I always enjoyed slipstreaming the drivers onto an XP disk, and then going through the install process at 1280x1024 with full graphics/sound/network support.

Oh boy, that brings back memories! With nLite you could slipstream Windows XP to run under 100MB. That was fun!

I never heard about a Longhorn leak, what was amazing about it?

If I recall, those first Longhorn builds found a great middle ground between the foundations of XP and the few good parts of what would became Vista, including some nice ui concepts.

Sadly, we all know how Vista turned out at the end.

Longhorn concept was awesome. I remember how crazy and advanced this Longhorn promo was https://youtu.be/b9ifQvQCO7Y

>Sadly, we all know how Vista turned out at the end.

Maybe with the first versions, but after a few service packs it was really usable. Hell, Windows 7 was referred to as "Windows Vista SP3" :)

But I do agree that Vista wasn't as Longhorn. I think they realized it was too demanding and too advanced so they decided to milk the concept ideas for later versions.

In the video, is the last application that opens when Longhorn starts up a package manager ? I've never really understood why both Microsoft and, especially, Apple have never tried to adopt a model similar to the one used by Linux distributions, positioning themselves as the intermediary between the end users and application developers. I suppose this is because they were focused on enterprise customers, and there was already a model in place for shipping software to such customers. However, for home users, installing applications have always been a tedious process that is full of risk.

> Apple have never tried to adopt a model similar to the one used by Linux distributions, positioning themselves as the intermediary between the end users and application developers.

Wait, isn't the prime example of an OS or device manufacturer doing that not “Linux distros”, but instead the app store model that Apple embraced we exclusive consumer mechanism for add-on software with iOS, and have since extended in less-rigid form (because of legacy expectations) to MacOS?

> Apple [has] never tried to adopt a model [...] positioning themselves as the intermediary between the end users and application developers.

I know it's in a way tangental to what your point was, but if you read this sentence again you'll realise that it is exactly what they have tried (rather successfully) to adopt.

> I think they realized it was too demanding and too advanced so they decided to milk the concept ideas for later versions.

there were major resource leaks in the file system and the shell that they just weren't able to fix. meanwhile the company kept piling in new features without having a roadmap for actually shipping the project.

Originally it was XP base indeed but after the development hell they stuck in, they've pick Server 2003 and baked out what later become Vista.