Wednesday, November 27, 2002
Longhorn Alpha Leaks
Posted by Jason Dunn in "OFF-TOPIC" @ 02:04 PM
http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/longhorn_alpha.asp
This was just too interesting to pass up - I'm a Windows geek, I admit it. I feel a rush of adrenaline when I rebuild a machine, install Windows, and tweak it to perfection. Longhorn is a long ways off, but it's interesting to see the kinds of things Microsoft wants to incorporate. How does Paul Thurrott get his hands on this stuff? Amazing.
The two most exciting things from my point of view are Avalon, a new graphics engine that will be based on DirectX and allow for any part of the OS to play media. Imagine icons that are actually Flash or video files. :D I always cringe when I see the words "legacy support" - sometimes I wish Microsoft would make a clean break from the past, even if it meant breaking 1000's of applications. Yeah, yeah, I know how angry that would make some people, but I look at what Apple was able to accomplish with OS X and I think "Sometimes starting over is a good thing."
The other cool thing about Longhorn will be the way the file system will work - it will be a giant database. I don't know exactly how this will work, but I've heard reports of Longhorn being almost like a GUI sitting atop a Sequel Server engine. Crazy? Perhaps. A significant change to the way Windows works? Definitely.
This was just too interesting to pass up - I'm a Windows geek, I admit it. I feel a rush of adrenaline when I rebuild a machine, install Windows, and tweak it to perfection. Longhorn is a long ways off, but it's interesting to see the kinds of things Microsoft wants to incorporate. How does Paul Thurrott get his hands on this stuff? Amazing.
The two most exciting things from my point of view are Avalon, a new graphics engine that will be based on DirectX and allow for any part of the OS to play media. Imagine icons that are actually Flash or video files. :D I always cringe when I see the words "legacy support" - sometimes I wish Microsoft would make a clean break from the past, even if it meant breaking 1000's of applications. Yeah, yeah, I know how angry that would make some people, but I look at what Apple was able to accomplish with OS X and I think "Sometimes starting over is a good thing."
The other cool thing about Longhorn will be the way the file system will work - it will be a giant database. I don't know exactly how this will work, but I've heard reports of Longhorn being almost like a GUI sitting atop a Sequel Server engine. Crazy? Perhaps. A significant change to the way Windows works? Definitely.
