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Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project

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Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project

#21

Post by duaneb »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #20
unsignedqword wrote: post #8

Vista was not a very well-received release, but I remember using 64-bit Vista way back when. Maybe my memory is failing me a little, but I don't really recall Vista being that bad or unstable. UAC, of course, was a little annoying then, but 7 felt a little more unstable and crash-prone than Vista. My dad still uses a Vista desktop regularly (a 2007 install) and as far as I can tell it still works perfectly fine for h…

Vista != Longhorn. Vista was a total do-over after it became clear that Longhorn was never going to ship.

No, Longhorn is the codename for Vista; it was Blackcomb (that eventually became Windows 7) that was the original goal that was punted.

Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project

#22

Post by StevePerkins »

unsignedqword wrote: post #8

Vista was not a very well-received release, but I remember using 64-bit Vista way back when. Maybe my memory is failing me a little, but I don't really recall Vista being that bad or unstable. UAC, of course, was a little annoying then, but 7 felt a little more unstable and crash-prone than Vista. My dad still uses a Vista desktop regularly (a 2007 install) and as far as I can tell it still works perfectly fine for h…

Aside from UAC... the biggest issue with Vista is that the required system resources was a significant jump over XP, and too many manufacturers shipped machines that were simply too under-powered for the preinstalled OS.

In those days, I remember seeing Vista laptops with 1 GB of RAM, on which Vista was unusable. People had to edit arcane registry settings to disable the "Aero" look-and-feel, and drop down to a more Windows 95-like display just to run at all.

It really was basically fraud, and infuriated everybody. If Microsoft had been more realistic about their "certified for Vista" specs, it probably wouldn't have been such a flop. On the other hand, new laptops jumping from 1 GB of RAM to 4 GB minimum overnight would have been a hard consumer sell, I suppose.

Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project

#23

Post by NamTaf »

ams6110 wrote: post #15
ajdlinux wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If my memory serves me correctly, a lot of the public outrage at the time was about poor drivers for some time after release?

Also wasn't that the release that had endless popup warnings asking permission for arcane things. Anyone who used it became trained to just click "Allow" a dozen times just to get on with what they wanted to do.

The issue was chiefly that XP didn't enforce good programming practices (storing user info in /Program Files/ was rife and one of many issues). Introducing the UAC security structure meant that suddenly all of these applications tried to do things that triggered UAC elevation prompts.

This was addressed twofold, as far as I understand: 1) Application developers were railroaded into best practices and forced not to do terrible design ideas, and 2) MS introduced a whole load of compatibility features such as virtualising folders transparently so when bad apps still tried to do bad things, it was securely captured and diverted around requiring a UAC elevation prompt.

Regarding the stability issues, Vista's driver model was new when compared to XP. Naturally, the number of bugs in drivers increased initially but slowly settled down. Much of the '7 is more stable / faster than Vista' groupthink is the result of bad drivers getting better in the intervening years.

Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project

#25

Post by NeutronBoy »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #20
unsignedqword wrote: post #8

Vista was not a very well-received release, but I remember using 64-bit Vista way back when. Maybe my memory is failing me a little, but I don't really recall Vista being that bad or unstable. UAC, of course, was a little annoying then, but 7 felt a little more unstable and crash-prone than Vista. My dad still uses a Vista desktop regularly (a 2007 install) and as far as I can tell it still works perfectly fine for h…

Vista != Longhorn. Vista was a total do-over after it became clear that Longhorn was never going to ship.

In the first few paragraphs of the article it mentions

> The project, however, failed completely and development had to reset. More than three years late Microsoft released Windows Code Name 'Longhorn' as Windows Vista.

Is this incorrect, or not the full story?

edit: less confrontational

Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project

#26

Post by yuhong »

StevePerkins wrote: post #22
unsignedqword wrote: post #8

Vista was not a very well-received release, but I remember using 64-bit Vista way back when. Maybe my memory is failing me a little, but I don't really recall Vista being that bad or unstable. UAC, of course, was a little annoying then, but 7 felt a little more unstable and crash-prone than Vista. My dad still uses a Vista desktop regularly (a 2007 install) and as far as I can tell it still works perfectly fine for h…

Aside from UAC... the biggest issue with Vista is that the required system resources was a significant jump over XP, and too many manufacturers shipped machines that were simply too under-powered for the preinstalled OS. In those days, I remember seeing Vista laptops with 1 GB of RAM, on which Vista was unusable. People had to edit arcane registry settings to disable the "Aero" look-and-feel, and drop down to a more…

This also reminds me of how the DRAM manufacturers tried to do the 1Gbit DDR2 crossover during 2007/2008, when 64-bit Windows was not common until mid-2008. Needless to say it was a serious mistake (I think Qimonda went into bankruptcy during that time). Even on laptops, DDR2 used BGA not TSOP.

Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project

#27

Post by aaronbrethorst »

duaneb wrote: post #21
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vista != Longhorn. Vista was a total do-over after it became clear that Longhorn was never going to ship.

No, Longhorn is the codename for Vista; it was Blackcomb (that eventually became Windows 7) that was the original goal that was punted.

Yes. The website we're looking at refers to Longhorn, a defunct operating system project that was canceled by Microsoft and replaced by a new project with an identical codename.

Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project

#30

Post by maslam »

I have vivid memories of working on Longhorn as an intern. It was an incredibly ambitious project - rewrite of the "filesystem" (really, a relational object store!), driver framework and display stack to name a few. The project failed the same exact way many projects fail - they are too ambitious and not well-scoped. The demo Hillel showed, IIRC, was complete vaporware.
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