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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.
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?
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).
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.
OneBorgMind.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Right up until you want a way to define API changes and continue to maintain back branches.
Rod Taylor
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.
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'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.
*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)