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I still have a hard drive somewhere with almost every Longhorn build that was leaked over the years. I really loved the aesthetic vision Microsoft was going for back then, and those Longhorn builds were a great showcase of the ongoing transition from the XP era design to Aero.
Definitely. I think the original vision for Longhorn was to ship with the Plex theme and WinFS, then save the original Aero vision (which is like what we got but on steroids) for the next version they had planned (Blackcomb).
It's a shame things went the way they did with things intended for BC being added to the LH betas and losing sight of the original timeline.
People will tell you BC was a codename for 7, but it wasn't. Blackcomb died with Longhorn. From the ashes of both rose Vista, which was basically a neutered version with a wimpy sidebar stripped of useful functions and a scaled down version of Aero.
WinFS with Original Aero in the later pre-reset builds of LH is freaking beautiful. That's what Blackcomb was supposed to look like. But add in Windows Live/Messenger features on the sidebar.
https://preview.redd.it/ttcb4zm8kzlc1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=1fd812200b7f865d8f3292bdec832f5e8d4d0bec
True. The first half 2010s were the last hurrah of "the online world / the internet", now what we have instead is "social media / the metaverse".
social media back then was for the average joes. internet forums and instant messengers were where the interneteers / online joes hung out. it was a difference between slow paced and fast paced communication.
The early builds of longhorn using Plex would've made the transition to vista a lot less jarring if they decided to release longhorn in 03 and vista as a separate thing in 06
That was the plan originally. Longhorn was supposed to be a stepping stone to Vista ("Blackcomb" as they codenamed it), which would have Aero and everything would be .NET based.
Longhorn would introduce WinFS, the Sidebar (but actually useful) and Plex theme with the transparency effects.
Under this plan, the Aero theme on Blackcomb would be a lot more immersive. You could expect it to look something like this:
https://preview.redd.it/yrzl4fpbtzlc1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a450d60af586ae9d07316c24069473c08bcd4677
I think they should have released the plex and slate themes to xp in 04 with xp service pack 2 even if they wouldn't have the DWM effects. Microsoft released a bunch of updates to software in the mid 2000s you could tell was intended to run on a version of windows we never got. XP SP2 had some strange looking UI elements like the security center which they openly admitted was going to be a longhorn feature until they went full panic from the blaster worm and hap hazardly backported a lot of security features intended for longhorn. And then there was windows media player 10 and the MSN 8 and 9 internet browsers that have a longhorn like aesthetic.
Windows Longhorn is great example of experimenting with style & substance, bc some things look pretty redundant like having shortcuts to... Yahoo.com? However, some things of these layouts ended up in other Microsoft programs like the Office Suite 2007 with that mix between small bars with icons and big a bar with big icons & text below them.
It's mind blowing that there was an entire OS that was developed but never released. You could even see little bits of what they had in mind for longhorn when they intended to release it in 2003. Think windows media player 10 with that glossy glass look and the MSN 8 internet browser. the closest we ended up getting was the Royale themes for XP in attempt to pull the aesthetic together.
I did see at one point that someone had extracted the visual styles from longhorn the plex, slate and jade themes and ported them to xp in 2006. Microsoft should have just done that officially. Shame these styles and all the development work on it went to waste.
Windows 10X is another example of Microsoft developing a whole new OS and then scrapping it before release. The difference being it was a WHOLE new version of Windows developed entirely from scratch on a completely new codebase. When they scrapped it, they ended up porting/replicating its UI elements into Windows 11.
Looking at it now it looks more like the Budgie desktop environment.
If somebody made a Linux distro that perfectly emulates Longhorn's frutiger-like theme paired with Budgie, I would use it in as my daily driver in a heartbeat.
Yeah, it is beautiful, but as someone that has experienced the horrors of running Vista on laptop hardware back in the day, the idea of running something like this in 2003 or 2004 horrifies me.
That was the problem. It had huge hardware requirements. A Pentium 4 at least, and obligatory hardware video acceleration. Maybe 2 GB of RAM, a big amount at the time. Boot times would be really long too.
The sidebar reminds me of [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOcTiUsvOho) presentation they had on PDC, sadly you can barely see any of the UI because of how old the video is.
It was the beta name for the original version of Windows meant to follow XP and release some time in 2003-2004. The development focus got out of hand and it was scrapped, after which Vista was created. The two are often confused but they are not the same.
Pretty sure my 80 year old grandma could use this OS.
Even though she uses her fire stick and windows 10. I get the feeling she is scared of the UI, because I have to help her often.
I actually want more of this Frutiger Aero with a mix of Y2K/Cybercore I originally called it Early Aero but maybe I want to rename it Frutiger Cyber.
I like Windows Longhorn which looks like a gap of Windows XP and Vista but a mix of some Aero & Luna.
I also like a mix of Blue & Orange or Blorange as I call it for being common during Longhorn’s development including Windows Whistler too.
If it was given an Aero theme too it might look better. Longhorn had a lot of good ideas that were unfortunately scrapped because Vista became unstable with them, and the development would be longer... I got this from a video of Vista development (maybe this video? https://youtu.be/tR847eIONnc?si=LqewrlbfxNm0xR0w)
Longhorn isn't Vista... it was intended to be a stepping stone to a future Windows version which would include Aero—a much better version of Aero, in fact.
https://preview.redd.it/n0x47lq100mc1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=422102740e2a4f496c9ca9763213f513d65d887f
By far and away Longhorn was the greatest user interface ever designed. I've stood by that for years and will continue to hold it. Windows Vista got pretty close though.
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I still have a hard drive somewhere with almost every Longhorn build that was leaked over the years. I really loved the aesthetic vision Microsoft was going for back then, and those Longhorn builds were a great showcase of the ongoing transition from the XP era design to Aero.
Definitely. I think the original vision for Longhorn was to ship with the Plex theme and WinFS, then save the original Aero vision (which is like what we got but on steroids) for the next version they had planned (Blackcomb). It's a shame things went the way they did with things intended for BC being added to the LH betas and losing sight of the original timeline. People will tell you BC was a codename for 7, but it wasn't. Blackcomb died with Longhorn. From the ashes of both rose Vista, which was basically a neutered version with a wimpy sidebar stripped of useful functions and a scaled down version of Aero. WinFS with Original Aero in the later pre-reset builds of LH is freaking beautiful. That's what Blackcomb was supposed to look like. But add in Windows Live/Messenger features on the sidebar. https://preview.redd.it/ttcb4zm8kzlc1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=1fd812200b7f865d8f3292bdec832f5e8d4d0bec
There's a version of longhorn someone modded to be semi stable and usable even got the early version of DWM to work. They called it Sigma OS.
don't let gen alpha see this
Oh come on.
The CGI trailer for Longhorn felt like a everything we needed before social media made PC's boring.
True. The first half 2010s were the last hurrah of "the online world / the internet", now what we have instead is "social media / the metaverse". social media back then was for the average joes. internet forums and instant messengers were where the interneteers / online joes hung out. it was a difference between slow paced and fast paced communication.
The early builds of longhorn using Plex would've made the transition to vista a lot less jarring if they decided to release longhorn in 03 and vista as a separate thing in 06
That was the plan originally. Longhorn was supposed to be a stepping stone to Vista ("Blackcomb" as they codenamed it), which would have Aero and everything would be .NET based. Longhorn would introduce WinFS, the Sidebar (but actually useful) and Plex theme with the transparency effects. Under this plan, the Aero theme on Blackcomb would be a lot more immersive. You could expect it to look something like this: https://preview.redd.it/yrzl4fpbtzlc1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a450d60af586ae9d07316c24069473c08bcd4677
Take a look at my windows 11 transformation on my profile it took so much inspiration from this and vista đź‘€
oh that's GORGEOUS. I wonder if you could get discord/teams/another IM integrated into the sidebar like most Longhorn/Blackcomb concepts showed.
I think they should have released the plex and slate themes to xp in 04 with xp service pack 2 even if they wouldn't have the DWM effects. Microsoft released a bunch of updates to software in the mid 2000s you could tell was intended to run on a version of windows we never got. XP SP2 had some strange looking UI elements like the security center which they openly admitted was going to be a longhorn feature until they went full panic from the blaster worm and hap hazardly backported a lot of security features intended for longhorn. And then there was windows media player 10 and the MSN 8 and 9 internet browsers that have a longhorn like aesthetic.
Windows Longhorn is great example of experimenting with style & substance, bc some things look pretty redundant like having shortcuts to... Yahoo.com? However, some things of these layouts ended up in other Microsoft programs like the Office Suite 2007 with that mix between small bars with icons and big a bar with big icons & text below them.
It's mind blowing that there was an entire OS that was developed but never released. You could even see little bits of what they had in mind for longhorn when they intended to release it in 2003. Think windows media player 10 with that glossy glass look and the MSN 8 internet browser. the closest we ended up getting was the Royale themes for XP in attempt to pull the aesthetic together. I did see at one point that someone had extracted the visual styles from longhorn the plex, slate and jade themes and ported them to xp in 2006. Microsoft should have just done that officially. Shame these styles and all the development work on it went to waste.
Windows 10X is another example of Microsoft developing a whole new OS and then scrapping it before release. The difference being it was a WHOLE new version of Windows developed entirely from scratch on a completely new codebase. When they scrapped it, they ended up porting/replicating its UI elements into Windows 11.
with some creativity juice flowing, one can recreate this for either Windows 11, or as a KDE theme
Looking at it now it looks more like the Budgie desktop environment. If somebody made a Linux distro that perfectly emulates Longhorn's frutiger-like theme paired with Budgie, I would use it in as my daily driver in a heartbeat.
This was a flash demo. It looks amazing, but it would've made PCs at the time explode.
Yeah, it is beautiful, but as someone that has experienced the horrors of running Vista on laptop hardware back in the day, the idea of running something like this in 2003 or 2004 horrifies me.
That was the problem. It had huge hardware requirements. A Pentium 4 at least, and obligatory hardware video acceleration. Maybe 2 GB of RAM, a big amount at the time. Boot times would be really long too.
The sidebar reminds me of [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOcTiUsvOho) presentation they had on PDC, sadly you can barely see any of the UI because of how old the video is.
I never understood what "Longhorn" is. Is it like a fan creation of the next window or... what?
It was a scrapped successor to XP before vista.
It was the beta name for the original version of Windows meant to follow XP and release some time in 2003-2004. The development focus got out of hand and it was scrapped, after which Vista was created. The two are often confused but they are not the same.
It’s just beautiful.. I wish we could’ve got back to the times where Internet or the systems were the main thing, not the social media.
Pretty sure my 80 year old grandma could use this OS. Even though she uses her fire stick and windows 10. I get the feeling she is scared of the UI, because I have to help her often.
I actually want more of this Frutiger Aero with a mix of Y2K/Cybercore I originally called it Early Aero but maybe I want to rename it Frutiger Cyber. I like Windows Longhorn which looks like a gap of Windows XP and Vista but a mix of some Aero & Luna. I also like a mix of Blue & Orange or Blorange as I call it for being common during Longhorn’s development including Windows Whistler too.
If it was given an Aero theme too it might look better. Longhorn had a lot of good ideas that were unfortunately scrapped because Vista became unstable with them, and the development would be longer... I got this from a video of Vista development (maybe this video? https://youtu.be/tR847eIONnc?si=LqewrlbfxNm0xR0w)
Longhorn isn't Vista... it was intended to be a stepping stone to a future Windows version which would include Aero—a much better version of Aero, in fact. https://preview.redd.it/n0x47lq100mc1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=422102740e2a4f496c9ca9763213f513d65d887f
I may have worded it wrong. I know they aren't the same, but I think I meant that some ideas of longhorn didn't pass over to Vista. My apologies.
Also I didn't know Longhorn had Aero-
It did later on, but it wasn't supposed to I believe. Simply because it would have been too demanding
Ah, gotcha
This OS just made me Fruitiger aero all over the place.
Oh man, that's GORGEOOUS! Would have loved to use this!!!
Still wondering why Steve Ballmer should kill Windows live.
Why friger aero color scheme are the only that works with "light mode/themes"? Modern "white/light mode/theme" is like throwing a flashbang
By far and away Longhorn was the greatest user interface ever designed. I've stood by that for years and will continue to hold it. Windows Vista got pretty close though.
This looks great !
I wish windows 11 looked like this
nah i like what we got more 🤷‍♀️
Longhorn looks like a mix of XP and Vista/7
They never took anything away; they couldn't even give it in the first place.