Does Longhorn worry anyone?

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wyrd

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Longhorn, to me, seems like it may either be one of two things; the angel sent down from heaven, or armageddon for the Windows platform.

What's driven technological advancements over the years has mostly been games, whether most people like to accept that or not. It's a strange fact that people have pushed technology over the edge just to get more power, so they can play their games at higher frameworks, or to view their games in all of their graphical glory. After all, do we really need a 3ghz machine to run a software application? Sure, there are servers and what-not, but I've never heard anyone overclocking servers just so they can process a couple extra megs of info. per second.

Ironically, game programmers are also the most stubborn when it comes to change. It took several years for C++ to be accepted as a valid language for game programming (early 90s I believe), and C# is certainly not viewed in anyones eyes as a commercial programming language. In this strange paradox of events, Longhorn will be built upon .NET.

Will game programmers accept this change, or refuse? If they refuse, could it be the end of Windows? After all, who would want to buy an OS that runs games slower than another? If it's accepted, what will happen to those with older versions of Windows? They will have the problem of running games slower than those with Longhorn, and eventually be forced to buy it. Still, we can't avoid the possiblity of the gaming industry being split - some using C++ and others using C#. What's a poor user like myself to do? Install two versions of Windows on my machine?

Regardless of what happens, it should be an interesting show to watch.
 
Yeah before reading Derek's post I was about to write down the same, I don't believe Microsoft will throw everything to the garbage, you just can't change everything and forget what you did in the past, specially when you're talking about an OS. So nah, Longhorn is not a major problem for me I can still sleep all nights. Besides I don't know if you work or not, but I can tell you, where I work, we don't push the graphics in the server (who cares about the graphics in a server), but you can bet that the hard disks, processors and memory get all our attention and we are always looking for new ways to process information faster without changing the server... and next year we expect to grow a 20%
 
I don't like the look of Longhorn... From the programming side, we only just learn a new language and then they bring another one in which is totally different! From the OS side, I think that we need more adjustment to it.

I think that XP was supposed to bridge the gap between Win2K and Longhorn - but I don't think its bridged enough. For the less able PC users, it will be a shock, I think!
 
Perhaps, since Longhorn is based largely on .NET, .NET
languages and applications may see a performance boost and
thus make them more feasable for commercial applications.

Is this a correct assumption to make?
 
maybe, but who knows, let's hope microsoft improves this and we really get a boost on .NET
 
Firstly, I disagree that games are what drive technological advancements in the PC and operating system software insustry.

Longhorn is not built on .NET - it has just replaced two of the three core windows dlls - user32 and gui32 with the managed Avalon presentation layer, and lots of communications stuff too.

Considering that games don't use these two anyway (sure, they do, but only as intensively as Notepad does) and they use C++ and DirectX, I don't see that it'll make a blind bit of difference.
 
Longhorn will not alive till 2006, 2+ years to go. It is a 64bit xp os with some more extra features. I'm sure that c++ program would run on longhorn system as other windows do. Ms has a lot of smart guys, that why it could survive for many years.

I think, windows is difficult to be abandonned by users, since it is improved each day; therefore, programmers must always stay with the users. :D
 
I don't think I will ever buy it. I will go to red hat soon. I bet longhorn will have a much stronger activation system! No second chance if your hard disk fails now!
 
The eternal discussion on what OS is better, well, I think Windows improved a lot in the XP version, longhorn seems to improve more the security, and yes, it's great that the activation gets better, I don't like piracy, I think the day users stop doing and using piracy, companies will drop the prices.
Linux has its own good points, but the time I decided to put some money on linux, I bought it, hired an expert to configure it, 15 days later was hacked, I've never been hacked in my windows servers, the reason, oops!!!! there was a flaw on Red Hat, and as open source everyone knew this flaw, nothing important lost, but after this I'm not using a linux server again, I rather stick with Windows or Solaris.
Longhorn will be a success if Microsoft does the correct things.
No OS is flawless, or let me know which one is, so I'll change to it
 
I seriously doubt a completely flawless operating system will ever exist. Between the unavoidable human error factor and the fact that no matter what you do there is always going to be someone trying to get into a system that they shouldn't you just can't have a completely flawless operating system.

What everyone should do is keep their system updated with patches as they are released by the maker, this holds true for any operating system. In doing this you have gone a long way toward having as secure a system as possible.

In this field of computing, change is the one thing we can all be certain of. Almost every aspect of this field will require you to continue to study, learn, and upgrade your skills. The way I view it is that I'm on an adventure. I know not where it will lead me or what tasks await me. But I have my wits about me and a willingness to explore so off I go on a journey. It will be interesting to see where we do go next. :)
 
As a reply to the one about 2 operating systems:

I use Windows XP Professional Edition and Windows 98 Second Edition because Microsoft Windows XP doesn't emulate DOS stuff properly. Even at the age of 15, I still like playing Duke Nukem 3D and GTA in 8 Colour Mode so the roads are grey and not purple.

Anyway, I am planning on getting a copy of SuSE 9.0 Professional. Apperantly it runs Windows based applications fine. I'll give it a try. I can get a copy of ebay for about $5 US.
 
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