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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

#101

Post by ygra »

cm3 wrote: post #99
ygra wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ReFS provides the same filesystem APIs as NTFS, but the implementation does not depend on NTFS at all.

Can you point me to a source? I've read conflicting articles on it and frankly I found it odd that they supposedly would layer ZFS-like features on top of NTFS.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/b8/2012/01/16/building-the-...

At least I read it as »We took the API and a bunch of support infrastructure for that API and simply changed the storage engine on disk completely underneath that.«

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

#102

Post by rbanffy »

frik wrote: post #100
rbanffy wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a damn fine OS until 2020 Can it delete an open file?

Weird question. I don't know what you mean with "it". As a user you can delete an open file, if you remove the file handle. A convenient way is the unlocker.exe tool.

"It" here is Windows. I know you can do that, but will the process that had it open be able to write to it?

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

#103

Post by cm3 »

ygra wrote: post #101
cm3 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point me to a source? I've read conflicting articles on it and frankly I found it odd that they supposedly would layer ZFS-like features on top of NTFS.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/b8/2012/01/16/building-the-... At least I read it as »We took the API and a bunch of support infrastructure for that API and simply changed the storage engine on disk completely underneath that.«

Thanks, looks like a fork and I can also see why some of the text could be mistaken to mean it's reusing NTFS underneath.

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

#104

Post by saganus »

chungy wrote: post #59
saganus wrote: post #45

How come they can distribute binaries of an OS that belongs to a company? I mean, even though it is a failed project, it still may have valuable stuff, patents, etc. So how come they are able to distribute without issues? are they going to potentially get a C&D? should we start archiving these just in case?

There's a few possible answers: * Microsoft doesn't know about it * Microsoft doesn't care about it * The website has ignored C&Ds * [insert other reasons] I'm actually most inclined to think "Doesn't care" is the correct answer. None of these builds are under support and it's unlikely that your necessary drivers or apps will run on it. They're alpha and beta builds of Windows Vista, for crying out loud -- even the f…

Yeah, I definitely agree on the first and the third, but I'm not so sure about the second.

Even though they might be unsupported or unusable that doesn't mean that the legal team would be happy to ignore them.

Sometimes (most times?) companies are very aggressive when it comes to their IP, especially when it's a core product.

Don't get me wrong. I think it's really cool that we have access to these things, just out of curiosity (although I doubt I'll ever download and install them, because of laziness). But things like the emails and such, just seems like a fuzzy/gray area.

In the end I was hoping there was some other kind of answer like, Microsoft actually let them publish things or something like that, but I'm skeptical.

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

#105

Post by brooksc »

During the Longhorn project (before the reset to use Win 2003 code and create Vista from it)... There was plans for a "Castle" feature which would allow you to roam your profile, data across multiple PCs in the home. Parts of castle made it into Win7 homegroups later, but it was very much scoped back.

At the time I was in the WMDRM team which handled content licensing. We had a feature that built on Castle if you purchased audio/video content (purchased music still had DRM then) we'd automatically roam the content licenses among all the PCs in the home. We had the typical challenges from content owners that this could be used to share content in a dorm, over the internet. We had to design in things like proximity detection to ensure you aren't sharing beyond a home network. It was somewhat complicated (DRM couldn't be simple), but it would have provided a far better user experience.

We also planned a centralized DRM licensing backup/restore service so you weren't beholden to the service you bought content from deciding to let you have another license years later.

All of this was cancelled with the reset unfortunately...

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

#106

Post by jlgaddis »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #3

In case you ever wondered where the codename "Longhorn" came from, Windows XP was codenamed Whistler, and the follow-up version was codenamed Blackcomb, after the Whistler and Blackcomb mountains at the popular, eponymous Whistler Blackcomb ski resort in British Columbia a few hours away from Seattle. The Blackcomb release of Windows started slipping, so an interim release was planned. It was codenamed Longhorn, afte…

Back in the 90s, before I fully migrated away from Microsoft operating systems, I remember a few other code names as well.

If memory serves, "Chicago" was the code name for W95 and "Memphis" was the code name for W98. Also, I want to say that WFWG was called "Snowball" but I'm much less sure about that one (it's been a little while!).

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

#107

Post by jlgaddis »

skaber wrote: post #4

Good memories. I remember leeching longhorn builds from some guy on an irc channel on efnet through xdcc transfers. Every two-three weeks there was a new longhorn build that I would burn on a cd and use to format the family pc. I would've been a great beta tester!

Indeed, that's the same way I acquired the beta/pre-release versions of W95/W98, although in my case I believe it was fileservers on Undernet, not EFnet.

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

#108

Post by vizeroth »

reacweb wrote: post #76
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 64 was preinstalled on the family computer (HP Pavilion m9458fr bought in july 2009 for 416€ on eBay hp_marketplace_fr). I have installed linux on a second partition like for my previous computers, but on my previous computers, I was using windows 99% of the time. With Vista 64, I have been unable to find drivers for my expensive scanner, nor for my printer. This was so much annoyance that we (my wife and me) w…

In the last few years, we've started purchasing Dells with Ubuntu pre-installed. Most of them get imaged with Windows 10, but the machines which stay in IT and a small number of faculty members teaching IT-related courses usually get configured to dual-boot.

I have been using Virtualbox to deal with everything I need to do in Windows rather than going through the hassle of rebooting the machine. I use Windows for Active Directory administration, the occasional document that doesn't look right in LibreOffice, and occasionally jumping into Adobe software. My next computer at work is going to be a MacBook Pro with a Windows 10 VM, but at that point I should have most of the Adobe and MS Office tasks covered in OS X instead of the VM.

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

#109

Post by JoeAltmaier »

vizeroth wrote: post #108
reacweb wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vista 64 was preinstalled on the family computer (HP Pavilion m9458fr bought in july 2009 for 416€ on eBay hp_marketplace_fr). I have installed linux on a second partition like for my previous computers, but on my previous computers, I was using windows 99% of the time. With Vista 64, I have been unable to find drivers for my expensive scanner, nor for my printer. This was so much annoyance that we (my wife and me) w…

In the last few years, we've started purchasing Dells with Ubuntu pre-installed. Most of them get imaged with Windows 10, but the machines which stay in IT and a small number of faculty members teaching IT-related courses usually get configured to dual-boot. I have been using Virtualbox to deal with everything I need to do in Windows rather than going through the hassle of rebooting the machine. I use Windows for Act…

It'd be great to work so fluidly between machines. I get a headache switching back and forth between desktops like that - its kills the flow to stop and struggle with finding a setting or even a close button when its not where I automatically reach for.

As for VirtualBox, strange but I just yesterday spent 2 hours trying my best to use it and failing. It just wouldn't resize the window beyond some tiny vga thing. None of the online help did squat; none of the menus and settings had any affect. So I finally gave up. That thing has a ways to go before its useful for a desktop environment.

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

#110

Post by slipstream- »

jlgaddis wrote: post #106
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #3

In case you ever wondered where the codename "Longhorn" came from, Windows XP was codenamed Whistler, and the follow-up version was codenamed Blackcomb, after the Whistler and Blackcomb mountains at the popular, eponymous Whistler Blackcomb ski resort in British Columbia a few hours away from Seattle. The Blackcomb release of Windows started slipping, so an interim release was planned. It was codenamed Longhorn, afte…

Back in the 90s, before I fully migrated away from Microsoft operating systems, I remember a few other code names as well. If memory serves, "Chicago" was the code name for W95 and "Memphis" was the code name for W98. Also, I want to say that WFWG was called "Snowball" but I'm much less sure about that one (it's been a little while!).

Snowball was WfW 3.11.

WfW 3.1 was Sparta.

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