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. "There has definitely been a huge amount of resistance in the market to Vista, but I think Microsoft has learned a lot from the experience," said Todd Swank, director of marketing for system builder and solution provider Nor-Tech, Burnsville, Minn. "I also think they realize they waited too long between the release of Windows XP and Vista."
View: The full story @ CRN
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. "There has definitely been a huge amount of resistance in the market to Vista, but I think Microsoft has learned a lot from the experience," said Todd Swank, director of marketing for system builder and solution provider Nor-Tech, Burnsville, Minn. "I also think they realize they waited too long between the release of Windows XP and Vista."
View: The full story @ CRN
its to bad they had to learn this the hard way
well, thats a monopoly for ya.
I suppose all of those performance related patches don't count?
Yes that what it mean a small leaner OS with out all useless carp but most likely be more like Windows XP Starter Edition but with out all it downside give full power which one can only hope for
You're basing the future of an OS on it's footprint? That's stupid. By your rationale, Vista should be roaring success!
Small footprint probably means they are going to strip stuff like Solitaire, and lots of other stuff which the average user never uses. The will instead focus on providing business end and home end solutions. I see this as a step forward and a step away from MS monopoly. More competition for Software Houses who develop for the platform now to gobble up the extra market share for applications.
You're basing the future of an OS on it's footprint? That's stupid. By your rationale, Vista should be roaring success!
Small footprint probably means they are going to strip stuff like Solitaire, and lots of other stuff which the average user never uses. The will instead focus on providing business end and home end solutions. I see this as a step forward and a step away from MS monopoly. More competition for Software Houses who develop for the platform now to gobble up the extra market share for applications.
Last I checked, Solitare isn't part of the Windows Core OS. MinWin is mostly the kernel+services but lighter and faster. More things that are in kernel mode will be taken out and inpart make the whole OS even more modular than Vista is.
They're not going to take out the apps Windows has already, it's just making the core smaller/lighter so that it'll work faster and need less resorces.
Even though I know nothing about this new OS, I'm going to guess that they're going to provide the basic OS on disk, and then have you download any extras you want to buy.
Presumably, by the time this OS comes out, pretty much everyone will have some kind of broadband or other and will be able to download what they need.
A good example of a similar situation is my Technet Plus subscription: Microsoft used to send my content to me on CDs or DVDs in the mail every month. Then they made downloading the content optional (for a discount). Now they've eliminated hard content altogether.
No reason they can't do that with an OS.
Jesus christ at the "news".
This is like saying "Well my Linux kernel takes 1.8MB on disk but my fully blown distribution uses 5GB".
Jesus christ at the "news".
This is like saying "Well my Linux kernel takes 1.8MB on disk but my fully blown distribution uses 5GB".
Glad I wasn't the only one to read that... No way the KERNAL of Vista has 4GB of Source Code! That would mean zillions if not sextillions lines of code!
Also, Manuroc the Windows Kernal does not need to compete with the Linux kernal on a space basis... Only on a functionality and performance basis...
Even still it wouldn't be 4GB of source cod... That is more than I'm suremakes up everything in Vista + MS Office + Exchange lol
There's no way on earth that you can claim that Vista consumes 4GB of space to get the basic explorer+kernel+basic deps up and running. If you rip out all the unnecessary software you can get it up and running in a few hundred megs.
The whole comparison of "25MB and 4GB" is completely devoid of any sense in the first place.
There's no way on earth that you can claim that Vista consumes 4GB of space to get the basic explorer+kernel+basic deps up and running. If you rip out all the unnecessary software you can get it up and running in a few hundred megs.
The whole comparison of "25MB and 4GB" is completely devoid of any sense in the first place.
Hold on guys, I wasn't talking about the 4GB Vista comment in the article. What I was replying to is the previous post comparing MinWin to the Linux Kernel and how one takes 25MB and then linux does 1.8MB or w/e.
That's why I was pointing out that MinWin isn't just the NT kernel. The NT kernel on it's own is small, though I don't know exactly how much.
That's why I was pointing out that MinWin isn't just the NT kernel. The NT kernel on it's own is small, though I don't know exactly how much.
The article says the MinWin's source takes up 25 megs on disk. For comparison, I downloaded and untarred the linux 2.6.23.9 source. It decompresses to 286 megs. I'd say 25 megs is pretty reasonable for just the kernel. Anywho, these number mean crap. I wanna know what the in-memory footprint is and how well it performs.
Definitely. And anyone who says that Vista's equivalent to that doesn't take up 4 GB of source code doesn't know what they're talking about. This is likely not the best analogy, but think of it like this: Mac OS X vs. Mac OS 9. Mac OS 9's source contains traces of System Software 1.0 still, and Vista's contains traces of Windows 1.0 still. MinWin is (to the best of my knowledge) a complete rewrite of Windows and just what's needed.
It sure is a clever and fitting name, thanks for sharing it!
It sure is a clever and fitting name, thanks for sharing it!
I get it, you're being sarcastic aren't you? Bravo.
I've been using Vista since Beta 1 and have used nothing else on my system with the exception of XP X64 (dual-boot). I use the 32-bit version of Vista due to the simple fact that there are fewer drivers for 64-bit Vista.
With that said, 32-bit Vista *trounces* XP X64 and XP. I have fewer crashes with Vista than with either OS, and the crashes that I have experienced in Vista were caused by nothing more than my stupidity in pushing Vista to the point at which both XP and XP X64 would have easily crumbled under and fubar'ed themselves with half of the demand placed on them. My system is not a hot-rodded, water-cooled, tweaked and OC'ed system: It's a two-year-old AMD Athlon 64 4000+, 1GB of OCZ RAM & an nVidia 6800 GT on a DFI LanParty UT nF4 SLI-D motherboard runnin in pure-stock condition - it's a very "pedestrian" machine in comparison to all of the dual-core & quad-core systesm that many of you are using today, and I put a sizeable amount of stress on this system on a daily basis and it has only faltered under Vista when it was utterly my fault.
Saying that Vista is "WinME 2.0" is nothing more than being disingenuous and deceptive. I've pointed out in various other posts here (you're more than welcome to look-up all of my posts here) that if people would use some grey-matter and think about how they have implemented Vista on their systems that they would end-up with a rock-solid OS that would outperform XP & XP 64. Obviously, those that are having problems with Vista have either a few neurons mis-firing, haven't thought-through their Vista installation clearly enough, or are just your garden-variety Anti-Microsoft zealots.
Vista is about the same as XP MCE with a few small apps, and some other things I'm not aware of (important or not)
Vista is a solid OS it's just going to work itself around time like its predecessor did.
This doesn't have anything to do with how many features Windows 7 will have. MinWin is just a more smaller and modular core OS. All the low level bits that work (kernel+services/dependancies) are going to be made more optimized and leaner so they boost performence and stability. Unlike in the past where all loads of stuff are in there that shouldn't be, now they'll be taking things out and so on. Moving them into user mode and so on. Vista taking a chunk of the video driver code outta kernel mode and into user mode is just a sign of it.
I prefer to think that Mac users are just more easily entertained - like a cat with a piece of string.
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.