Longhorn: fundamental differences, or just a new XP skin?

[crimson117]

Looking at these beta screenshots, I wonder will there be anything fundamentally different in Windows Longhorn than we have in Windows XP, or will it be little more than a new XP skin?

Like will user permissions work differently? I can't even think of anything else to change... maybe OS has reached its limit, and now upgrades will be little more than a few new bundled utilities?

EDIT: well this answered some questions.

 

[spyordie007]

Longhorn will be much more than the differances between 2000 and XP (a couple of new features and appearance related things). Fundimentally it will be as big of a differance as 2000 was from NT 4.

Of course right now a lot of the features of the OS need a lot of work (and a number of them have yet to be built). I've got an install of 4074 (a pre-alpha semi-stable build) and play with it periodically.

More info for your reading pleasure:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/Long...oductinfo/default.aspx

 

[hopejr]

Those screenies are way old. I installed 4051 and 4074 and got some screenies of those, and it's way different. (Only problem is my server just died and I can't get it running again 🙁)

 

[Nothinman]

I wonder will there be anything fundamentally different in Windows Longhorn than we have in Windows XP

Of course there will be fundamental changes. There were a number of huge changes in the XP kernel compared to Win2K, but you probably didn't notice because they didn't require UI changes to facilitate them and that's how most kernel changes should be IMO.