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Windows 7 Won't Have Compact "MinWin" Kernel

An anonymous reader points us to an interview Microsoft's Windows 7 development chief, Steven Sinofsky, did with CNet. He reveals that Windows 7 will be a further evolution of Vista, and will lose the rumored MinWin kernel. "We're very clear that drivers and software that work on Windows Vista are going to work really well on Windows 7; in fact, they'll work the same. We're going to not introduce additional compatibilities, particularly in the driver model. Windows Vista was about improving those things. We are going to build on the success and the strength of the Windows Server 2008 kernel, and that has all of this work that you've been talking about. The key there is that the kernel in Windows Server 08 is an evolution of the kernel in Windows Vista, and then Windows 7 will be a further evolution of that kernel as well."

6 of 580 comments (clear)

  1. doesn't sound promising.. by sqldr · · Score: 5, Funny

    We're very clear that drivers and software that work on Windows Vista are going to work really well on Windows 7

    What, all five of them?

    --
    I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
  2. Re:So the difference is... by halcyon1234 · · Score: 5, Funny

    It'll be simple for the marketing drones:

    Do you remember the last time you had a steak? A really big, thick juicy steak. Yeah, that was great, wasn't it. That was XP.

    And then you remember how it clogged up your colon, and you couldn't do anything for a day or two? That was Vista

    And then you remember how it all finally came out, when you spent a half-hour on the can, insides being stretched to Hello.jpg proportions, tears laced with internal-bleeding running down your face, screaming and punching holes in the bathroom drywall, until finally at last everything was right again, and wave of adrenalin-induced euphoria washed over you once the pain was gone, finally gone? That was Vista SP1

    Don't you want to experience that wonderful feeling of eventually bliss all over again? Windows 7, coming soon to a colon, urr, computer near you*.

    (c)Windows(tm) Marketing(tm) Team(tm) 2008)(tm)

    *Steak not included

  3. Re:hmmmmm Vista... powershell ... winfs..... etc by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I didn't even know winFS was still alive... Or is FS short for Frankenstein?

    But your comment is exactly what I was thinking. We've seen it before, the touting of features on the next-best thing from Redmond, and we were much amused. They were constantly dropping features off the list, up to the point where there really were no technological advancements left in Vista.

    They really appear to be doing the same: "The Windows 7 marketing speak will be a further evolution of our experiences with marketing Vista".

    (and to the mods: parent should be modded insightful, not funny)

  4. Re:Guarranteed To Suck by curmudgeon99 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Also, .NET has really withered on the vine. Though you will always be able to find shops that use .NET, the general consensus that I've heard is that .NET is dying.

  5. Re:hmmmmm Vista... powershell ... winfs..... etc by blincoln · · Score: 5, Funny

    Last I read the WinFS project is totally dead.

    The Windows database filesystem is something MS has been developing, announcing, and then killing off since the early 90s. It's sort of the Redmond equivalent of a phoenix, or maybe a Terminator.

    At this point, I think they sort of *have* to announce it as a feature of every upcoming major version of Windows, only to cut it before the release of the OS. It's a tradition with almost 20 years behind it!

    --
    "...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
  6. Re:hmmmmm Vista... powershell ... winfs..... etc by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    For Vista, they promised loads of stuff, then stripped most of them out, presumably for a later version.


    These Linux/Mac zealots always have something to complain about. Microsoft stripped that stuff out of Vista to give the users a fast and snappy system everybody could enjoy on any PC. If they kept all those features Vista would have been a real slug instead of the lightning fast OS it is now.

    [/sarcasm]