Hold mouse here for list of most recent changes.
Some journalists have been given legitimate and intentional leaks (called “previews”) by Microsoft, and Microsoft has started publishing its own articles on the subject. I’ll keep a sampling of these here (in addition to a few other legitimate news articles on the subject) for your perusal.
Release Notes for Microsoft Windows Code Named "Longhorn" Preview Release
THE LEGEND OF LONGHORN: On the Road from Whistler to Blackcomb
Those who love to ski in the British Columbia area will have no trouble recognizing the names “Whistler” and “Blackcomb.” Two popular and adjacent mountains a couple of hours outside of Vancouver, the mountains provide both summer and winter recreation, including a summer jazz and blues festival. Want to know more? See here.
For most computer folks, though, “Whistler” first stands out in memory as the prerelease code name of Microsoft’s current leading edge desktop operating system, Windows XP; and, just one mountaintop beyond, “Blackcomb” is the code name for Microsoft’s next planned server release.
But what lies before us on the road from here to there, from Whistler to Blackcomb? Well, in British Columbia, as one comes down off the high of Whistler along the road to Blackcomb, the primary thing that will likely catch your attention, at the base of the village gondolas, is a popular stop-over and nightlife bar called the Longhorn.
Go south to Redmond, Washington and Longhorn is also the biggest thing you’re going to encounter on the road from Whistler to Blackcomb. The press is starting to heat up about it, especially since Microsoft’s formal unveiling of a pre-Alpha version of Longhorn at the October 2003 Professional Developers Conference. By all credible news accounts, we’re two to three years from the release of Longhorn, so nobody knows what the final will look like. It’s just too early. Even once a formal Beta process begins, the product is still subject to considerable change, and we haven’t even gotten close to watching it behave with a wide range of existing hardware and software. That all comes later in the development process. But, that having been said, I also want to add that I am more excited by what I have seen in Longhorn than I have ever been for any Microsoft operating system ever to come down the pike. Ever. I don’t just mean bells and whistles and new Sunday clothes. No, I mean things like raw end-user functionality and flexibility, and the adoption of industry-wide standards that are going to blow wide open the capabilities and interaction of software over the next few years.
How different is Longhorn from, say, Windows XP? “Longhorn is as different from current versions of Windows as Windows 95 was from Windows 3.1,” Microsoft’s Chris Sells wrote recently, “and offers as much opportunity for users and developers.” While we are still quite a ways from seeing the final result, what I have seen so far convinces me that Chris isn’t exaggering. Windows XP is the apex of Windows as it has been known thus far, and Longhorn may well be the first truly 21st Century operating system. (Science fiction fans, get ready!)
LONGHORN PORTAL & GENERAL ARTICLES
- Longhorn Developer Center Microsoft’s first full Longhorn portal. Check it out!
- Understanding Longhorn To date, the best overview of the product, straight from Microsoft.
- The Pillars of Longhorn An important overview. This one will help you put all of the scattered data into perspective.
- Living La Vida Longhorn by Chris Sells. A superb tour of the “three pillars” — Avalon, WinFS, and Indigo — which, with Windows Fundamentals, comprise the new Windows Framework, WinFX.
- LonghornBlogs.com As blogs will do, you may find just about anything here! So far, it’s been a great source of breaking news. This will probably be a very active site for the next couple of years!
- Longhorn Glossary Almost entirely for programmers — almost nothing of popular interest — except it does help you keep up with the current conversation!
THE “THREE PILLARS” of WinFX
AVALON – Presentation
Longhorn’s graphical & multimedia APIs
WinFS – Storage
The new Windows File System
NOTE: Toby Whitney of Microsoft’s WinFS team wrote the following, which clarifies many misconceptions about WinFS: “NTFS covers the surface area of the disk and at one point in the namespace on the disk WinFS is built on top of WinFS. In the PDC builds, that namespace is \\localhost\defaultstore. WinFS doesn’t cover all of the NTFS-formatted disk. In LH [Longhorn] the default store that comes with the standard LH install will map to c:\documents and settings. The user (or apps on behalf of a user) will be able to create additional WinFS stores. In LH if a user creates a folder outside of a WinFS store and puts files in them, those files won’t get the benefits of WinFS.” (2003 Nov 7)
- Code Name WinFS by Richard Grimes (Microsoft). Subtitled, “Revolutionary File Storage System Lets Users Search and Manage Files Based on Content.” The best public discussion of WinFS I have seen yet!
- WinFS API A technical but accessible short article. The WinFS API addresses querying, navigating, behaviors, and events in WinFS.
- Microsoft unpacks details of Longhorn storage by Martin LaMonica (CNET News.com). Primarily about the new WinFS storage system, one of three main new components of Longhorn. Clears up several misconceptions. Discusses the relationship of NTFS, the “Yukon” release of SQL Server, and XAML (‘zamel,’ rhymes with ‘camel’ — it’s the Longhorn markup language). This is the stuff that excites me most about Longhorn! (2003 October 14)
- WinFS Security A short, cogent addressing of the No. 1 question on everyone’s mind.
- WinFS Scheme Early Draft A Visio file showing the early version of the WinFS schema as shown at the 2003 PDC.
INDIGO – Communication
Next generation web services founded on .NET
NOTE: As “next generation .NET,” Indigo will be made available for earlier versions of Windows. My best current public information is that sometime after the release of Whidbey (next year’s version of Visual Studio) and well in advance of Longhorn’s release, an Indigo version will be shipped for Windows 2000/XP. I suspect we will see Indigo to appear for other platforms as well.
AERO – The Longhorn GUI Shell or “User Experience”
built with Avalon and WinFS Technologies
FURTHER ARTICLES
LONGHORN PUBLIC NEWSGROUPS
Microsoft has opened several Longhorn-related newsgroups, in the microsoft.public hierarchy, for the discussion of Longhorn. Understandably, these are all aimed at developers right now. Here are direct links that will launch these newsgroups in your default newsreader.
THURROTT’S FAQs
NEWS MEDIA ARTICLES
SOME MICROSOFT CHATS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
Mentioning Longhorn
TIDBITS
Thanks primarily to the developer public newsgroups, small bits and pieces of information are emerging that may be of interest to the typical end-user. I am going to start recording these in this Tidbits section. I have no idea where this will go or what it will evolve into, but for now it will be a list of Longhorn trivia. Because this information may change significantly with successive builds of Longhorn, I will date each entry.
- Projected Release Date for Longhorn At present, Longhorn is projected for a late 2006 release — in time for Christmas 2006 sales. That suggests a date no later than October (my speculation: roughly October 25, the fifth anniversary of Win XP’s release. This is, of course, subject to change between now and then. (5/05)
- Dual Boot with Windows XP The Longhorn developer preview version will dual boot just fine with Windows XP. It is best to install XP first, then install Longhorn. The usual warnings prevail concerning running pre-Apha (undeveloped and unreliable) code on a machine that must work for you. (various contributors, 10/03)
- Internet Explorer & Outlook Express Longhorn contains Version 7. Reportedly, this IE version will be heavily tied into Longhorn’s Windows File System (WinFS) storage and data access capabilities. Therefore IE/OE 7 will not be released for earlier Windows versions. Both NNTP and email are stored in WinFS by Outlook Express 7 (which is now a true db client), so it is all totally searchable — which also should be good news for NNTP fans that may have had concern that the protocol was being sidelined by MS. (Paul Steckler, MS, 11/5/03)
- Longhorn Command Shell This is the new interactive scripting and automation environment for Longhorn. Though the Longhorn Beta isn’t scheduled to start until sometime next summer, a Command Shell previe is kicking off now, according to Neowin.net. (This is not yet a Beta, as previously reported.) (5 Nov 2003)
- System Tray The classic System Tray doesn’t appear in Longhorn by default. You can, however, right-click on the SideBar, and choose Classic Tray from the dropdown menu. This will add a SideBar Tile that displays the icons that would be in SysTray in earlier versions of Windows. (Mike Kolltz, MVP, 11/1/03) Alternately, disabling the SideBar gives the classic desktop taskbar with the traditional notification area System Tray.
longhorn Download Ranking
