Windows Longhorn, the codename of Microsoft’s next-generation operating system, is scheduled to ship in May of next year.
After a seemingly endless series of missed deadlines, it appears that Microsoft is only now ready to meet the expected release date that it set for its latest operating system.
Though not a total departure from the Windows XP experience, Longhorn promises to be a vast upgrade both visually and functionally. Microsoft has decided to take a compartmentalized approach to software development for this project, isolating such systems as the underlying graphics engine (code-named Avalon), the graphical user interface (code-named Aero), and several others.
Each portion of the new operating system is exciting in itself, but taken as a whole, Longhorn packs quite a punch. For instance, the Avalon graphical engine will allow visual feats not previously possible with current software.
As a demonstration of its abilities, Microsoft has shown off a neat toy which rotates all of the on-screen windows independently about their centers while still maintaining their usability.
Such concurrent independent graphics rendering would be a stretch to accomplish on modern machines, and at best would perform quite slowly. (The demonstration included over 10 simultaneous windows, all rotating, usable, and translucent.) Also shown was an animation of hundreds of separately-rendered squares dancing atop of a usable Windows desktop. These neat tricks, intended to show off the capabilities of the new technology, will likely not be found in Longhorn’s public release.
The graphical interface will see an impressive makeover as well. Incorporating a new sidebar in addition to a slimmer taskbar, Microsoft plans to improve one’s interactive computing experience. The interface will also include actual photographs into layout elements and will offer a choice of three tiers of visual experience, the topmost of which will require fairly advanced graphics hardware.
Microsoft also promises to beef up security measures, incorporating a new coding structure currently called Palladium. Though its details are not concrete, Palladium applications will have built-in security measures, even at the hardware level, in order to protect users from spam, hacking, privacy invasion, and other electronic attacks.
In addition, Microsoft is working on WinFS, an add-on to Microsoft’s current file system (NTFS). WinFS, originally planned to ship with Longhorn, is being delayed until after Longhorn’s release, and will be installable on both Longhorn and XP machines.
WinFS allows for a searchable file system, one that can facilitate finding data buried on your hard drive. This system will go about indexing and integrating the underlying file structure to allow for searching at different levels of granularity.
Similarly to WinFS’s planned backwards compatibility, Avalon, the graphics engine built into Longhorn, will also be released separately for Windows XP. This doesn’t mean, however, that Windows XP machines will look like Longhorn. Instead, they will be compatible with any new programs that utilize the advancements of the Avalon engine. This means that developers can feel free to explore this new engine, knowing that millions of machines will be able to use it regardless of Longhorn’s success.
With the first beta deadline approaching and time swiftly moving ahead, Microsoft is working hard on each individual subsystem and its integration into Windows Longhorn.
Though it was originally planned to be released as early as 2004, progress has been slow in coming. The current release date of May 2006 has been treated with greater certainty than any previous one, and as long as development follows planning, we will see the next generation operating system in a little over a year’s time.
