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In my previous post, I introduced Sami, and I mentionned a bunch of the crazy hacks he did on .NET. Less than three hours later, Sami posted a new entry on his blog. In this post, Sami explains that he managed to copy a bunch of files from the Longhorn PDC build to a regular Windows XP, cnahged some system DLLs here and there, and managed to have Avalon working on XP.
Technically speaking, that's no big surprise to me. I always saw the Longhorn PDC build as a "Technical Preview", which is some kind of a working prototype. With a system expected for 2006/2007, that's obvious that what we got at PDC was a "thing" based on XP and half way between XP and the final Longhorn. What is more interresting is that Avalon - in it's current preview state, at least - looks to be quite well isolated from the rest of the system. Remember also that what we got in the PDC build was not complete.
My understanding is that the development teams that are working on WinFS, Avalon and Indigo are neccessary working on today's systems, Windows XP to name it. So, obviously, current pre-alpha builds of each of these three Longhron pilars have to run on Windows XP. I do not understand how it could be otherwise.
That reminds me of a rumor of an Avalon for Windows XP that I heard from various PDC attendees. Anyone has more information about this? Anyway, it looks like Avalon won't be a "Longhorn Only" technology, since a future release of the TabletPC system - which by the time will probably be based on Longhorn - is expected to support Avalon, and a version of Avalon that supports digital ink, as reported in this article on Microsoft Watch, by Mary Jo Foley, who is generally well informed.
[Update] : Chris Anderson has posted comments about Sami's hack, and explains why it works today, and why it won't tomorrow. Chris has also given clarifications on how the teams work and on which OS they develop. I must admit that my assumptions above are pretty wrong. Thank you, Chris!