The truth about MinWin: the heart of Windows 7

Not a new OS or kernel but a new approach to writing Windows
For something that's supposed to be small, self-contained and all about simplifying Windows, MinWin causes a lot of confusion.

Microsoft Technical Fellow Mark Russinovich laid out the technical details at Microsoft's TechEd conference, so we've gathered together the essential information you need to know about it.

Yes, MinWin is in Windows 7 (and Windows Server 2008 R2). No it's not a new kernel.

Instead, it's an attempt to rewrite the most basic foundation of Windows – not just the kernel, but also the basics of the file system and network connection, with drivers and services – as a self-contained and logically separate system

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more at The truth about MinWin: the heart of Windows 7 | News | TechRadar UK

Then you're going to love this one even more!

Microsoft agrees: Windows is a "really large bloated operating system"

While newly minted Windows head Steven Sinofsky continues to play his cards close to his chest, we're seeing signs that Microsoft is rethinking its monolithic approach to not only the mass-market Windows operating system but the entire family of Windows products from servers down to CE-based embedded devices.
First up is a streamlined microkernel codenamed MinWin, around which a re-engineered Windows line will be built. Described as "the Windows 7 source-code base", in reference to the successor to Windows Vista which is slated for a 2010 release, MinWin strips back the current NT-based kernel to the barest of bare metal.

"We'll be using this internally to build all the products based on Windows" said Microsoft engineer Eric Traut, when he slipped the first public glimpse of MinWin into a demonstration of Microsoft's virtualisation technology at the University of Illinois last week.
After loading multiple versions of Windows from the original 1.0 release through to NT 4 - including Windows ‘Bob' which earned a few chuckles from the audience and which Traut described as "not necessarily Microsoft's proudest moment!" - Traut fired up an additional VM session to load MinWin, which he called "the core of Windows 7, the Windows 7 source-code base". Microsoft agrees: Windows is a "really large bloated operating system"

so .... is THAT the little 100MB partition Win7 make's during install?
or is that just a severely dumb question? :huh:

nope but its actually the closest we will get to it (actually it reminds me of singularity and the web version of Server 08 and R2..)
as winmin is a fully self sufficient OS (where it does not call anything other that itself, meaning its more modular and easier to patch (less spaghetti code to me...)

anything in orange is part of minwin and anything in green are the "extras" that we usually see in consumer OS's, it seems closer to a Server OS with nothing other that a command line interface...

When 7 was first being mentioned some time back there was mention of a new file indexing system. Once the betas came out the thing noticed then was the based on content. The overall changes are what you notice when comparing XP and Vista to 7 are noticible like seeing 7 installed in 20-25minutes while actually larger in size?

darkassain said:

more at The truth about MinWin: the heart of Windows 7 | News | TechRadar UK

Instead, it's an attempt to rewrite the most basic foundation of Windows – not just the kernel, but also the basics of the file system and network connection, with drivers and services – as a self-contained and logically separate system

Click to expand...

I thought that was called Linux.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

I thought that was called Linux.

Cheers
jimbo

Click to expand...

no os wars here...
reminds me of windows 3.11 actually (it was using a dos core and the windows extesion was running on top of it...)
this is the core of windows...
you cannot get any deeper and still have a functional system...
you can with linux distro also break down to the most essential parts of the OS (much easier actually)... like the many Unix/Linux Servers on the net...

Line who? Anyone by that name? :roflmao: The last time I saw anything like that it was some live cd I used to see the 32bit RC installed on a friend's machine! He know sees an XP/7 dual boot! There wasn't any ? strange file names coming up either!

darkassain said:

no os wars here...
the net...

Click to expand...

Hi there
I use and LIKE W7 so its not an OS war.

The design of Linux is based (like older "Classical OS" design) on having a "Protected" smallish kernel to provide the main system services and then other functionality is loaded as and when required such as Modules for hardware drivers and GUI's ( The whole GUI system in Linux is run via a generic "X-Server" module which then loads up the "Window Maker" of your choice such as GNOME, KDE. XFCE etc.

Even the file system is "modular" . If the kernel has support for the relevant file system then you can use it. It's actually even more generic now as the main file system driver is based on the "FUSE" support which allows read and write to a very large number of file systems including NTFS.

Linux basically was a Unix derivative - so the whole idea of a GUI was an added afterthought - but because of the modular nature of the OS could be implemented without a fundamental re-design of the OS.

Windows on the other hand was designed as a GUI from the start which makes it rather difficult to change almost anything without re-writing the whole system.

There probably is a lot in Windows that people could do without in some cases but since in any case the GUI is 100% linked with the OS it will need a major re-fit to slim it down a lot.

Also Linux has a lot of open source components which is why optimising it is a lot simpler to do than in Windows -- the disadvantage here in Linux is that there are almost as many different distributions as there are native plants on the planet. This means that you can't always ensure your hardware will work on different distros.

So

"You pays your money and takes your choice".


Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

Hi there
I use and LIKE W7 so its not an OS war.

The design of Linux is based (like older "Classical OS" design) on having a "Protected" smallish kernel to provide the main system services and then other functionality is loaded as and when required such as Modules for hardware drivers and GUI's ( The whole GUI system in Linux is run via a generic "X-Server" module which then loads up the "Window Maker" of your choice such as GNOME, KDE. XFCE etc.


Even the file system is "modular" . If the kernel has support for the relevant file system then you can use it. It's actually even more generic now as the main file system driver is based on the "FUSE" support which allows read and write to a very large number of file systems including NTFS.

Linux basically was a Unix derivative - so the whole idea of a GUI was an added afterthought - but because of the modular nature of the OS could be implemented without a fundamental re-design of the OS.

Click to expand...

in a sense yes and no...
yes in that the linux gui was a afterthought (and that is where its suffering the most..)
and no in the fact that its a smallish kernel...
the fundamental concept of the linux kernel is by design monolithic
while yes its made in modules and so its a hybrid monolithic kernel but it still carries the monolithic design

Windows on the other hand was designed as a GUI from the start which makes it rather difficult to change almost anything without re-writing the whole system.

There probably is a lot in Windows that people could do without in some cases but since in any case the GUI is 100% linked with the OS it will need a major re-fit to slim it down a lot.

Click to expand...

actually windows was a gui or a shell extension if say to DOS...
so you are correct...

Also Linux has a lot of open source components which is why optimising it is a lot simpler to do than in Windows -- the disadvantage here in Linux is that there are almost as many different distributions as there are native plants on the planet. This means that you can't always ensure your hardware will work on different distros.

So

"You pays your money and takes your choice".


Cheers
jimbo

Click to expand...

actually it takes alot know how to *optimize* components such as the kernel...
while yes you can always have the posibilty of doing it there a lot to be learned if want to accomplish such feat...
so yes its out there but not everyone (even in the linux world) can understand it..

One of the main problems seen with Linux is simply put it still UNIX based while the gui and additional packages are a constantly changing open source OS not being standardized like you would expect to see with each progressive version of Windows. At this time it's become more of a beta tester's OS since every so many months one or the other distro has a totally new release effecting the main gui.

For the more MS friendly distros like ubuntu, Knoppix it can serve well live as an emergency data recovery tool booting from a live cd as well as seeing an excellent cross platform drive tool(GParted of course) while not always as friendly to the novice user. Windows on the other hand sees a far larger range of softwares as well as now seeing the largest improvement seen in 7 for the desktop OS.

I think what you are now seeing is MS maturing a bit more as a company in general taking into consideration what the average home user looks for in an OS. Support, reliability, and flexibility! Besides seeing the regular updates MS is now taking into consideration those that still have need to run older softwares with the introduction of the XP mode besides simply seeing an updated Virtual PC from the 2007 version.

The use of virtualization of XP in windows 7 is interesting in this case. Perhaps MS is preparing us for landslide change of the kernel, much like apple os9 tp osx. In which case the seamless virtulazation of the previous version (s) of windows will help a lot to solve legacy problems.

This should clear a few things up...

jimbo45 said:

Windows on the other hand was designed as a GUI from the start which makes it rather difficult to change almost anything without re-writing the whole system.

There probably is a lot in Windows that people could do without in some cases but since in any case the GUI is 100% linked with the OS it will need a major re-fit to slim it down a lot.

Click to expand...

Yes and No. When Dave Cutler was brought in to start designing NT as the new UNIX killer for MS, the original plan and the original builds, were for it to be commandline only. But, because it would need to run OS/2 apps (MS and IBM were working together on OS/2 at the time), Cutler wanted basically a VM to startup when Presentation Manager (OS/2) programs were started.

When Windows 3.0 took off, Gates realized that he had a winner and he forced Cutler to change ways. MS bailed on IBM and decided to have NT become the new flagship 32-bit OS, capable of server and workstation ops. The Win32 API was quickly developed, from the Win16 API (bugs and all). This then had to be bolted onto the kernel that Cutler had already started, and that process was much harder than expected.

Unfortunately, Win64 continues the string of quick ports from Win16 to Win32. MS is between a rock and a hard place. A new GUI API is needed to remove so much of the kruft that has built-up over the decades, but the amount of effort involved in doing this, and the number of apps that would be broken by this is unacceptable to them.

They have treid to mitigate this with various frameworks, .Net, WPF, etc,, but all of these still require interaction with Win32/Win64.

Peter Bright, an admin on ArsTechnica, has written some really good articles on where MS has dropped the ball. He is a very knowledgable programmer who provides some pretty good insight. He is very plain spoken, so if you are easily offended, you might want to avoid direct contact, but he certainly knows his stuff.

PhreePhly

Boris said:

The use of virtualization of XP in windows 7 is interesting in this case. Perhaps MS is preparing us for landslide change of the kernel, much like apple os9 tp osx. In which case the seamless virtulazation of the previous version (s) of windows will help a lot to solve legacy problems.

Click to expand...

With Vista also installed on the new Virtual PC beta release I found a few definite drawbacks for seeing previous versions installed unlike what is seen with the XP mode. First forget any sound since you can't install device drivers for video and sound for whatever you are using there.

In the Virtual PC you ares seeing a virtual video adapter used instead. Despite efforts to use the automatic updates the sound card plus tv tuner card remain unidentified yelow marked items in the device manager there. The second main drawback is simply no access to other hard drives and addons like flash or pen drives. The only other drives avialable are floppy and the dvd drive used for installation.

Vista other then that still runs the same. The XP Mode loads in a minute's time there and has ready access to all drives internal or otherwise. You hear sound using the existing 7 setup while still using a virtual video card.