Microsoft confirms MinWin is in Windows 7, after all


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MinWin ? the core of the Windows operating system ? is, indeed, in Windows 7. It?s just not part of it in the way many people (including yours truly) initially assumed.

Technical Fellow Mark Russinovich, who detailed via a Channel 9 Webcast last week how Windows 7 would run on up to 256 processors, tackled yet again the MinWin bugaboo during that same episode.

(I say ?bugaboo? because ever since Microsoft officials first discussed MinWin, there?s been confusion over whether it would be part of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Nervous about setting off customers? alarm bells around more low-level changes to Windows, like happened with Vista, the Microsoft brass have been repeating that Windows 7?s kernel won?t deviate from Vista?s, so all drivers and apps that work on Vista should work on 7.)

What, exactly, is MinWin? That?s been another thorny issue that Microsoft execs have been reticent to detangle. After listening to Russinovich, here?s my best attempt at explaining the concept:

MinWin is the core of Windows, but it is not the same as Windows Server Core. If you could ?cut? Windows and shuffle around some application programming interfaces (APIs) so that it would be a standalone, bootable, testable mini OS, MinWin is what it would look like. It?s the heart of Windows, organized in a way so that none of the included parts has any dependencies on anything outside of MinWin.

As Russinovich noted, MinWin includes some kernel interfaces, but it is not simply the Windows kernel. Some part of the kernel32 implementation didn?t belong in MinWin, he said. After tinkering with what did/didn?t belong, the team ended up layering kernel32 on top of the Windows kernel base, he said.

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It makes me wonder if Microsoft never mentioned Vista or released it and continued to develop it until it became Windows 7. How would people feel about that?

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It makes me wonder if Microsoft never mentioned Vista or released it and continued to develop it until it became Windows 7. How would people feel about that?

Well, Microsoft quite obviously released and marketed Windows Vista. Windows 7 is going to be very similar to Windows 98. Both were largely the same as their predecessors, but contained some new features and fixed a lot of bugs, glitches and quirks. And I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft's next major OS release was a revision to Windows 7, just like Windows ME was a revision of Windows 98.

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Well, With Windows 7, Snow Leopard and Ubuntu 9.04 something tells me computing is finally steering away from the bloatware and back into realistic, real coding.

I love the concept of WinMin, but it's something Microsoft should leave in development and finally release as a x64 only kernel for Windows V8

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I love the concept of WinMin, but it's something Microsoft should leave in development and finally release as a x64 only kernel for Windows V8

Yea, if that's how it all goes they should work on it until 64 Bit is the only standard and release it. Brand new and clean, something to shout about too. Windows 7 seems to getting enough praise already to hold it's own and really needs to be perfect with no driver issues for example.

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just like Windows ME was a revision of Windows 98.

please no , i would W8 like a plague then :rofl:

Well, With Windows 7, Snow Leopard and Ubuntu 9.04 something tells me computing is finally steering away from the bloatware and back into realistic, real coding.

I love the concept of WinMin, but it's something Microsoft should leave in development and finally release as a x64 only kernel for Windows V8

it is better the way it is

No.

+1

Yea, if that's how it all goes they should work on it until 64 Bit is the only standard and release it. Brand new and clean, something to shout about too. Windows 7 seems to getting enough praise already to hold it's own and really needs to be perfect with no driver issues for example.

then you got the other guys who got ten+ years old printer/scanner who expect it to work in a new system

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Yes. And also in every Windows NT release till date.

you got it wrong

minwin is a project and some optimization will goes onto W7 kernel

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How has Windows evolved, as a general purpose operating system and at the lowest levels, in Windows 7? Who better to talk to than Technical Fellow and Windows Kernel guru Mark Russinovich? Here, Mark enlightens us on the new kernel constructs in Windows 7 (and, yeah, we do wander up into user mode, but only briefly). One very important change in Windows 7 kernel is the dismantling of the Dispatcher Spin Lock and redesign and implementation of its functionality into separate components. This work was done by Arun Kishan (you've met him here on C9 last year). The direct result of this great work is that Windows 7 can scale to 256 processors and enabled the great Landy Wang to tune Windows Memory manager to be even more efficient than it already is. Mark also explains (again) what MinWin really is (heck, even I was confused. Not anymore...). MinWin is present in Windows 7.

Tune in. This is a great conversation (if you're into operating systems). It's always great to chat with Mark.

fine he said it is on W7 ,

but where is the part that he is saying it was part of every windows based on NT ???

Yes. And also in every Windows NT release till date.

like you just said

on the side note

it look like it is multicore aware/optimised

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fine he said it is on W7 ,

but where is the part that he is saying it was part of every windows based on NT ???

like you just said

on the side note

it look like it is multicore aware/optimised

Minwin is basically NT kernel with all the dependencies removed (so that it can run as a very tiny "OS"). It won't magically improve the retail Windows version from end user perspective. That's why I said it's been there in every NT release. If you see the original video where Minwin was first mentioned/demoed, the presenter says the exact same thing.

There will be improvements in every release of Windows kernel but it's not because Minwin is some fairy dust magic.

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Yeah, Windows 7. What does that have to do with your claim of it being included in every version of NT? That would be pretty amazing since MinWin is new, unless they've also invented time travel. You obviously don't understand what it is.

I obviously don't. So please enlighten me.

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then you got the other guys who got ten+ years old printer/scanner who expect it to work in a new system

Sure, I don't know much about this just that changing kernels brings up driver issues.

On another note how would Microsoft eventually get to a 64bit only OS. I know it has benefits with more usable memory but if it breaks old apps that's a tough cookie. Guess virtualization.

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Seeing as minwin is a low level subset of windows without higher level dependencies, it is part of windows by definition.

minwin + higher level components = windows 7

No surprises there.

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I obviously don't. So please enlighten me.

Here's a crazy idea, try reading the article.

If you could ?cut? Windows and shuffle around some application programming interfaces (APIs) so that it would be a standalone, bootable, testable mini OS, MinWin is what it would look like. It?s the heart of Windows, organized in a way so that none of the included parts has any dependencies on anything outside of MinWin.

Once again, MinWnotot the NT kernel, it's just built on it. Also it has not been included in any Windows release in the past. Not Vista and certainly not every version of NT ever released.

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It makes me wonder if Microsoft never mentioned Vista or released it and continued to develop it until it became Windows 7. How would people feel about that?

It would receive the same backlash as Vista. The biggest "problems" with Vista are all of the under-the-hood rewrites, which are ironically what many of the people on Neowin who bash Vista are asking for (total rewrite of the OS, etc.).

The hardware manufacturers took their sweet time updating drivers and such, which caused initial slow-downs and instabilities when Vista was first released. Also, the memory management model and services model changed significantly, and this made people believe that Vista was a "resource hog" and slow because they didn't have 98% of their RAM free.

The fact is, most people (and hardware companies) have adjusted to the changes Microsoft made with Vista, and Windows 7 won't have the same "shock effect" that Vista had.

That said, I love Vista and I'm really looking forward to 7.

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Here's a crazy idea, try reading the article.

Once again, MinWin is not the NT kernel, it's just built on it. Also it has not been included in any Windows release in the past. Not Vista and certainly not every version of NT ever released.

I see your logic now but then it won't be part of any Windows release.

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