MS Suggests Using Shims For XP-To-Win7 Transition

eldavojohn writes "Windows XP (and a lot of MS OS code before that) had a fundamental security flaw whereby the default setting made the ordinary user run as the superuser. Vista & Windows 7 have fixed that and implemented The Correct Paradigm. But what about the pre-Vista applications written to utilize superuser privileges? How do you migrate them forward? Well, running a virtualized instance of XP in Windows 7 is an option we've talked about. But Microsoft is pushing the idea of using 'shims,' which are a way to bypass or trick the code into thinking it's still running as user/superuser mode in Windows XP. This is an old trick that Microsoft has often employed, and it has brought the Windows kernel a long ways, in a duct-tape sort of fashion. At the TechEd conference in LA, Microsoft associate software architect Chris Jackson joked, 'If you walk too loudly down the hall near the [Windows] kernel developers, you'll break 20 to 30 apps.' So for you enterprise developers fretting about transitioning to Windows 7, shims are your suggested solution."

Comments

if youve got to go through a bunch of hacks

[wjh31]

just to get the software to work properly, you may as well just move to linux

Re:I know you slashdotters hate to hear it

[Joe U]

Funny, Apple was able to make the transition from insecure, single-user based OS to more secure, multi-user OS without too much trouble and keeping a compatibility layer for older apps. Why can't Microsoft do the same?

When you only have about 20 apps for the platform, it's easy.