Microsoft is developing versions of its Windows operating system with only a subset of the Windows code base, designed for specific server tasks, in a move that could reduce maintenance costs for customers and create products that are less vulnerable to attack. Elsewhere, Ballmer gave an interview about the new digital style of life.
Microsoft Eyes Lighter Versions of Longhorn
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“The new “role-based” products may appear in 2007, when the server version of Longhorn is scheduled for release. Offering a smaller code base would mark a significant technical shift for Microsoft and could help it to better address the competitive threat posed by Linux. But it also presents significant engineering challenges for the company, industry analysts say.”
Well, if MS didnt intergate everything, it wouldnt be that much of a problem now would it. Perhaps they can take a lesson for these programmers:
nuhi.msfn.org
http://www.98lite.net
“”Today, it’s still the entire code base. There’s no reduction in the bits you get; things are just roped off,” Taylor says. “We want to get to a model of role-based deployment where you might just have the bits you need for that function. … It’s one of our design goals for Longhorn.””
What about the complete rewrite of the OS that Windows users were promised. I remember when, MS had their Linux hit team out, studying code so as to create a superior OS. Now is this just XP Advance (copyright pending). ‘-)
“Reducing the amount of code on a server would reduce the “attack surface area,” Cherry says, meaning hackers would have less code to aim at with their viruses.”
Aaaaa, can we get that in the home edition too?? Please…
“Having less code should also mean lower maintenance costs, in part because customers will not have to apply patches to the parts of Windows that do not exist on their servers.”
Home addition, once again, please… Dial up can be difficult…..
“A Microsoft spokesperson confirms that the goals of providing a smaller Windows “footprint” are to cut maintenance costs and provide a “reduced surface attack area.””
I would pay extra for getting less!!!
“Microsoft is also keen not to limit the software’s management capabilities.”
How about the 3rd party toy that gets bundled with WMP that gives out the songs of the current CD your playing. Oppps, wrong management software. Nothing to see here, move along.
“Microsoft can predict, broadly speaking, what roles its customers want their server software to fill, but it can’t predict every combination, Taylor says. For example, a customer might want to install a print server and a Web server on one system, and a storage server on another. He suggests that Microsoft may engineer the products in a way that allows customers to decide at deployment time which parts of the operating system they want to use.”
This is something that is called “modular”. This is typically a good design facet. Say modular with me people. ” Mooooddddduuuulaaaarr”
“”We can predict the roles, but some customers might want Web and print on the same server,” Taylor says. “Instead of delivering these preconfigured, maybe there’s a way to do it with a bit more customer input.””
You mean less preset defaults? Home edition please….. And if the defaults are preset, make them secure? Let the enduser make the choice to open up services and ports… Could lessen that virus thing that everyone is talking about. That it, a conspiracy to get rid of McAfee and Norton AV. I knew it. Cleaver ploy, but not cleaver enough.
“Some industry insiders have speculated that Microsoft would reduce the code base for certain server versions of Windows. When it developed Windows XP Embedded several years ago, part of the task was to figure out which parts of the operating system could be removed without disturbing the software’s internal dependencies, Cherry notes.”
Hmmm, maybe its not as closely linked as we thought.
“”That knowledge of how the components work together could allow them to build versions of Windows with only specific functionality. … It could be used to develop several other products,” Cherry says.”
You mean instead of one giant pile of ***@@@. Perhaps this will stop MS from putting other companies out of business… Monopoly powers activate…. Ok, “Wonder Twins” pun.
Thats all she wrote….
Let’s see if MS is capable of supporting multiple OSes tailored for different markets. And let’s see if them opening their customers’ eyes to the existence of more suitable options will not also make the customers consider even more suitable, non-Microsoft options. It will be interesting. In any case, the world wins.
It seems that with XP, it has become more modular underneath, but on the service layers, it has become bloated (whether this is more or less modular, it’s hard to tell. I believe Windows is more modular than people give it credit for, it’s just that Microsoft makes everything on top do everything. OK, forgive me, I got very little sleep last night. Sorry if this is incomprehensible.
Why is it that people cannot speak their mind about anything. I posted the “My commentary”, if you do not like an opinion, state your counter opinions. I have used MS since ~1980 on the PC XT (8088 / 8086). I have seen and heard enough of MS’ promises.
State your opinions and facts instead of trying to impose censorship.
Why not just write a better installer that can more accurately taylor to a customer’s needs instead of shipping a ton of different ‘canned’ installs?
maybe including a windows update tool that is similar to Ximian’s Red Carpet that does nothing other than updateing the OS, and not use internet explorer, so users dont HAVE to have that browser installed would be a good start…
Let’s hope that doesn’t happen lol…
Why not just write a better installer that can more accurately taylor to a customer’s needs instead of shipping a ton of different ‘canned’ installs?
That already exists, but if you only need a web server (for example), why should you have to pay for Server 2003 Standard (or above) if you can instead get the web server version at a significantly reduced cost?
If you prefer the full package that includes everything, but still lets you taylor it via the installer, that’s available, but you pay more for the extra functionality.
I thought it was a complete re-write based on the Net API not Win32. With this MS could introduce the concepts of modularity and less is more.
Picture this, you get to install Longhorn Pro or any other version and you get to, under customise option, select the components you want to install. Non of this we just throw all this crap on your hard drive but remove the short cuts from your desktop/start menu. Actual, no I don’t want Media Player so I don’t install it, or Messenger, or Video editor, Frontpage, or any other garbage MS installs as default with no option to remove in Windows XP.
Time to wake up.
’nuff said.
Isn’t this exactly what everyone was trying to tell them years ago when they talked about intergrating MSIE into Windows?
The APIs are .NET, but Win32 sits alongside the managed APIs for legacy support.
If you fully uninstall WMP, Messenger, etc., the APIs (dlls) which come with those products would also be uninstalled. Thus, when you need to use an application that calls those APIs (quite a few these days), you’d just need to reinstall those apps whether you use them in particular or not.
An alternative approach MS could take is to uninstall the executable w/o uninstalling the APIs, however, since the size of most executables for the included apps is only a few hundred kb, there wouldn’t be much space savings.
With Longhorn, most, if not all, of the included applications will just call out to system dlls for all of their functionality, making the individual application exe even more insignificcant.
[i]”We have had media technology built for years – Apple, Sony, RealNetworks, have been there for years. What’s changed is that now it says Microsoft on it.”
“Now you have the format, the player, the device and the service, and that’s what we will have with the launch of <strike>Quicktime</strike> Microsoft Media Player 10, the official launch of the <strike>iTunes Music Store</strike> Microsoft Network (MSN), and <strike>Airport Express</strike> Microsoft’s Portable Media Center,” he said.
So this means you’ll have to buy seperate licenses for each Windows derivative for your print,samba,http,ftp,sql servers?
Lame ideas. *nix flavors and distributions have been doing this for years. Furthermore this digital life thing is just a blaintent rip off of other industries (apple for example). Come this fish is way past dead, time to throw it out.
If they are lame ideas then why have *nix flavors been doing it for years?
Well, I for one will not be upgrading to Longhorn, and I will be recommending to my supervisors that we migrate to Linux rather than upgrade to Longhorn. Longhorn’s system requirements are just way too steep, and I don’t like the whole managed code thing that Microsoft is trying to force on programmers with WinFX.
I’ve already been busy porting a lot of my custom apps to Linux in preperation for migrating to Linux instead of upgrading to Longhorn.
How would it be possible for Microsoft to do this? They have always claimed that EVERYTHING is an ESSENTIAL part of Windows. Things just can’t be removed. Or can they?… 😉
“We’ll compete with Linux by offering as many Windows products as there are Linux distributions.”
– chrish
Just imagine… a SERVER OS without OpenGL ScreenSavers, a Media Player, games, and an instant messanger installed by default.
WOW, now thats “INNOVATION”…
Microsoft is full of crap. By the time Longhorn comes out MS will have alienated their audience enough that Linux will be the dominant OS. No real developers even use Windows for development anymore. All I see being developed for Windows are toy applications. Linux is for the more serious developer. Im sorry, Microsoft had their chance to create a great OS. they failed. Microsoft is a sinking ship and Im sorry they will sink. By 2010 their will not even be a Microsoft. Now I will say this to the Microsoft developers. Step aside kids, let the real developers get back to work.
By the time Longhorn comes out MS will have alienated their audience enough that Linux will be the dominant OS.
It’s time to stop dreaming and to move out of your parents’ basement. There are enough people with enough issues with Linux that it’ll not be dominant for quite a long time. For serious UNIX users, there are better things, many of which are both free and open source.
Regardless of both of those facts, Windows will be king for quite some time to come, no matter how badly Microsoft handle’s it’s research and development.
Well, I for one will not be upgrading to Longhorn, and I will be recommending to my supervisors that we migrate to Linux rather than upgrade to Longhorn. Longhorn’s system requirements are just way too steep, […]
Of all the reasons I’ve heard to stay away from Longhorn, that would have to be one of the lamest.
[…] and I don’t like the whole managed code thing that Microsoft is trying to force on programmers with WinFX.
Because real men only program in kernel-mode assembler, right ?
…are destined to re-invent it.
For various reasons, I don’t think Microsoft will succeed in making things as modular as they should be. (Note that they talked about modularity…but did not say modular!)
Microsoft is suffering from an intense sense of “Not Invented Here” syndrome; if they didn’t make it, or can’t remake it, they don’t want to hear about it. Standards be dammed; Microsoft’s software is the standard.
Apple decided to conceed the obvious years ago and went with unix…adding where it was practical…and making some parts propriatory for both corporate benifit (lockin) and to make the transition easier on customers.
Now, Microsoft is figuring this out…though instead of following Apple’s lead and using standards they still want to do it all themselves. Reinvent the shell. Reinvent security. Reinvent services. All the same mistakes already fixed in the past in unix and unix tools rediscovered … kinda like Columbus announcing to the natives in the ‘new world’ that he discovered the place!
What Microsoft can’t reinvent by going it alone is the chaos — the struggle — of so many projects fighting it out. Microsoft has only itself to fight against for anything they bundle with the OS…so improvements to the shell will not match unix they will mimic it.
Improvements to security will always bend to marketing.
Services will always be tied to each other ‘synergistically’ to drive one and one way only to piece things together.
Genuine improvements in any one place will be sucked away by unrestrained competitors and others who don’t care where the tech was invented…only if is benificial. So, as modular as it sounds I doubt it will last.
What a waste.
(The above rant is mostly what I think…though I’m not too strident about it. MS does many things well though it’s not going to be easy for them to pull any of this off. Moving to a new API (CLR runtime environment) is one way to wipe the slate clean and to eliminate past mistakes, though it does not glue everything together or allow for dynamic changes.)
Those who ignore unix are destined to re-invent it.
The actual quote is “those who do no understand unix are destined to reinvent it…badly”.
Of course, it’s quite arguable as to whether or not unix is the pinnacle of OS development. Certainly, the only people who have even come close to making unix accessible to the general public is Apple, and only then by making it distinctly un-unix-like.
For various reasons, I don’t think Microsoft will succeed in making things as modular as they should be. (Note that they talked about modularity…but did not say modular!)
It’s important to understand that just because something is modular by design does *not* mean it will be sold as such. A modular *technical design* does not imply a modular *product*.
Whether or not Windows has a modular design is completely and utterly irrelevant to whether or not a) it is sold as modules and b) that modularity is easily accessible by the end user.
Microsoft is suffering from an intense sense of “Not Invented Here” syndrome; if they didn’t make it, or can’t remake it, they don’t want to hear about it. Standards be dammed; Microsoft’s software is the standard.
Apple decided to conceed the obvious years ago and went with unix…adding where it was practical…and making some parts propriatory for both corporate benifit (lockin) and to make the transition easier on customers.
“Unix” is no more a standard than “Windows” is.
Apple went with a BSD base after a great deal of hand-wringing and it was far from a foregone conclusion that they would do so – they spent *years* trying to write their own OS from scratch and even NT was a contender for the core of Apple’s “Next Generation OS” after they failed at that. There’s certainly good reason to believe they ended up with Yet Another Unix more because that’s what NeXT was based on and they got NeXT when they bought Steve Jobs than any overpowering technical capabilities.
That’s also ignoring that for the majority of users and developers of Apple’s OS (and its software), it *isn’t* really a unix.
Now, Microsoft is figuring this out…though instead of following Apple’s lead and using standards they still want to do it all themselves.
Which is why Active Directory is based around LDAP and DNS.
Which is why they use TCP/IP.
Which is why they (legitimately) extended Kerberos for authentication.
Which is why the new Office file formats are XML.
Right ?
Reinvent the shell. Reinvent security. Reinvent services.
There are no standards that define any of those things (meaningfully, from the perspective you appear to be talking from).
What Microsoft can’t reinvent by going it alone is the chaos — the struggle — of so many projects fighting it out. Microsoft has only itself to fight against for anything they bundle with the OS…so improvements to the shell will not match unix they will mimic it.
Pray tell, which part of “unix” is the Windows GUI mimicking ? How about the APIs ? Low-level design ? Security model ?
Improvements to security will always bend to marketing.
Close. Security will always bend to usability.
Services will always be tied to each other ‘synergistically’ to drive one and one way only to piece things together.
Uh huh. Because *no* services are dependent on other services in the unix world, are they ?
“Of all the reasons I’ve heard to stay away from Longhorn, that would have to be one of the lamest.”
Yeah… Cause we all want to upgrade to dual core CPUs running at 4Ghz and have 2Gb of RAM (which Microsoft themselves have said they expect the average computer to have when Longhorn ships. Please tell me why Linux runs faster on my K6/2 400 then Windows XP runs on my Athlon 1700?
“Because real men only program in kernel-mode assembler, right ?”
No. Because I don’t want Microsoft’s managed code crap slowing down my scientific number crunching code. And I don’t appreciate Microsoft basically telling me “Because we believe that programmers are incompetant, we are going to force them to use a babysitter by having everything they write run as managed code”. That is basically what Microsoft is doing with Longhorn.
When I want to use managed code (which I do sometimes for security and such) I will use Java. When I want to do low level hardware intensive number crunching, I will use C. I want the option. Microsoft is trying to take that away.
Yeah… Cause we all want to upgrade to dual core CPUs running at 4Ghz and have 2Gb of RAM (which Microsoft themselves have said they expect the average computer to have when Longhorn ships.
Ignoring for a second that was random speculation from no-one of any importance at Microsoft, are you really so stupid as to not be able to realise the difference between “average machine available” and “minimum specifications” ?
Windows has an *excellent* record for supporting and being usable on hardware 3-4 years old at the time of its release (with good reason – the typical business desktop cycle). I see no reason to think that’s going to change.
Please tell me why Linux runs faster on my K6/2 400 then Windows XP runs on my Athlon 1700?
Because either your XP machine is severely broken (eg: hard disk DMA off), crippled (eg: low memory) , you’re not comparing similar configurations (eg: twm) or you’re lying.
No. Because I don’t want Microsoft’s managed code crap slowing down my scientific number crunching code.
What makes you think it will ?
And I don’t appreciate Microsoft basically telling me “Because we believe that programmers are incompetant, we are going to force them to use a babysitter by having everything they write run as managed code”. That is basically what Microsoft is doing with Longhorn.
Most developers have yet to distinguish themselves as *not* incompetent.
When I want to use managed code (which I do sometimes for security and such) I will use Java. When I want to do low level hardware intensive number crunching, I will use C. I want the option. Microsoft is trying to take that away.
Somehow I doubt they’re going to completely remove the ability to run performance-intensive code.
“are you really so stupid as to not be able to realise the difference between “average machine available” and “minimum specifications” ?
Of course. Which means that for acceptable performance, you will ptobably want a 6Ghz dual core CPU and 4gb of RAM.
“I see no reason to think that’s going to change.”
Then you haven’t been paying attention. One single word that says why that is going to change: WinFX.
“What makes you think it will ?”
Have you played with .NET at all? That’s what makes me think it will. Hint: .NET is a subset of WinFX. It is basically a preview of Longhorn.
“Most developers have yet to distinguish themselves as *not* incompetent.”
Including a lot of the developers working for Microsoft and writing Windows code.
“Somehow I doubt they’re going to completely remove the ability to run performance-intensive code.”
Of course they are. Because without completely removing the ability to run unmanaged code, the Longhorn security model breaks. All of its security doesn’t matter if I can slip some executable unamanged code in there. Cause at that point, I can corrupt the security manager with my unmanaged code, at which point the entire system falls apart.
Of course. Which means that for acceptable performance, you will ptobably want a 6Ghz dual core CPU and 4gb of RAM.
You know, when you’re trolling, a little subtlety goes a long way.
“You know, when you’re trolling, a little subtlety goes a long way.”
The only one trolling here is you. Hense your resorting to accusations against my intelligence, and also accusing me of trolling since apparently you can’t come up with a reasoned response to my arguments. So you just accuse me of trolling instead. Cute.
Drsmithy, I’m the person who posted the original comment with the ‘Those who ignore unix…’ comment.
Well, you are almost reasonable! At the begining, that is. The rest of it, not as much.
As you’re not really going to want to hear my reply — and I say that since you didn’t either read, understand, or comment on what I actually wrote the first time round — I’ll just skip repeating what I already wrote.
Let’s say our sunglasses are different shades. You can decide for yourself who wears what.
The only one trolling here is you.
Comments like these:
“Yeah… Cause we all want to upgrade to dual core CPUs running at 4Ghz and have 2Gb of RAM (which Microsoft themselves have said they expect the average computer to have when Longhorn ships. Please tell me why Linux runs faster on my K6/2 400 then Windows XP runs on my Athlon 1700? ”
“Of course. Which means that for acceptable performance, you will ptobably want a 6Ghz dual core CPU and 4gb of RAM. ”
Are trolling. Longhorn Alphas are running *right now* on machines with vastly lower specifications than those. Personally, I’ll be amazed if it isn’t usable (sans some flashy graphical effects) on 1Ghz Pentium 3 class machines.
Hense your resorting to accusations against my intelligence, and also accusing me of trolling since apparently you can’t come up with a reasoned response to my arguments. So you just accuse me of trolling instead. Cute.
My reasoned response is simple, I’ll repeat it:
I sincerely doubt Microsoft are going to remove the ability to write (and run) performance-sensitive/intensive code. Even more so if they’re making a push into the clustered-computing market (as per reports earlier this year).
You might find this worth a read:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dn…
I also sincerely doubt Microsoft are going to release an OS for the business world that will require upgrading nearly every machine in an organisation. They’ve never done it before and I see no reason to think they’ll start now.
If nothing else, doing either of the above would be an incredibly bad business decision – and Microsoft aren’t exactly known for doing that.
“Personally, I’ll be amazed if it isn’t usable (sans some flashy graphical effects) on 1Ghz Pentium 3 class machines.”
It’s usable if your idea of usable is waiting 60 seconds for applications to start and then waiting 10 seconds for dialogs to appear, etc. in running applications.
“I sincerely doubt Microsoft are going to remove the ability to write (and run) performance-sensitive/intensive code.”
Once again, this would invalidate the entire Longhorn security model, because now unmanaged code can corrupt the security system.
Will Longhorn still run legacy apps? Yes. But it will run them as managed code using verifiers and such.
=o/
http://m0rten.mine.nu/morten/fun/video/ballmer_dance.mpg
mmm, not sure