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Thread ID: 57605 2005-05-07 06:13:00 Longhorn Beta "Hugely Disappointing" vinref (6194) PC World Chat
Post ID Timestamp Content User
353064 2005-05-09 05:14:00 Mmmmmm. Would that excuse stick with the courts? "Sorry your honour/tax inspector/receiver/auditor! Longhorn ate my accounts!" vinref (6194)
353065 2005-05-09 08:59:00 Reading between the lines, then putting my own brand of logic to work; I think they've made a massive mistake by taking an existing OS's which is inturn built on a predecessor's code, etc, etc, then trying to build the new bits and pieces into/tacking on/ it while tweaking the OS code to fit. The whole thing must be reaching Sumo proportions by now and is no doubt the reason why some of the geegaws will never make the light of day until better processors and more memory are readily available.

Why not take the opportunity to start from a clean sheet, built the kernel to fit the requirements of the a new file system, GUI, API, 64bit, virtual/cell technolog, etc. They could rewrite existing technology and processes to be backward compatible while getting rid of some old bugs.
Murray P (44)
353066 2005-05-09 21:43:00 At the rate micrsoft is going longhorn is just going to be XP with a slightly chaned aperence and more anoying features

And another $500 Bill hopes to get out if the "must haves" pockets..
paulw (1826)
353067 2005-05-09 23:46:00 ...Why not take the opportunity to start from a clean sheet, built the kernel to fit the requirements of the a new file system, GUI, API, 64bit, virtual/cell technolog, etc. They could rewrite existing technology and processes to be backward compatible while getting rid of some old bugs.

I have never witten an OS, but I am sure this is a huge undertaking. Especially something to replace Windows and all that that implies...

Why not simply do what Apple did when it face the same problem - use a perfectly good pre-existing OS and build on top of it. The BSD license allow this without any problems at all, and as Apple MacOSX has shown, it can be greater than sliced bread (well, according to some people anyways...).

But then you never really know these things - MS could pull something out of the hat and surprise everyone!
vinref (6194)
353068 2005-05-10 03:00:00 BBC's Click Online Steven Cole described the promises made about Longhorn as "Vapourware"
(we won't believe it 'til we see it).
Strommer (42)
353069 2005-05-10 04:26:00 Steve, trust me, it exists....

They scrapped the 4000 series of builds AFAIK which were built upon WinXP and tried to start with Server 2003 as its base because of one reason or another (I dunno) and they have been frantically working to port the current patches that were made to the XP code-base to 2003.

So thats apparently why some of the delays occured, and why the latest 5000 series build is pretty similar to the last 4000 series build.

Making an OS from scratch while it would be an interesting idea is simply not feasible after the millions of man-hours that have been put in to the current Windows OS.

Making an OS from Assembly would be cool ;)

The File-system is "possible" apparently there's something similar by SUN out.
Word is there's a reiser4 plugin underway which will do similar things to what MS promise, and possibly an ext3 extension too... That's what I heard through the grapevine at least.
Chilling_Silence (9)
353070 2005-05-10 04:40:00 ...Word is there's a reiser4 plugin underway which will do similar things to what MS promise, and possibly an ext3 extension too... That's what I heard through the grapevine at least.

Errr, aren't reiser and ext3 filesystems the wretched spawn of the evil demon of open source, and are therefore viral, cancerous, communistic, a danger to good capitalistic folk etc? Surely MS wouldn't pollute their OS with open source-derived technology would they?
vinref (6194)
353071 2005-05-10 04:51:00 Steve, trust me, it exists....

They scrapped the 4000 series of builds AFAIK which were built upon WinXP and tried to start with Server 2003 as its base because of one reason or another (I dunno) and they have been frantically working to port the current patches that were made to the XP code-base to 2003.

So theve scraped what they have been working on for the last few years and started again
sambaird (47)
353072 2005-05-10 06:20:00 Making an OS from Assembly would be cool

No. :groan: Believe me. It is possible for a small OS. I made a monitor/programme loader "OS" for the Z80 which finally filled a 2kx8 EPROM (all hand assembled, too ;)). I've worked with the assembly language source of a couple of DEC minicomputer OSs(OS/8 and RT11). But it is distinctly not nice. Even C is more pleasant to work with. The Primes used a mixture of Fortran, PL/1, and assembly. Burroughs used Algol. That was nice.

I don't doubt that WinFS is "possible". "You can do anything with software". What I am sure of is that although it might be a very nice thing when everything works perfectly, a file system has to be robust when things aren't right. It has to work in the real world. The power goes off halfway through an update. There are users in the real world. Things happen. I suspect that MS are discovering this.
Graham L (2)
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