linux is a platform, not a product, it is not constrained by the need to protect the factors of production (The R&D), a platform is able to handle more risk.
Vendors who plan to build their product around Linux, need to provide learning resources to the Linux community.
Excellent article.
One thing that MS seems to do very well is infrastructure stuff. The folks at Microsoft understand the holy grail that is backwards compatibility. Recently I experienced a DOS program from 1980 running a legacy book database on Windows XP! The fact that one can run 20 year old programs on a modern OS is not something to be overlooked.
MS will embrace and develop new infrastructure, but they know better than to break the old stuff. This is something the free software community hasn’t really had to think about until now. I’m glad that Red Hat and SUSE are really starting to concentrate on putting out very stable platforms.
Imagine, when Longhorn debuts in 2006, Red Hat Enterprise Linux may be nearing version 5. If Red Hat takes backwards compat. seriously, then by then there are going to be some amazingly robust applications for Linux.
Whether you are a commercial developer or a free software developer, if you plan to produce a quality product, you don’t do it on a platform that could be swept out from under you tomorrow.
Now that Linux companies are taking this fact seriously the Unix development philosophy can only get stronger in the years to come.
I’m not convinced Microsoft, no matter what fancy tricks and buzzwords they develop, can ever top the experience of development in a robust and stable GNU/Linux/Unix environment.
All you traditional Perl tweakers and CLI hackers out there had better hide, because there are plenty of us former Windows Whackers(tm) who’ve made the move to Open Source. We’ve brought our ideas for what makes an OS look and feel good with us. And since you loved us enough to give us the source to tinker with, that’s all she wrote.
You have been warned.
This is one of two things that are going to knock Microsoft off the top of the hill (I’ll mention the second in a moment). There were things about Windows that we didn’t like, but it wasn’t easy to change things. It *is* easy with open source.
Hey, I’m a guy who once loved Windows 98 to death. Now I tell everyone that KDE rocks like Van Halen doing backup for T-Bone through the Grateful Dead’s PA system. I feel so limited when I go back to Windows now, I can’t stand it. (Yes, even Windows XP.)
Innovate. Try new stuff. Go 3D. Why should I have to stack these treacly, two-dimensional windows on top of one another? Why not give me a REAL 3D interface? Let me zoom out from one application, then use the mouse wheel to zoom in on another, all on the same screen.
Who’s gonna do that, Microsoft? I don’t think so. A bunch of long-haired Gnu types with more time that sense will do it. Just wait and see.
The second thing that no one is considering is that Microsoft isn’t very popular overseas. Even if I’m wrong, the worst case scenario will be that the US of A remains a 90+% Microsoft realm, while Europe and Asia go almost entirely to Linux (or some other free/open OS).
This is my 25 cents worth. (Inflation; 2 cents don’t buy squat anymore. [g])
If you sat down to ask 90% of the developers who develop open source software for linux regarding their competition against Windows, all of them will tell you they don’t really give damn about Windows. Windows needs all these, so called needless “innovations” to stay in business. Linux, open source, doesn’t. Windows needs to demonstrate to you that it will be profitable into the foreseeable future. Linux, open source, doesn’t. Windows needs to spread as much FUD about Linux, and do everything within their means, marketing, propaganda, lying, FUDware ads to discredit Linux. Linux, open source, doesn’t. Windows needs to innovate. Linux, open source, doesn’t. Windows has a billion or more dollars invested in R&D. Linux, open source, doesn’t.
To the author, even if Linux doesn’t innovate for the next century, it doesn’t affect it’s status. Heck, isn’t the assumed role of Linux to play second fiddle? When has linux or open source ever claimed to be innovators? Isn’t that the marketing jingles of commercial entities like Apple and Microsoft, to mention a few. It is mundane to conclude that Linux competes with Windows. It is further misconscruing to say it does so from a technological perspective, or on a quest to reach the next level of innovativative accolade. In fact, Linux shouldn’t be the innovator. Big business like Microsoft who can afford to spend billions on R&D should. The fact that you and Microsoft consider Linux as a great threat is as shameful as it is flattering to open source enthusiast. Because, in reality, we don’t consider Microsoft threat, nor do we believe them to be innovators.
The aim of open source isn’t to compete with Windows, that might be Red Hat, SUSE, IBM or whatevers goal. The aim of open source is to provide an alternative to the inequities, unfairness and monopolies of proprietary software. If by accident open source happens to be in competition with Windows and a factor that might put their products in jeopardy, then that’s just a side effect of the progress, prosperity and posterity thate open source has become and is becoming.
It’s silly to think Professor Campbell sitting in front of the TV with his laptop and bottle of beer beside him trying to perfect, his already widely used open sourced excellent rendering engine for a browser, and applying patches he just received from Joe Anonymous, who he has never met in person but who’s patches has just added support for a new pop up blocker, is in competition with a multibillion dollar monopoly that still doesn’t offer pop up blocking for it’s “innovative” browser.
I also find it silly to compare the product of a hobbyist to that of a specialist or professional. Correct me if I’m wrong, isn’t the specialist or professional supposed to be a step or two ahead? If the specialist or professional were truly innovative, I’d say 5 to 10 steps ahead. But perhaps I am the silly one. But perhaps, I’m wrong. Perhaps, John Dilly, a software engineering student, who hacks away at gtk+ every sunday, should be as innovative as Microsoft. Or perhaps we should just cease this needless comparisons and/or the quest to be the next innovator and rather concentrate on solving problems and sharing our findings with other.
Open source development has it’s shortcomings. But your Microsoft propaganda aren’t it’s solutions.
…but there’s a heck of a lot of ground (and a lot of time) that has to be covered by then.
I wish more writers would make that absolutely clear. It is not a shipping product, and it shouldn’t be treated as such.
It’s excessive coverage like this that drove so many people to make financial committments to the Microsoft “Chicago” release a couple of years before it actually hit the market (many of them were convinced by writers in the industry trade rags that Chicago was going to be a real live 32-bit consumer OS completely redesigned from the ground up).
We all know how true THAT was…
First of all, there is no OSS movement. Open Source is useless if you can’t do anything with the software. Windows CE is Open Source. Java is Open Source. Neither are free. There is a Free Software movement, and a group of splinter trolls.
Now, that that’s out of the way, since when did emulating Windows become a goal of GNU? Or even implementing the same features? Trying to do that does nothing to draw any separation between the platforms other than cost and support. This, of course, is the absolute wrong direction to go in. His implication seems to be that every desktop should be able to do exactly the same things with the slight differences in implementation. No. I don’t want a taskbar and systray (something he mentions in the article).
The Samba and WINE projects don’t serve to replicate windows, rather, they serve as a bridge for interoperability. There is nothing wrong with that.
The bigger question is what is the right tool for the job. Windows is a fine desktop OS. It is a positively lousy server OS. GNU/Linux (or any of the other Unix clones) is a barely adequte desktop OS, but a good server OS. If Free Software is going to aim at the desktop, it’s going to have to jettison the dated model that Unix provides. If Windows wants to be a serious player in the server market, it needs to strip out every vestage of single-user insecure code left.
I suppose we’ll see what happens.
-Linux is about learning. Especially through generalizaton leading to system implementation on a platform as opposed to specialized solutions based on a product strategy.
-The goal of open source software is to put control into the hands of the users by making the factors of production (The R&D) accessible (tools) and open (Platform versus Product).
-Vendors who want to base their product on Linux can take ideas from the knowledge pool and form a market around an experimental technology that they can base on a product line with a strategy that discovers leadership through competitive advantage.
-Since Microsoft has huge resources and it is difficult to compete with them and win the market, the Linux vendors should provide the open source community with learning resources so that we can make the source code more accessible with tools. This is one area in which Microsoft would have to struggle to compete, it is the competitive advantage that Linux vendors can take to the market.
-Innovation is about creating a market for an idea and winning the market with a strategy. The innovation happens somewhere only once and it is through leadership that the vendor maintains customer demand.
Exactly what is this “dated model that UNIX provides?” How is it holding back the desktop? Here is what is really holding back Linux on the desktop:
1) Application support. A lot of people simply can’t use Linux until they get the apps for it. Office users and developers are in a pretty good spot, but people like web authors aren’t. This isn’t a technical thing, its just a market forces thing.
2) Application quality. A lot of Linux apps just aren’t “there” yet. They’re rough around the edges, don’t have the featureset the majority of users need, etc. The only thing that will fix this is development time.
3) UI polish. Its not so much a matter of quality, but a matter of quantity. HIG-complaint GNOME apps are extremely polished. They’re the closest thing to classic MacOS or BeOS that I’ve seen.. However, there are only a handful of HIG-complaint GNOME apps. Again, its just a matter of development time until more apps attain that standard. Remember, it takes many years for an application to become mature, and most OSS desktop apps have not had that much time.
4) GUI tools. There are not enough GUI tools for configuring the system. RedHat or SuSE’s tools will do 99% of what most newbies need, but intermediate users need more coverage.
There is nothing about UNIX that makes it fundementally unsuitable for the desktop. What makes it unsuitable for the average person today is not the foundation, but the fact that enough stuff has not been built on top of it yet.
We have to separate Linux as a platform versus Linux the product. A vendor needs a product to sell but the open source community needs a research platform.
In my personal opinion Linux makes for a great desktop OS. I prefer KDE over Gnome, but both seem to be much more customizable than the Windows GUI.
I’ve also found that my system rarely, if ever, hangs when using more than one resource intensive application. Windows XP does…. alot.
I don’t use WINE just to run Windows software. There is plenty of Linux software available.
I use WINE to run MS Outlook! Remember… MS Exchange Server… PROPRIETARY.
I disagree that these projects (e.g.,WINE) have been developed to keep up with MS. They have been developed in order to run applications that use MS proprietary coding.
Ever tried opening a Word document in AbiWord? It never quite comes out right….
What is a bane to some is a treasure to others…
Linux comes in many <quote>flavors</quote>.
I started out with Red Hat, and have tried a number of others (Mandrake and SuSE, etc.).
I now use Slackware, and am extremely happy with it.
I became quite frustrated in my search for a distro, because of the differences between each of them.
Slackware is the most UNIX-like, while Red Hat, and especially Mandrake and SuSE have so many GUI configuration tools that it makes my head spin.
Pick your flavor. There is a distro to suit your needs.
There is one area where I don’t think anyone will disagree: Microsoft’s picture of a Longhorn cow is a lot more stylish than GNU’s picture of a GNU gnu! :o)
I guess that Microsoft is more full of ‘bull’.
I guess that Microsofts new advertising slogan will be ‘Mono is a disease and that’s no bull’.
1994 Cairo Takes OLE to New Levels
http://www.byte.com/art/9411/sec9/art11.htm
“The next version of Windows NT, code-named Cairo and targeted for release sometime in 1995, will be built around the concepts of objects and component software. It will have a native OFS (Object File System) and distributed system support.”
1995 Signs to Cairo
http://www.byte.com/art/9511/sec6/art14.htm
“Cairo, Microsoft’s object-oriented successor to Windows NT, will begin beta testing in early 1996 for release in 1997. Although Microsoft is not revealing the full details of Cairo yet, there are enough clues within current Microsoft OSes to yield a good idea of how it might work.”
1996 Unearthing Cairo
“At the first NT developers conference in 1992, Bill Gates announced that Cairo would arrive in three years and would incorporate object-oriented technologies, especially an object file system. Since then, we’ve seen Windows NT 3.1, NT 3.5, NT 3.51, and most recently NT 4.0. None is object oriented, none has an object file system, none is Cairo. It seems that Cairo is Microsoft’s sly way of promising the world. “Will we see Plug and Play in NT?” “Oh yes, of course, in Cairo.” “Will NT ever produce world peace and cheap antigravity?” “You bet — in Cairo.””
The so call Longhorn WinFS directory is just another rencarnation of the Cairo object orientated file system.
September 1, 2003 Eweek ‘Longhorn’ Rollout Slips
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1235502,00.asp
“”Microsoft Corp. has once again shifted the schedule for the release of “Longhorn,” the company’s next major version of Windows, leaving some users up in the air about an upgrade path.
Microsoft executives from Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates on down have long described Longhorn as the Redmond, Wash., company’s most revolutionary operating system to date. The product was originally expected to ship next year. Then in May of this year, officials pushed back the release date to 2005. But now executives are declining to say when they expect the software to ship.
“We do not yet know the time frame for Longhorn, but it will involve a lot of innovative and exciting work,” said Gates at a company financial analyst meeting this summer. Since then, other Microsoft officials have neither retracted nor clarified Gates’ statement.””
October 11, 2003 It’s Official: No Longhorn Until 2006
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,4248,1332766,00.asp
“At the show this week, several Microsoft execs casually slipped into their presentations that Longhorn is three years away from debut. Last time I did the math, that was not 2005, as promised just a few months ago. Nor is it even the wishy-washy “2005+” that a few execs had taken to attaching to their product timetables. The new target is 2006, plain and simple.
Did the company think no one would notice? Or maybe after all that Abita beer on draft served up at the Friday night partner party at the House of Blues, that no one could count?
Maybe Microsoft is assuming that tacking another year onto a product that’s already far from debut wouldn’t matter. But if Longhorn client is three years away, that means the rest of the Longhorn wave also is three years from cresting.”
Even if Microsoft does manage to deliver on it’s promises this time, most of the business comunity do not want nor need a database hosted document storage system or 3D based user interfaces. The former is far too much more likely to fail with corruption, and the latter is just a distraction and a waste of CPU/GPU power.
Microsoft have been attempting this type of functionality since 1991, over a decade. Meanwhile, one open source GNOME developer, with help from the other core GNOME developers, provides most of the features within months.
http://www.gnome.org/~seth/storage/features.html
A Windows-specific mixed markup/programming environment to supercede HTML.
Nevermind about Longhorn’s useless 3D desktop, you’ll know about it when you can’t visit websites outside of Windows.
What a complete piece of thinly disguised Microsoft propaganda this article was?
The underlying assumption of the whole article is that Linux is just not good enough and it is just trying to copy Windows. And I just love the line about B. Gates shrewdness.
What a lot of nonsense this was! What a complete misunderstanding of where the real innovation is taking place. Long-a-coming-horn is vaporware. It does not exist. We don’t know what it will really be like and we don’t know that people will want to throw out their perfectly good computers to continue to do email and web browsing, just so that they can run Long-overblownOS.
What a waste! There was nothing that made that article worth reading.
>I believe that this new version of Windows is Microsoft’s >trump card in its, yet early, battle against Linux on the >desktop and the Open Source Software (OSS) movement in >general.
I believe that I am tired of hearing about Longhorn when it is so far away from anyone except developers actually using it or even considering it.
I believe that most people don’t care and would rather read about more relevant things!
Go check out the latest Netcraft reports. Sure, Linux may be playing “catch up” on little home Pee Cees, and due in part to Microsoft’s monopoly abuse (we should all remember that they were found guilty of that), but where it matters (servers etc.) it’s Microsoft who is playing catch up.
M
1) Binary compatibility
Between distros and versions of the same distro.
2) Interoperability problems
Between apps using different toolkits, for example clipboard operations, etc. It’s not so trivial to make Gnome and KDE apps to run at the same time.
(Yes I know an experienced user can find the way around those problems, but those problems are something of the past and should not still happen in 2003, explain to someone who is a power user with windows that you can not copy and paste between apps.)
3) XFree is a mess, slow, get upgraded very slowly…
The kernel, Gnome, Kde, OpenOffice… any considerable Open Source project gets lots of updates during a year, LOTS! Then look at XFree, it’s pathetic not only compared to Windows, even to other proprietary X implementations.
4) Lack of a common framework.
From the developer point of view, you never know what to expect on an user’s computer (again binary issues apply here)
5) Lack of easy tools to program.
Linux badly need a VB clone, Corporations need this sort of tools for their internal work, they need means to deploy apps and middleware really quickly, and they care about functionality not technical aspects, if a tool in VB does the job as well as one in C++ what’s the issue? No one is talking about developing an OS with VB, they want just to parse some text and add info into a DB. (Lack of common framework applies here too)
Conclusion:
What Microsoft tries to do is to bury the Win32 with something people will like much more due it clearness, that way Wine will be useless in the future. Backwards compatibility is necessary, but the long-term success of a platform relies on the future applications. (Look at OS X)
Windows framework has been Win32, now they plan to make .NET their new API. They make sure everyone can use the power on it, that’s why they continue using VB. I know Linux is much more powerful on lots of areas than Win32, but how many people can access to the power of Linux API’s??? Those who know C/C++ which are a few compared with the Army of people doing things on VB taking advantage of Win32 (please do not come with the old tired argument about VB being rubbish, it is not it serve an specific purpose, allow easy corporate programming)
If Linux were able to take advantage of all of those people who know how to code on high level languages than C/C++ adoption rate will increase quickly.
I’m sure that a clone of VB on Linux will be 1000 times better than Microsoft’s VB.
The good thing is that some of those issues are starting to be addressed or at least people start to notice there’s such a problem. 2004 Is going to be an interesting year.
By the time MS eventually introduces whatever it releases as “Longhorn”, the battle may be over. Companies are _very_ sensative to the bottom line, and Linux et al have progressed to where FLOSS is very usable for virtually everything MS offers. “Why switch?” -is that a trick question? If any company has an opportunity to quit spending money in favor of using something for free, they will do it in a heartbeat, and if they don’t, those responsible will eventually find themselves looking for new jobs. Think of the military and the several hundred dollar hammers and toilet seats.
In the very near future, the corporate world will tell MS “Sorry, we don’t need you anymore”, and no amount of gesturing about “Longhorn this” and “Longhorn that” will do them any good.
meanwhile today, most people still find linux hard to use, less apps, hard to config, no 3rd party support..etc
you think in 2005 linux will catch on or surpass windows? bleh..
The underlying problem with any of these arguments is that
LINUX isn’t anything but a bunch of open source software.
There is no organization to cooridnate a fight. In that
respect it doing quite well and conversly cannot be “beaten”.
Those that care to write and give away software will just
continue to do so, and enjoying themselves along the way.
> I’m sure that a clone of VB on Linux will be 1000 times better than Microsoft’s VB.
<mild-troll>
And:
1. Will not be compatible with itself among distributions,
2. Will not be backward- and forward- compatible among versions
3. Applications will not be binary-portable requiring you to (./configure && make && make install)
4. You will need to download and compile sources for 157 bleeding-edge C, C++, Java, C#, Python, Perl, Ruby, AWK, sed TCL, put-your-favourite-language-here libraries just to compile and run a helloworld.vb.
5. Will not be KDE-compatible when made by a Gnome-guy or vice versa
6. Will contain too many features to be understood by an average Joe Programmer
</mild-troll>
That’s the problem with Linux/OSS.
Except in 2006, BSD or Linux will still be available for download for next to $0, as will the latest incarnation of MySQL, etc. To run Longhorn (aka copious source of cowpies around here), you will have to fork out $$$$$ to Microsoft and buy new hardware, i.e. more $$$$$) to run it (10GHz P5, 4GB RAM, 500GB HD, etc). While BSD or Linux will continue to run very fast, very well on aged 4GHz P4’s…
But yes, Linux and Open Source has lit the fire under Microsoft’s monopolistic fat arse. With all of that said, lets compare promises made today with what they will actually deliver in 3-4 years.
No more Longhorn articles – please!
> if you implement a dotGNU application, you have better
> portability since the windows forms in portable.net will
> run on windows, mac OS X, and Linux.
What about Mono, I beleive that runs on Windows, Linux, Mac, and FreeBSD.
> it does not have the write once run anyware-ness of Java,
> and it is more cumbersome to write OO code in than C++
> and it is slower than C/C++, as is any managed code
> written in any supported language,
Don’t you mean write once _test_ everywhere. I have developed a ton of applications in Java and I have to say they don’t run the same on all machines or even render the same on all machines. Also 95% of the work I have done in Java is for Windows, so why not switch to a language that runs better in Windows.
> sure, it gave them a marketing tool, but they could have
> built .net and managed APIs with out inventing C# or any
> language like it.
Well since there were alot of great down falls with Java microsoft created a Java-like-syntax language and added alot of great features that make a developer more productive. Like Properties, Boxing, in addition the melding of C++ and VB elements.
Microsoft did the right thing because Sun was always going to old Java over the head of Microsoft, so Microsoft had to find an answer to that and it was C#.
Longhorn is a product now… but the problem is it’s not software. Just futureware.
Nowadays big software companies have learnt to develop a product much needed for their well-being. Futureware is made of promises and ideas, but it is a product on its own.
Today MS has a product called Codename Longhorn. You just have to look at the name to realize it’s not a software product -Longhorn’s not a selling name for a Windows OS-, it’s the name of a futureware product. As such it must be understood for a quite different perspective.
Futureware is developed for marketing and confidence purposes. It’s main reason to exist is simply to keep the attention on a product that will exist sometime in the future.
Software can be evaluated on its features and capabilities. That’s mostly from a technical point of view. Futureware, even though is made of promises with a technical resemblance, shouldn’t be taken so ‘seriously’.
In 2, 3 years’ time, when MS releases whatever they release (Windows X2, Windows Z…) it won’t be Longhorn. It’ll be the software product Longhorn purports to be today.
Futureware is (or seems to be) a necesity for the marketing part of the company, but let’s try to not make it so for the users. Let’s not believe in futureware as a real product.
“Truly an amazing feet of backwards engineering.”
Backwards feet make it hard to walk.
The objective of Open Source is not to compete with Microsoft. It never was. Do a google search on FSF and Open Source and find its true mission.
To say that Open Source is in competition with Microsoft is like saying art painters are in competition with the movie industry.
Open Source includes BSDs, Linux, many Other OSes and software for applications to GUIs. Open Source is people participating on their own time or actually being paid to participate. A person writing software on their own time may be trying to create software that could compete with Microsoft but then again the person could be creating software just make his/her life easier.
In the end there will be Open Source, how long will Microsoft live? Open source has longevity on its side.
Doesn’t matter what Microsoft invents, doesn’t matter at all, it’s always based to deliver XML by web services whatever, as wellproducing standard SOAP packages…
If they use .NET, or C# or whatever …
ONE THING WILL ALWAYS BE THE SAME, THE C/C++ LANGUAGE
Doesn’t matter what happens, C and C++ is always present, during the eyarss some change some go some come, but C an dC++ is always the base everywhere… and where this languages hang better at all? Yes NON WINDOWS SISTEMS.
Do you think I care about VBs and sutff like that? When companie swant a real product si to see them begging for C/C++ programming cause it goes everywhere. Java is also good, but the one and only that it’s here for decades is the C/C++.
SO F**K Microsoft STUFF, the base will never be from Microsoft, and I don’t need packages to create, I create my own packages whenever io want for whenever I need in c/C++ compatible everywhere.
How about we just wait and see, kids? Thanks.
That’s exactly the attitude that’s gotten the Unix desktop to where it is now: a clone of what already exists.
Did you read the article? It’s one big complaint that all that happens is that people “wait and see.” If they like what they see, they clone it. Look at Mono vs MS’s .NET implementation. Mono began cloning .NET around release time. Resultingly, Mono has yet to reach 0.3, and MS’s .NET implementation is gaining market share every day. Seriously, when was the last time MS cloned something fresh and new from Gnome or KDE? Virtual desktops are up and coming, but that’s innovation that’s eons old. Lately, it’s all been one big clone-fest.
you’ve got to ask: “why are there so many incompatible systems in OSS?”
two quick reasons:
1) most developers are pretty stubborn, lets face it. i know i am. i really hate being forced to work on something that has an (IMHO) flawed design/ideology. this is the _sole_ reason for the GNOME/KDE split. this splits developer effort and creates incompatibilities.
2) most OSS developers don’t want to code boring stuff and compatibility layers are one of the most boring things ever! you’re basically glueing two flawed designs together with elbow-grease. this is why drag-n-drop in X has as many different incompatible versions as there are desktop environments.
putting a foundation down, like MFC/Cocoa/Swing (well, maybe not Swing) in the GUI world, or the GNU/BSD tools in the UNIX world, pretty much stops this. the trouble is that the foundation has to be either perfect or enforced in some way.
> Linux badly needs a VB clone
http://www.borland.com/kylix/index.html
1) Binary compatibility
Myth #1 This is because of the people creating the programs.
Test Tracker Pro, Netvault, and even Loki games all work on both Suse and Redhat over a couple of different versions and libc incarnations.
Commercial programs don’t have this problem. They are not using some out of the way far-out bleeding edge lib versions like many of the OSS projects insist on.
2) Interoperability problems
Between apps using different toolkits, for example clipboard operations, etc. It’s not so trivial to make Gnome and KDE apps to run at the same time.
I have no problems with them running at the same. X has its own cut and paste model with the middle click or two-button click for the two button mouse folks. Of course I try to stick with apps for the same major toolkit I am working on.
In addition, I don’t have problems cutting and pasting from gnome apps into OpenOffice so this issue never really impacts me.
3) XFree is a mess, slow, get upgraded very slowly…
The kernel, Gnome, Kde, OpenOffice… any considerable Open Source project gets lots of updates during a year, LOTS! Then look at XFree, it’s pathetic not only compared to Windows, even to other proprietary X implementations.
This is a real problem but it is totally overshadowing a much deeper issue. The window manager developers, toolkit and major app developers along with the XFree86 folks all have blame to share on the slow gui in linux issues people talk about. The “I hate Xfree86” people are missing the problem that a number of different groups need to work together for the goal of a faster/smoother gui experience for the user.
4) Lack of a common framework.
From the developer point of view, you never know what to expect on an user’s computer (again binary issues apply here)
Once again, it would be nice if there was once all guiding gui toolkit but that is never going to happen for linux. There may become a dominant gui toolkit but that is not the same.
Once again, there are a number of gui apps available for linux that do not seem to be problematic.
5) Lack of easy tools to program.
Linux badly need a VB clone
TCL/tk cross platform scripting based gui toolkit for easy programs. Been avialable since forever and every unix house in the universe has used at one time or another.
As easy if not easier to learn that VB.
The very first poster wrote:
>Sure, Linux is putting pressure on Microsoft to be a leader >and to innovate. It’s actually SUN who innovated, and than >Microsoft took up the market of middleware with .Net.
Is it actually SUN that innovated?
Let’s see:
In 1992 when Microsoft released a technology called ODBC to standardise the connecting and programming to different databases.
Four years later, in 1996, Sun came up with the JDBC specification which not only had a very similar name was designed to do exactly the same thing!
This same story has been repeating itself for the last 9 years:
– 1996 Microsoft releases ASP; in 1998 Sun releases JSP
– 1997 Microsoft releases ADSI; in 1998 Sun releases JNDI
– 1997 Microsoft releases MSMQ; in 1998 Sun releases JMS
– 1997 Microsoft releases Microsoft Transaction Server; in 1998 Sun releases EJB
– 1998 Microsoft releases MSXML; in 2001 Sun releases JAXP
– 2000 Microsoft releases Queued Components; in 2001 Sun releases Message Driven Beans
– 2000 Microsoft releases XML Web Services; in 2001 Sun releases Java Web Services Developer Pack
Then MS goes out and does C# (which does clone a lot of Java stuff), and next thing you know, SUN announces Java 1.5 which copies the new C# features, like auto-boxing, metadata, for iterator loop, etc (check ths JSRs).
Well…
Well duh, Microsoft made it.
That’s exactly the attitude that’s gotten the Unix desktop to where it is now: a clone of what already exists.
Obviously in order to be successful a graphical operating system needs to have some semblance to existing systems. Is a Volkswagen Beetle a clone of a Dodge Ram? They both have a steering wheel, gas pedal, brake, wheels, combustion engines, exhausts. When you describe similar things based only on their most minimal similarities, of course they sound similar!
Do Windows or OS X allow multiple desktops through first-party software? Nope, but KDE does. Wait. That means open source developers didn’t just copy off of Windows desktop! They must be copying off of someone else!
The Xbox plays video games, and DVDs. So does the PS2 and it came out a year prior. Microsoft is copying off of Sony! Call a lawyer and the US Patent Office! Quick!
Do you live in a building that has doors and windows? And have a bathroom with a shower and toilet? Does your toilet look like a few others you’ve seen. I wonder if they are the same brand. I wonder if the same company designed all houses, apartments, and bathrooms. Otherwise someone is copying someone else! And that would be tragic! We need more innovation in the bathroom. And doors and windows have had very few features added in years!
Everyone is copying everyone else. That isn’t even an issue.
Did you read the article? It’s one big complaint that all that happens is that people “wait and see.
You are taking my “wait and see” comment entirely out-of-context. I am telling that to the folks making rampant speculations about Longhorn vs The World, and holding Microsoft’s future operating system on a pedestal, when it won’t be released for several years.
I am not telling open source developers to wait and see. And they aren’t.
If they like what they see, they clone it.
I agree. Pop-up blockers, tabbed browsing, and download managers were obviously ripped from features that have been in Microsoft Internet Explorer since the early 80s. Hell, I bet the open source developers somehow stole the code directly from Microsoft.
Innovation is really a pointless word.
“Linux is a copy of unix and is not trying to copy windows.” “Microsoft is nothing but a bunch of copied/bought ideas”
What matters is how a company ‘moves’ newer/better items into its products. This is what MS does really well. When they want to ‘push’ something…things get moved. They want managed code because we can afford the speed cost 2day, so people will code using the managed system.
They wanted drag/drop, copy/paste, single GUI, registry, directx…and these things are all out there and work throughout windows. It may not take a genious or even innovation to make these feautures or those on longhorn, but it does take organization and commitment. That is what ultimately makes the product. There will always be research and innovation done. I don’t care who does it. I just want it delivered to me.
Yamin
> from Ucedac
> > I’m sure that a clone of VB on Linux will be 1000 times better than Microsoft’s VB.
Nice remark, but there is a but…
My experience:
I left vb away and switched to Python/wxPython. Now, I’m developping on and for win platforms. Everything is fine, static libs, creation of exe files, setup.exe, same app for the different win flavours, win98, winNT, XP, …
Porting such applications to Linux is a nightmare. On Linux, wxPython relies on wxGTK, that means GNOME. What should I do for KDE users? How do I distribute it? And so one.
You see the problem. I’m developping applications using OSS tools, but they are better running on a win platform! I do not want freedom (X, xfce, gnome, kde, ..), I just wish / want a standard GUI. After all, it’s not my fault, if the “Linux community” is not able to produce such a standard. That’s why I stick on win.
Note that I’m not suffering from that situation. There are enough win users.
Some people are comparing OS with cars, I will suggest a gastronomic approach. Linux/OSS has all the ingredients to prepare the best dishes, but the final meal is disappointing.
jmf, Switzerland
<it>One thing that MS seems to do very well is infrastructure stuff. The folks at Microsoft understand the holy grail that is backwards compatibility. </it>
I don’t see this at all. .Net is not compatible with the older Windows. There is nothing intrisic to distributed computing that would make it impossible to run on something as old as Win 3.1. For example, it is possible to run TAO/ACE on every windows platform since 3.1, as well as nearly any Unix-derivative and even a Cray supercomputer. It’s amazing what coding to the POSIX standard can accomplish.
I think that MS wants to limit backward compatability to force upgrades. (Any why not? they are in business to make money.)
1) It doesn’t matter if MS isn’t the innovator. They own the marketshare and (end-user) people see them as the innovator.
2) Cost isn’t be a factor. As long as Windows is viable on the corporate desktop, corporations will continue to pay exhorbitant fees for the priviledge of using the software.
3) Despite being OSS (and free), Linux must innovate on its own, or it will die. If that means simply being (GAK!) “as good as Windows”, so be it.
4) With the relatively low cost of reasonably fast hardware, MS will be able to continue to sell their software, no matter how bloated it might appear.
5) As long as Mono is blessed my MS, Mono will be controlled by MS. I personally wouldn’t use Mono on a bet, and I feel the same way about .NET.
6) I’m a Windows programmer, and I’ll be 50 years old when Longhorn comes out. I, and all my Windows API experience will be obsoleted what that happens. That pretty much torques my jaws out of shape.
7) The Linux zealots out there have to trade their utter defiance in on a truckload of clues. Standing here and saying MS is bad and shouldn’t be believed is falling on deaf ears (you’re singing to the freakin’ choir here), and simply makes you look like you have no technical merit on which to base your acrimoniousness.
8) As Linux users, we have been given a grace period to get all our crap in one sock and win the hearts and minds of “regular people(tm)”. The neophytes and god-fearing hordes of end-users will turn the tide and may stem the acceptance of Longhorn.Finally, we ALL have to admit that Linux simply must be made better than it is right now by the time Longhorn is released.
9) I use Linux for my own reasons – at home. At work, it’s ALL Windows, and there’s no sign that it will be changing any time soon, unless something REALLY IMPORTANT happens within the context of the Linux vs Windows dynamic.
<mild-troll>
And:
1. Will not be compatible with itself among distributions,
2. Will not be backward- and forward- compatible among versions
3. Applications will not be binary-portable requiring you to (./configure && make && make install)
4. You will need to download and compile sources for 157 bleeding-edge C, C++, Java, C#, Python, Perl, Ruby, AWK, sed TCL, put-your-favourite-language-here libraries just to compile and run a helloworld.vb.
5. Will not be KDE-compatible when made by a Gnome-guy or vice versa
6. Will contain too many features to be understood by an average Joe Programmer
</mild-troll>
That’s the problem with Linux/OSS.
I’ll bite.
1 – 4: Dude, that exists on Windows as well. What do you think makes the binaries that execute when you click on your cute little blue “e”? Do windows programmers code in 1’s and 0’s?
More on 4: Ever used an RPM? How about apt-get? Portage is a thing of beauty. All of these provide fantastic package management with support for automatic dependency resolution. Windows installers are self-contained, Linux installers are maintained in a repository. To me there’s not much difference between them except for the fact that most often installing something on Windows requires you to open a browser and go search for stuff.
5: I’ve yet to encounter something that can be used with KDE or Gnome that can’t be run under the other. Clipboard and panel specs are identical. The only difference I can see is maybe some default settings as well as the toolkit used to create the language. Indeed, a good number of people prefer Gaim to Kopete (for God knows what reasons), and resultingly use a GTK IM within KDE. Similarly I used Galeon as my browser quite often when I used KDE. KPretendIDE (or whatever it’s called…one of the 4 included with the base distro) has a nifty feature to remove all the Windows CRLF’s and change them to Unix formatting, so I’m constantly starting that one up under Gnome.
6: Is Joe Programmer a moron? What’s so hard to understand? Unless this guy’s making something like a screensaver or a little popup window, I don’t want this guy anywhere NEAR my applications! No matter what context, a programmer who can’t pick up VB within minutes upon seeing it for the first time probably should consider another profession.
What if the US economy starts to go down quickly, whether it’d be crash or slow depression, how would that affect Microsoft and, I guess, the entire computer industry when 2005/2006 rolls around? Which makes me wonder if they’ll even survive, let alone anyone, if the economy’s really bad by then.
Even if there was a group of programmers trying to hammer out a nice standard GUI for Open source OSes, not everyone will use the GUI. I for one use Fluxbox, not KDE nor Gnome. Other users use IceWM, Blackbox, Xfce, other small but useful window managers.
Is it possible to have programs created in such a way so the user could use any particular Desktop Environment or window manager? Right now, I can run KDE and Gnome applications as well as application written just for X11.
The struggle is not to create the GUI, it is to allow any user to run any applications in whatever environment they choose. Programmers at Anygui have an interesting idea. You create an application using the Anygui interface for the Gui. What Anygui does is look for what GUIs are on the computer then laucnes the application using one of the installed GUIs.
Same goes for package management. Instead of having the packages themselves decide where all the files should go, the distros installer program should take of that. Dependencies are another matter. Development tools could be created to automatically find the dependincies then list them in the package file. The distro installer program can figure out how to handle the dependencies.
Unix is different than Windows because of the diverse environment. The standards that people create need to accept and enhance the diversity. Not narrow it.
Open Source is about creating and sharing. Being competive is a side effect.
At work, they’ll probably stuff this down everyone’s throat everywhere possible. At home, I need performance for what I do…raw speed, as few interlopers as possible.
It always amazes me how much time and effort people spend fighting over what’s good for “business.”
If we have done what’s good for “business”, then how come the level of garbage e-mail is approaching 50 percent of all e-mail traffic, and how come so much of the e-mail that comes into companies is malevolent crap generated by machines running Microsoft software?
I have 2 OS’s at home: Windows 98 and Debian GNU/Linux. I do not connect the Windows 98 operating system to the Internet, because toe cost/year to keep it virus-free and cracker-free is too high. Same goes if I were to switch to a newer MS operating system—which I might not because of legacy software that I will never be able to re-compile because I don’t have the source code.
Nice ad, though. Maybe some of you Linux folks could counter with just as slick of an article.
Make it more accurate, though….
“I agree. Pop-up blockers, tabbed browsing, and download managers were obviously ripped from features that have been in Microsoft Internet Explorer since the early 80s. Hell, I bet the open source developers somehow stole the code directly from Microsoft.”
You simply can’t be serious.
IE didn’t even exist in the 80s except as Spyglass’ browser. 1.0 didn’t come out until ’95.
It has been very enlightening to write an editorial and then read all the comments made about it. And I wish to make a couple comments myself about the responses the article received.
First off, I think some people need to learn to read. Those of you who somehow thought the article an “ad” for Microsoft, really missed the boat. Sorry, but it’s true. Try reading it again.
There is some argument about the source of real innovation. But it’s not so much where it comes from, rather who brings it all together and makes it accessable to end users. Wares that don’t get used, no matter how innovative, eventually die.
In short, this article had a simple goal, to point out the Microsoft will not stand still in the face of the competition Linux and OSS presents, they will exploite every weakness available. If the Linux and OSS communities truly wish to see their beloved work, and more importantly their charished ideals, make inroads into the computing populace at large, they will have to form a greater unity among themselves, develop highly innovative and compelling new wares, and deliver them in like marketable fashion. Offering various levels of Windows emulation/compatability will simply not suffice.
– T. Onoma
You simply can’t be serious.
You’re right, I wasn’t being serious.
If you read the entire thread of conversation, you’ll see the person I was replying to claims most of the open source community simply copies Microsoft. I was, (through heavy sarcasm), pointing out that is not always the case. Mozilla has many features that far surpass anything offered by Microsoft Internet Explorer.
imo.. microsoft WILL have the best OS.. but it will be expensive.. very very expensive.
I’m a .NET developer and can say it’s pure fun to work with and very well designed by some of the worlds best programmers. Cloning it is much easier than creating something own which couldn’t be better and wouldn’t be possible anyway for open source. There shouldn’t be a problem with Microsoft changing .NET because of course they do this everytime a new version comes out. Different versions run side by side. The question is can Microsoft’s lawyers attack Mono when it becomes to powerful and ain’t Novell afraid of that? Novell supports the development of Mono and they will ship the first distribution that will include Mono and they will develop applications and services running on it. Of course all this are still assumptions but reading recent news everything looks like this is what they are planning to do
What does this mean?
GNU is Not Unix
It is a loosly associated collection of open soucre software projects. The most famous of which is Gnome, the desktop environment. The other well know open source desktop environment is KDE, which most Linux users use. KDE is not part of th GNU project.
Take a look at http://www.gnu.org to learn more.
– T. Onoma
gnu=Guaranteed Nearly Useless
in other words
isn’t the amazing thing about avalon is that the WHOLE gui is rendered in vector graphics?
most other os’s use bitmapped graphics or flat shades of color for the gui.
I remember hearing this about NT in the early 90’s. Unix vendors fell all over themselves trying to commit suicide in the face of the onslaught of NT, which, when it finally came out was…disappointing. Made the pre-emptive suicides look pretty stupid; and Sun, the only proprietary Unix vendor left standing, reaped the benefits despite its congenital incompetence.
Vaporware is vaporware.
My first impression when I read this article was “Bah!” I felt my blood pressure rise. But when it comes down to it, we, The Community are (for the most part fueled by our emmotions) we are idealist – and that’s why when all the Nay-Sayers talked they only added fuel of our progress.
In the past few years Linux (and Open Source tools) have come out of nowhere and caught up with Microsoft. Microsoft now realizes that they can’t afford to put out sloppy products and expect the public to just shut up and take it. Now the public has Options.
We’ve pulled up the Microsoft and waved, “Hi!” Now is time to take it all the way, now is time that we offered not only an alternative to Microsoft products, but to offer new technologies and new ways of doing things the for public. Now is the time to show them that Open Source is infinately better than buggy products rushed out the door with no regard for quality what-so-ever.
~
Just another,
User Joe
Huh. What a bunch of shallow crap.
Regarding “re-inventing the wheel”. I just finished a conversation which touched on this subject. FYI, many “open source” programmers may take up a re-invention of an existing capability as an educational exercise or challenge — that is, as a hobby related to their profession. There’s simply no basis for criticism of that phenomenon. Occasionally, the results of such an effort turn out to be better than the “established” version, and replacement may occur.
“The real problem lies in the overall lack of unification of its many diverse camps,”
Most of the author’s belief and opinions seem to revolve around the above statement, and its corollary that Microsoft’s carefully guided development model is superior. Congrats, Tom O! You have unknowingly stumbled on the core of the debate! That is, can the open model, with its advantages in communication, diversity, sheer volume, and dynamism produce better results than carefully directed development? But at this point, that’s exactly what it is: a debate. Contrary to what the author writes, the jury is far from in on that question. His prognostications should be presented against the backdrop of actual events, which are giving substantial credence to the open model. Tom, please take some time to educate yourself on all sides of this debate before submiting your next opinion piece.
Thanks
Peter Yellman
Well, XAML is a knock-off of Mozilla’s XUL, WinFS bears no small resemblance to reiserfs’s published future directions, sparkle sounds a lot like SVG, and so on. Just who’s playing catch-up?
Anywayy, Longhorn sounds uncannily like Cairo, that MS offering that is now even later than “Duke Nukem Forever”. Wonderful things, roadmaps…