Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Possible Reason Behind Version Hop to Windows 10: Compatibility

Posted by timothy on from the damn-you-autocomplete dept.

First time accepted submitter ndykman (659315) writes The Independent reports that a MS developer has suggested a real reason behind the Windows 10 name: old code. More specifically, code that looks for "Windows 9" to determine the Windows version. Fine for Windows 95 or Windows 98, but not so great for a new operating system. The article includes a link that shows that yes, this would be a problem.

4 of 349 comments (clear)

  1. Re:How badly coded are Windows applications? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Microsoft has a history of treating broken apps very gracefully; this explanation seems perfectly plausible and very much in line with what Raymond Chen writes about on his Old New Thing blog.

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  2. Re:How badly coded are Windows applications? by steelfood · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's also rather short-sighted, not to mention lazy, to look for "Windows 9.*". I mean, Windows began with version numbers (Windows 1.0, Windows 2.0, Windows 3.0). There's no reason to think that Microsoft wouldn't go back to version numbers.

    At the very least, look for the string "Windows 95" and "Windows 98", since there are really only two versions of Windows relevant to the "Windows 9.*" search string. I know hindsight is 20/20, but this one really was avoidable by the simple principle of not being lazy (even if ignorant).

    --
    "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
  3. Re:Windows 9X by donaldm · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The whole article is Bull since MS Windows uses the NT kernel and their so called Windows 10 has an NT 6.4 kernel (see here ). For those that won't read the article the following is a list of NT versions from MS Windows Vista.

    NT6.0 - MS Windows Vista, Server 2008
    NT6.1 - MS Windows 7, Server 2008 R2, Home Server 2011
    NT6.2 - MS Windows 8
    NT6.3 - MS Windows 8.1
    NT6.4 - MS Windows 10

    Sure some of the apps my be different (slightly :)) but the basic kernel is only a minor increment. If the developers find difficulty in writing software that can't determine revision difference then I suggest they go back to school. Basically the whole reason to go to version 10 is IMHO marketing hype of which the Microsoft PR department excels (pun intended).

    --
    There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
  4. Re:How badly coded are Windows applications? by dbIII · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I had a Y2K bug introduced in 2008 in Macrovison's piece of shit "protection" software, flexlm, which stopped me running the software I had paid for because a perpetual licence was dated "00" and so was the year 2000.
    The phone support guy had never heard of the Y2K bug!
    It took a week and a half to sort out and meanwhile three people in the office had to work around it instead of using the software that was "protected". And people wonder why I prefer open source software.