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Microsoft Partners: MinWin Could Soothe Vista Headaches | |
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| Time: 08:39 EST/13:39 GMT | News Source: CRN | Posted By: Kenneth van Surksum | ||
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In the year that has passed since Microsoft released Windows Vista to business users, the operating system has gained a reputation in the channel as a bloated memory hog that many companies are avoiding like a trip to the dentist.
But Microsoft partners have a more positive opinion of Windows 7, the next generation of Windows that Microsoft expects to ship in the 2010 timeframe. That's because Windows 7 will be based on MinWin, a scaled down version of the Windows core that will also serve as the framework for Windows Server and Windows Media Center.
MinWin's source code base takes up about 25 megabytes on disk, compared to about 4 gigabytes for Vista. Solution providers see this as a sign that Microsoft has learned its lesson from trying to cram too much into the Windows OS, and some feel that Windows 7 will be a roaring success in the market. | ||
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| #1 By 92283 (64.180.196.143) at 12/2/2007 10:34:56 AM |
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Vistas installed base has tripled since April to 9.19%
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=11 This post was edited by NotParkerToo on Sunday, December 02, 2007 at 10:36. |
| #2 By 1896 (74.166.235.69) at 12/2/2007 2:58:55 PM |
| it seems a little bit too soon to forecast "a roaring success"; if Longhorn had been delivered the way it was envisioned it would have been a "milestone" or a 'turning point". Unfortunately things took a different path. |
| #3 By 8556 (12.210.39.82) at 12/2/2007 7:21:52 PM |
| Many of us are too jaded to believe that MS will pull off completing minwin in a timely manner in the form being described here. History is the best predictor of the future. |
| #4 By 32313 (208.131.186.18) at 12/2/2007 9:06:54 PM |
| There is always fear in going to dentist, but its a good thing. Which would you prefer having, fixed pearly whites or yellow cavity stricken nightmares? |
| #5 By 17996 (66.235.18.153) at 12/3/2007 12:38:30 AM |
|
These people (the article author, and the various "partners" the article quotes) really have no idea what MinWin is or what its purpose is. It's a way of segregating out a "core" of Windows, and then building the rest top of it. The core itself is useless and you're not going to see apps written to work directly on it.
It's a way of architecting an OS so that lower layers (e.g. stuff inside MinWin) has no dependencies on higher layers (GUI, shell, browser, etc.). For example, read how Larry Osterman describes "layers": http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2005/08/23/455193.aspx. MinWin is a way of drawing a hard line at some point in the layers, e.g. between layers 5 and 6. Nothing at 5 or below will depend at all on 6 or above. Therefore, you can have a different team (e.g. the Core OS division) working on the 5-and-below stuff (MinWin); and they can add features and fix bugs and as long as they provide the same API to upper layers, they can work independently. The people working on higher levels (e.g. the client and server teams) can work independently of each other and the Core OS team. Eventually, this could mean you'd see, for example, a Windows 8 client which is built on top of the Windows 7 MinWin. Here's a video that talks about the componentization and layering a bit (among other things): http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=148820 |
| #6 By 12071 (124.168.186.163) at 12/3/2007 3:14:43 AM |
| Wow!!! Layering... innovation at it's best! Pure and utter genius! If only they had thought of that concept for operating systems 40+ years ago... What will they innovate next? |
| #7 By 72426 (69.109.25.217) at 12/3/2007 4:43:39 AM |
|
In addition to the information provided by #5, what people also seemed to have completely missed about the presentation of the MinWin demonstration is that it is essentially the Vista kernel as it exists today, it is just a slightly newer build forked after the Windows 2008 server NT build. It is nothing special or new whatsoever except it was compiled with an HTTP server interface at the core layer.
So the whole demostration wasn't about something new, it was about what is when you strip the upper layers of the OS away. MinWin is Vista's core OS, and it is shocking that people didn't understand that from the demonstration as this was specifically talked about that MinWin was just the NT OS but a slightly newer fork from Vista and moddifed to only have the HTTP interface API instead of a full subsystem like Win32 as the NT client/server kernel is designed to have and work with higher level OS level API sets. NT is and always has been a well designed kernel and OS underlying architecture, and this was nothing more than a demostration of this. Vista only gets big when you add on the subsystems. Take the NT HAL originally it was designed to be under 64K, around Win2k/XP days it grew to around 120-150K, in Vista it is still only 250K, and it has to deal with all the new core hardware technologies in addition to all the legacy hardware and x86 as well. Vista gets big especially when you consider the Win32/Win64 subsystems and the legacy and complexity that exist in just the Win32 subsystem as it goes back to code from the late 80s because it still has Win16 compatibility layer, and all the NT Win32 work from 1990 to the current date. Another thing that gets missed in the contrast of bloat in size from Vista to XP is that Vista revamped the Video, Audio, Display, Internal Com, Network Stack, Printing subystem, and added a new API set that is a dual 2D/3D managed XML based UI API. The added 'new' alone is large, but also then remember that Vista will STILL work with XP based audio drivers, XP based Video drivers, XP based printer drivers, XP based network drivers; and in doing so, many of these old drivers run beside the new Vista systems, as then run in the old context and on legacy code that was 'kept' specifically so XP technology could easily move to Vista. So when printing to a EMF/GDI based printer driver, Vista has to convert it from XPS/XAML to EMF or when printing from an old application that sends the information to the printer in GDI/EMF format and the printer is new and use a XPS based driver, it has to convert this to XPS. And it does all of this flawlessly, to the point where people don't see that Vista is much different than XP because all of the compatibility and duality of the new and old systems in Vista do work so well. Also look at the complexity of handling to Video driver constructs and two Video subsystems. Using old drivers, it has to work like XP did, let it run in kernel mode and also convert new application constructs to work on the old model. Then there is the new WDDM/LDDM driver model of Vista, and in addition to working well, running in a hybrid kernel/user mode, it also has to work flawlessly when running old applications and supporting the new APIs and constructs of the WDDM/LDDM video system that adds in GPU scheduling, GPU virtualization, a Composer, etc. MinWin is great, but it is nothing special, new or nothing that doesn't already exist on every Vista based computer in the world, it is just NT at the core with no subsystem layers. Mary Jo and others keep confusing this issue and trying to build MinWin to be a new direction or Windows 7 and it is not. Everyone here needs to write the authors of stories like this and let them know that they should acutally watch the MinWin presentation fully and stop calling it new, and instead realize it is just a different look at Windows of today - barebones. |
| #8 By 2459 (69.22.120.94) at 12/3/2007 7:32:55 AM |
| ^ Exactly |
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