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Windows Kernel Version Bumped To 10.0
jones_supa writes: In Windows, the kernel version number is once again in sync with the product version. Build 9888 of Windows 10 Technical Preview is making the rounds in a private channel and the kernel version has indeed been bumped from 6.4 to 10.0. Version 6.x has been in use since Windows Vista. Neowin speculates that this large jump in version number is likely related to the massive overhaul of the underlying components of the OS to make it the core for all of Microsoft's products. The company is working to consolidate all of its platforms into what's called OneCore, which, as the name implies, will be the one core for all of Microsoft's operating systems. It will be interesting to see if this causes any software compatibility issues with legacy applications.
Neowin speculates that this large jump in version number is likely related to the massive overhaul of the underlying components of the OS to make it the core for all of Microsoft's products.
Really?
I think "make the version number match what the marketing dept wants" is the more likely reason.
Objectively, Windows 10.0 is slightly over 56% better than Windows 6.4.
It's Windows 8.1 with a start menu. They didn't rewrite the kernel from scratch so that puts it into 6.4 - 6.99999 range. It's an arbitrary, meaningless number and it's in an OS that they named 10 for no logical reason. They're trying to assign meaning to that?
Every version number has been bumped!
Yeah, think of how much work this was. We had to create new entries in the inventory database, and... and... everything!
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Are you sure the major version of the kernel wasn't increased to allow breaking changes to the device driver ABI? That's what changed from XP (NT 5.1) to Vista (NT 6) and what didn't change from Vista to 8.1 (both NT 6.x).
OneDrive
OneCore
OneNote
xBox One
-?? Future ??-
OneOffice
OneExporer
OneSecurity
Life is not for the lazy.
I'm voting for hit DEL at the login screen to bypass.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Version numbers? We can increment them!
I am not really here right now.
It will be interesting to see if this causes any software comparability issues with legacy applications.
Of course there will be - in any large pool of people of any calling there's going to be morons - the sort of morons that sniff the OS version string for things like "Windows 9" and then assume it's Windows 95 or 98 and refuse to work; instead of using the proper channels to query for the OS version number.
As a PHP programmer I can testify that morons can indeed program. I'm one of them.
Kernel, not potato.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
The reason Microsoft never bumped the version number is because of backwards compatibility. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, many programmers have misused the old Windows APIs that check version numbers in a way that breaks compatibility of their apps going forward. That is, they're checking against future version of Windows rather than previous versions, and as such, their programs would refuse to run if the internal version number had been bumped from 6 to 7 (or 8). Whenever that sort of thing happens, people inevitably blame the OS rather than the application that had the bug in the first place, and as such Microsoft has resorted to some rather extraordinary measures to preserve backward compatibility, even going so far as to intentionally replicate bugs in special program-specific compatibility modes.
The GetWindowsVersionEx() API function is overly-complicated and notoriously easy to accidentally misuse. It appears that Microsoft finally had enough of that, and depreciated it. It will now actually only report accurately up to Windows 8.1, even in future operating systems, to ensure people can't accidentally or intentionally misuse them. They've been replaced with a set of "too simple to possibly misuse" functions that look like the following:
IsWindowsXPSP2OrGreater()
IsWindows7OrGreater()
IsWindows8Point1OrGreater()
There's one function for each major OS version + service pack, and it only checks in an equal-to-or-greater fashion, as you almost always want to do for broad compatibility checks. Notice also how you can't even check against future Windows versions until new API functions are released. I think now that MS has this safer API in place and enough time has passed since the initial problems were detected, they can get the internal version number back in sync with the more visible public number.
There's probably some marketing push in there, because I've seen people (wrongly) claim that since it was just a minor version bump in previous versions, it proved that there were only minor changes to the kernel, blah, blah... Maybe it bothered some particularly anal developers, but I doubt many really cared. It's just an arbitrary number to check at the end of the day, and we're sort of used to dealing with those.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
For when you need that extra level of noise.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Every time they overhaul things, they break stuff right and left. Why can't they leave things alone that are working properly?
I know in Windows 8.1, if you query for the version number you get back the version for Windows 8, unless you're executable lists the GUID for 8.1 in the app manifest. So in Windows 10, with no app manifest, do you still get back the version number for 8?
Gates probably ran in to Volkerding on Caltran last week...
yep, thought so, going from version 6 of the flagship product to version 10. What could go wrong? It's just a label, heheh.
Windows has so many piles of APIs and hooks rotting in the corners, unpatched for 15 years and longer, that it's perhaps time to blow up the known universe and start afresh.
the danger is that it becomes open competition for all business and consumer apps. but with a fully sandboxed emulator, as Apple did, the well-behaved stuff should get enough life to allow CrankyCo to take down their FrankenCode and streamline the apps around the core data.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
...they adopted Linux or Mach kernels and just wanted a way to differentiate them...
sadly, no that will not be the case.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
They've done it before. For example, Word for Windows: it went 1.0, 2.0, and then 6.0 because Microsoft wanted all the Office programs to have the same version, and Excel happened to have the highest version number. Another example is Windows itself: Windows NT went straight to 3.1 for the original (1.0) release because that's where the DOS-based consumer Windows was.
It's not unheard-of from their competitors either.
There's really no significance to this story other than a psychologically-important number increment.
The Internal number represented the TECHNICAL class of the kernel, and now the cretin running Microsoft has allowed marketing to prevent this being thru- for the FIRST time- for Windows 10.
-Windows 3 and 3.1 were the same Kernel class
-Windows 95/98/Millennium shared the same kernel
-Windows NT4.0/Windows 2000/Windows XP shared the same Kernel
-Windows Vista/7/8/8.1/10 share the same kernel
'SAME' does NOT mean identical code. It refers to compatibility with drivers and DLLs that provide the essential defining services. NT4.0 can run DirectX9, for instance, though almost none of you here know that fact.
So why now is Microsoft playing games with the internal Kernel class name? The scummy Huddy from AMD gives us a giant clue. A few days ago, scumbag Huddy gave a technical report declaring DirectX12 would no run on any OS before Windows 10. A day later, Microsoft forced AMD to release a VERY humble press statement declaring that Huddy had been talking out of his arse, but nasty games are afoot.
AMD does NOT want to produce DirectX12 drivers for any AMD GPU hardware earlier than GCN. Nvidia, on the other hand, has already announced DirectX12 support going back several generations before its latest architecture. If DirectX12 does appear on Windows 7 (and unless Windows 10 has a TRUE, new kernel, nothing can prevent this) AMD is going to be in a LOT of trouble.
AMD cards based on VLIW5 and VLIW4 (going back to the 4000 series, and possibly the 3000/2000 series) are perfectly capable of running DX12. Half of sold AMD APUs (including ones selling today in non-West nations) are VLIW4. AMD is determined that its lousy software teams will NOT have to bother providing new drivers for them, and needs Microsoft to provide the excuse.
Intel goes along with this, mostly. It's own GPU (integrated into most Intel CPU parts) has only very recently reached the point of any kind of hardware correctness and true compatibility- older Intel GPUs will never have DX12 support because their GPUs are far too broken and buggy.
But Microsoft has a real dilemma. Unlike Vista and Win8, Win7 has been a great success- it merely lacks the virtualised 'Metro' environment of Win8 that few Windows users wish to use anyway. Win7 has no downside for Microsoft, being fully kernel compatible with all new Microsoft initiatives save Metro apps. Disowning Win7 at the very moment so many companies need it as an upgrade to WinXP would be a DISASTER for MS.
However, internally Microsoft still has some insanely filthy, very powerful, figures- including the bloc that initially prevented MS from supporting full-blown Windows on ARM (leading to the abortion the world knows as RT). These cynical scumbags are fully onside with AMD, and want Microsoft to 'play the market' with Windows 10- in other words pay off tech sites like this one to proclaim that, of course, technically Windows 10 cannot be compatible with Windows 7. If the kernel number for Windows 10 remained the same as Vista/7/8/8.1, the betas that visit sites like this one would get suspicious. Hence the renaming to '10'.
*Freddy Mercury impression*
One Core, One System!
The bright neon looks oh-so tacky.
They've screwed it up, it's now worse than wacky!
Oh oh oh, give them some vision!
No true, no false, the GUI will only do a slow waltz
No blood, no vein, MS zombies wanna much on your brain
No specs, no mission, the code's just some fried chicken!
*Switches to Gandal*
Nine cores for mortal tasks, doomed to die()
Seven for the Intel lords, in their halls of silicon
Three for the MIPS under the NSA
One for the Dark Hoarde on their Dark Campus.
One Core to rule them all, One Core to crash them,
One Core to freeze them all and in the darkness mash them!
In the land of Redmond, where the dotnet lies!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
They'll quickly star the marketing machine calling it Windows X and then they'll start calling it X Windows as they move to the Linux kernel.
They can also start calling all computers running Windows X/X Windows, X Boxes. So really, using 10 just makes everything fit with marketing better since the Windows brand is so last century.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
> It will be interesting to see if this causes any software compatibility issues with legacy applications.
The odds are in favor that many legacy applications won't work.
"Neowin speculates that this large jump in version number is likely related to the massive overhaul of the underlying components..."
The version number and the amount of work on a project have nothing to do with one another. Does he (or they, whatever the hell a neowin is) really think that 40% of all the work that has ever gone into windows happened in this iteration? Version numbers are assigned by marketing and management. You have to name your product something, but what it is named has nothing to do with the engineers working on it.
And yes, I know that the actual name (windows 7, XP, Vista) is also assigned by marketing. But since people know the top name means nothing and look at the internal version number, marketing gets a hold of that and tries to manipulate it as well.
As Londo said... "It does not mean a thing!"
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Windows has so many piles of APIs and hooks rotting in the corners, unpatched for 15 years and longer, that it's perhaps time to blow up the known universe and start afresh.
You just described WinRT aka Metro.