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First Details of Windows 7 Emerge
Some small but significant details of the next major release of Windows have emerged via a presentation at the University of Illinois by Microsoft engineer Eric Traut. His presentation focuses on an internal project called "MinWin," designed to optimize the Windows kernel to a minimum footprint, and for which will be the basis for the Windows 7 kernel.
3 = 3 9x = 4 2k/xp = 5 vista = 6 7 = 7 Nuff said.
Actually, the proper lineage is:
Windows NT 4, Windows 2000 (NT 5), Windows XP (NT 5.1), Vista (NT 6), 'Windows 7' (NT 7)
"has mac done this or is it just that the OS on a linux bas system is just plain faster"
The implication that the Mac might have got rid of the BIOS (and hence gained speed) is tied to "a linux-based system is just plain faster". You could easily read that as suggesting the Mac is Linux-based.
FWIW, the Mac doesn't use a BIOS, it uses EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) these days. And it's not Linux-based either.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Actually there are 2 Windows lines...
MS-DOS Based
1.x, 2.x (Windows/286, Windows/386), 3.x, 4.0 (95), 4.1 (98), 4.9 (Me)
NT Based
3.1, 3.5, 4.0, 5.0 (2000), 5.1 (XP), 6.0 (Vista), 7
Actually, VMs can reduce overhead for IT. For each legacy app, build a VM image and then just deploy that image to any of the PCs that needs it. Much more reliable than trying to run it directly through some dodgy legacy support.
> So Microsoft tells something about the next version of Windows not long after the people
> have noticed that their current version isn't all that it's made up to be?
Duh. They have been doing this same bait and switch for the life of the company.
Step One. Release wonderous New Version! It is THE must have thing.
Step Two. Everyone realizes it sucks but their money is already in Bill's pocket. And everyone realizes they have no choice but to adopt the new product anyway because of the three year hardware replacement cycle and the illegal (as certified by a US court) bundling agreements with the OEMs that continue to this day. Especially in the case of their OS but to a lesser extent with Office and the other crap they peddle.
Step Three. Microsoft begins hinting about the upcoming new version. It will fix all of the (not quite admitted) problems with current version AND add exciting new must have features. And it is coming Really Soon.
Step Four. Have their minions in the trade press obsess about Upcoming new version. All complaints about Current version are answered with "But Upcoming version will be out soon and will fix that problem." After a year or two make sure to begin writing reviews for competitors products by comparing them to features that Upcoming version will be shipping "Any day now". By this point EVERYONE must be lamenting how crappy the shipping version is to help generate the NEED to upgrade when the new version ships.
Step Five. As the death march to release continues and feaures get cut, spin it as a good thing. (We are focusing on the needs of our customers, blah, blah.) Now that there is beta (anyone else would rate it pre-alpha but.....) code get the drumbeat ramping up in the press with lots of articles and screenshots. Will your hardware be compatible? Can life as you know it continue without the exciting new features? Etc, blah blah.
Step Six. The product finally releases... See Step One.
Democrat delenda est
I used to have a program that analyzed the boot log file from a windows 98/ME machines and pointed to anything over a set time frame. It diplayed everything in the boot log but it let you filter it to specific times, failures and all that. Often the generic devices that used system memory and processing power took the most times to load. Taking the modem out and replacing the on board stuff with good full blown cards would decrease load times enormously.
It is possible you had a sound card that just wasn't a full blown hardware sound and off loaded a bunch of stuff onto the system's processor and memory.
Of course the different types of boot logs on NT machines didn't work so it cannot look at XPs boot logs. I haven't found anything like it for 2000/XP either. Which really sucks because often the boot log can show all sorts of problem areas that could lead to other glitches in the OS.
No! The Win9x line is dead. 2000, XP, 2003, and Vista are the Windows NT line.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
The nice thing about microkernels is that the kernel itself it's completely isolated from the rest of the software running on it - even device drivers, which can (and are) a breaking point in common monolithic kernels. Instead of doing direct calls to the kernel, the software now uses a system of messages.
This, of course, works just fine and it makes the kernel rock solid, but makes system calls slower. I'm guessing that when Win7 is released hardware will be fast enough that this will be a non-issue (hell, it might even not be one now), but the point is, a "regular" kernel will almost always outperform it on the same hardware.
Consumer line:
Windows 1.0
Windows 2.0
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.1
Windows 95 (v. 4.0)
Windows 98 (v. 4.1)
Windows ME (v. 4.9)
Line killed off.
Business line:
Windows NT 3.5
Windows NT 4.0
Windows 2000 (v. 5.0)
Windows XP (v. 5.1)
Windows Vista (v. 6)
Windows "7"
There were no NT versions prior to 3.5 because the first NT was released after Windows 3.11, and Microsoft wanted their numbering to be consistent. NT 3.5 coexisted with Windows 3.x (and shared the same GUI design), NT 4.0 coexisted with Windows 4.x, and then MS killed off the "Consumer" Windows line, leaving the NT line to fill versions 5 and 6.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
What does a BIOS do? It does POST, lets the user customize some low-level system settings and puts the system in a known state before loading the OS's (boot-)loader.
An x86-style legacy BIOS does the same fundamental things as an x86-style EFI BIOS, the only major differences being the BIOS APIs, how the boot process is structured and the fact that EFI is not backwards-compatible on its own. Other than that, a BIOS, by any other name, is still a BIOS. EFI simply has fewer kludges and ties to legacy x86 hardware.
BTW, a few weeks ago, I read an article about some MoBo manufacturers considering adding 512MB-2GB of flash memory to boot an embedded Linux desktop from the BIOS for disk-less web-browsing and other stuff... a BIOS with embedded Linux does not seem that far-fetched, we only need 1GB firmware hubs to plug into Intel's chipsets and hope we will not need to flash our 1GB BIOS too often.