On October 27 2003, the day after the PDC starts, Microsoft will launch the “Longhorn” Developer Center on MSDN. The actual product is expected sometime in 2005?but all the buzz?reminds me of the hype that was before Windows 95 was launched. Ofcourse, this time, its a more mature product and hopefully less buggy.
Among many other things that Longhorn will bring to your desktop or server, its core components will (hopefully) be:
- Aero -?the 3D-rendering user interface
- Avalon -?the core set of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling graphics/presentation chores
- Indigo -?the next release of Microsoft’s Web-services infrastructure that will underlie the OS; think .NET Remoting + MSMQ + ASMX + .NET Enterprise Services (a k a COM+)
- WinFS?-?the Windows File System data-store that Longhorn will borrow from Microsoft’s SQL Server “Yukon” database; will be able to store XML and metadata in a single place
- Palladium?- the next-generation secure computing base
Robert McLaws brought to attention some Longhorn snapshots at Only4Gurus.com