Editorial Repost From 5/9/2009: The Longhorn Community is dead.
Ah, Mid 2009, When I was just really coming into the respectable geek I am now. I found this post on my old blog. I hope you guys like.
Looks like I’ll be the first blogger with the guts to come out with the cold hard truth. Longhorn is completely dead.
Many people don’t want to say stuff like this in fear that Their Longhorn Fanboy friends will Block them off WLM. Well, I don’t care as it would be nice not to hear about Longhorn for a few days.
Before I get into more detail, Let my explain what Longhorn is, Was and is going to be.
Right after Windows XP was released, Microsoft Started work on the next version of Windows. Codename: Longhorn.
Longhorn had troubles from the Start, At First Microsoft could not decide if Longhorn would be the “Bridge to Vienna” (Vienna was a early name for the version of Windows to precede Longhorn) or if Longhorn would be a Landmark OS.
Not many people knew anything about Longhorn and how it would Turn out until PDC 2003. At PDC 03 Microsoft made a big mistake. The Video showed stuff that there would have been no way they could have done in a mere… Few months. That’s right, In PDC, they said that Longhorn would be Available in… 2003.
The Biggest problem with that idea is this: Microsoft was aiming for many amazing new features and core system changes at the point in Longhorn’s development was Windows XP With a poorly coded theme named Plex.
Longhorn got delayed. And at WinHEC 2004, MIcrosoft gave out Windows Longhorn Build 4074. And that proved to people that Longhorn was in no way anywhere close to ready. And Longhorn kept getting delayed.
Up until, at one point, Microsoft realized that Longhorn was a failure and the project needed a “re-boot”.
So Microsoft quit Building on-top of Windows XP and Started Building off of Windows Server 2003, This Became Windows Vista. Many geeks were mad. They were promised a Amazing slew of Amazing interface and System Amazement, and they got Vista. Vista was amazing, But it was nothing like What the PDC 04 Video led geeks to believe.
Thus, as people wanted Longhorn the way it was promised, Projects like Longhorn Reloaded got started.
But most of us moved on from that and Focused on trying to make Vista look like Longhorn. (this was because Longhorn was made of poorly written code on-top of a old codebase that could not handle the strain as it was.)
Overall, Vista just did not give what geeks wanted. But here it is, 2009, and many people are still hooked on Longhorn.
A few of us (and I do mean just a few) have moved on with our lives and gone to Windows 7. (which blows Longhorn away in pretty much EVERY aspect) We have realized that Longhorn was a Dead-end road in our lives and we keep our good memories of playing around with it but we are moving forward.
Now, The “Longhorn Gang” as it were is split up into people who have moved on, and People who are still holding on to it.
People’s attention is leaving Longhorn. And it is fading away. The people who still hold onto Longhorn and who were seen in the Tech Community as Elites are getting desperate to hold on to their tiny bit of “fame”.
One such way is they right about the same time as Windows 7 Build 6956 was leaked, a Unleaked Longhorn Build was leaked, 4066, But was for the most part ignored in favor of Windows 7.
As always comes with holding on to old junk that most people in the world don’t care about, Longhorn fanboys are acting more and more immature. And using “134t sp34k” (which more mature geeks call “nub speak”). The road to Longhorn is a Fast, Downhill one. Forums that still largely support Longhorn are infested with arrogant, immature noobs hell bent on staying in the past, rather than looking to the future.
I can say, as one that moved on before most, It’s hard watching your friends get dragged down, But don’t let them keep you in the past. Move forward, one Windows 7 build at a time.
-Benjamin 5/9/2009
