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The Road to Longhorn
The next release of Windows is set to be as big a change from XP as Windows 95 was from Windows 3.1.
At the foot of the sleepy ski resort of Whistler Mountain in British Columbia, just off a small road called Blackcomb Way, lies the Longhorn Saloon and Grill – an enticing restaurant that serves up food and drink to provide, in their own words, “the perfect ending to a day on the mountainâ€. The Longhorn Saloon is where people go when they're through with Whistler, which is curiously similar to the situation Windows users are in. Whistler was the codename for Windows XP, and Longhorn is the codename for the next generation release of Windows, supposedly due in 2005.
Windows, codenamed Longhorn, isn't just a new GUI (Graphical User Interface), nor is it an evolutionary build of Windows XP. Instead, Longhorn is the culmination of several key Microsoft initiatives from the past few years, including .NET, DirectX, SQL Server, Trustworthy Computing, MSN Messenger, and Windows Installer.
Although Longhorn isn't due out in the shops till 2005, Microsoft has taken great pains to ensure that Longhorn is on everyone's lips. In order to keep people talking about it, Microsoft has put out a number of pre-alpha releases of Longhorn. These act as technology previews of what the final release might look like, and enable developers to work towards the new operating system. With over 18 months until release date, these releases have been more showcases than previews, and the majority of new features planned for Longhorn have yet to materialise.
Three pillars
Longhorn brings with it many fundamental changes to the Windows platform. Microsoft has encapsulated the changes under the banner of WinFX. This can be broken down into four key technology ‘pillars'; Fundamentals, Avalon, WinFS, and Indigo. Fundamentals is the operating system core we're used to from Windows XP, but is re-engineered to properly follow Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing mantra. It includes new ‘ClickOnce' technology to make installation and maintenance of software much easier.
Avalon is a completely new graphics system that's intended for use on all future Longhorn-based applications, replacing older systems like GDI and GDI+. Avalon powers Aero, which is the new graphics engine, and does away with the old, component-based system of Windows development. In its place we get an all-new, vector-based system that keeps user interface information stored in a dialect of XML, known as the XML Application Markup Language (XAML).
Much work is being done on the next release of DirectX (tentatively named DirectX Next) to offer better throughput of primitive shapes, and the Longhorn desktop will render all of its display through DirectX for maximum aesthetic effect. Demos have already been shown where windows have been transparent, rotated, scaled, and warped, while still retaining their functionality. This is made possible by the vector UI system and DirectX rendering. In order to keep the desktop clear of animated clutter and glitz for business users, the new Aero-style interface can be downgraded to a more traditional style by the administrator, although this will take place automatically if you don't have the required graphics hardware.
WinFS is a new file system that's integrated with some of the technology Microsoft developed for use with SQL Server, codename Yukon. This is a product that will eventually be SQL Server 2004 or SQL Server.NET. The plan is to use the existing NTFS filesystem that we're used to from Windows 2000 and XP, and to add proper support for metadata. Metadata is “data about dataâ€, and will be used to describe the contents of the files on your hard drive. Much of this was already in Windows XP. If you convert a music CD to Windows Media Audio format when online, Media Player will auto-connect to an online CD music database to get the name of the artist, the name of the tracks, the year it was recorded, and the genre for the CD, storing that information inside each file. What's new in Longhorn is the ability to look at your hard drive through a metadata-filtered view. For example, you could sort your music folder by artist, even though the artist's information isn't stored in the filename itself but in the metadata. It's possible that this will only be available in the My Documents folder in the Longhorn release.
The final component in the three pillars is Indigo. This is the communications layer that's designed to both bring together all the advances Microsoft has made in its move to .NET, as well as bringing in a new set of technologies at the same time. Combining various disparate parts of .NET into one API means that developers will be able to access a selection of protocols and security measures all through one interface, which in turn should help to increase security, whilst adding a great deal of flexibility at the same time. End users can expect applications to work together much more smoothly if all of Microsoft's hopes for Indigo come true. It will finally bring the power of web services to the desktop in a way that everyone can use. Microsoft has committed to back-porting the Indigo subsystem to both Windows XP and Windows 2003, which should help its adoption.
New features and technologies are all well and good, but to really understand what Longhorn offers, you need to look at it from the viewpoint of the three types of user who will buy it; enterprise users looking to deploy to hundreds or thousands of desktops; small office and home users looking to work smarter with their existing resources, and developers looking to take advantage of the latest technologies.
Big business
Despite Windows XP having been out for some time now, Windows 2000 continues to be the most popular enterprise desktop system in use,. For the large part, this is because it's easy to manage and very stable. Responding to repeated requests from its customers to lengthen its Windows product cycle, Microsoft will make Windows XP last from late 2001, when it was released, to late 2005/2006 when Longhorn will finally arrive.
As a result, Microsoft will have had over four years to develop Longhorn into a product that will be as popular in big business as Windows 2000. There are three key technologies that will drive this. The first is Next Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB), an initiative most of us know by its original codename, Palladium. Many stories and rumours regarding Palladium have circled the web since it was first announced, with people saying it will remove all freedom from computing, that it will lock you into Microsoft and certain hardware manufacturers, and that it will stop you using unauthorised software (that is, software that ‘they' don't want you to use). Some parts are true. Microsoft has said that “much of the NGSCB architecture design is covered by patents, and there will be intellectual property issues to be resolved. It's too early to speculate on how those issues might be addressed.†If patents are involved, running NGSCB hardware almost certainly means lock-in, so be careful what you commit to. If this 1984-like event doesn't materialise, NGSCB has the potential to help companies form stronger and more secure networks. It has a finely grained trust system that's built from the hardware up, meaning that when someone sends you an email, you can verify that it came from that person and their system.
From a software management perspective, one of the new features being introduced in Longhorn is ClickOnce. This is anticipated to enable easy installation, maintenance, and uninstallation of software. This feature, which is being introduced in the next version of Microsoft's Visual Studio.NET development tools will also allow dynamic updating of applications in roughly the same manner as Windows Update currently works. The plan here is that by keeping applications patched, one set of security issues can be struck off the check list.
One area that's sure to please CTOs the world over is platform compatibility. Longhorn is available in three different flavours for three different architectures – one for x86 (Pentium-class hardware), one for AMD64 (Opteron and Athlon64), and one for ia64 (Itanium and Itanium 2). As a result you can standardise your OS irrespective of the hardware you choose. We believe that the ia64 build may not ever be released given the current success of the architecture, but it's possible that Intel may cut a deal with Microsoft to keep its ailing flagship alive.
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