All About Microsoft
Mary-Jo FoleyStripped-down 'MinWin' kernel to be at the core of Windows 7 and more
Summary
Microsoft has created a stripped-down version of the Windows core, called MinWin, that will be at the heart of future Windows products, starting with Windows 7, the Windows client release due in 2010.
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Blogger Info
Mary-Jo Foley
Biography
Mary-Jo Foley
Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 20 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She has kept close tabs on Microsoft strategy, products and technologies for the past 10 years. In the late 1990s, she penned the award-winning "At The Evil Empire" column for ZDNet, and more recently the Microsoft Watch blog for Ziff Davis.
Got a tip? Send her an email with your rants, rumors, tips and tattles. Confidentiality guaranteed.
Microsoft has created a stripped-down version of the Windows core, called MinWin, that will be at the heart of future Windows products, starting with Windows 7, the Windows client release due in 2010.
While the Windows team has been working for years on reducing the dependencies in Windows which have made the operating system increasingly bloated and difficult to maintain and upgrade, it’s only been recently that the team has been able to create a separate, usuable new core.
Going forward, MinWin will be at the heart of future versions of Windows Media Center, Windows Server, embedded Windows products and more.
Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Eric Traut described some of the work the Microsoft Core OS team has done to build the MinWin core during a recent talk he gave at the University of Illinois. The full video of Traut’s talk is here. Blogger Long Zheng clipped out the piece of Traut’s talk which highlighted how the MinWin core will work in Windows 7 and posted it to his site.
MinWin is internal-only and “won’t be productized but it will be the basis for future products,” Traut said. But “it’s proof there is a really nice little core inside Windows.”
MinWin is 25 MB on disk; Vista is 4 GB, Traut said. (The slimmed-down Windows Server 2008 core is still 1.5 GB in size.) The MinWin kernel does not include a graphics subsystem in its current build, but does incorporate a “very simple HTTP server,” Traut said. The MinWin core is 100 files total, while all of Windows is 5,000 files in size.
Traut said he is running a team of 200 Windows engineers working on the core kernel and Windows virtual technologies.
Traut acknowledged tat the Windows kernel is between twelve and fifteen years old right now. He said that Microsoft is operating under the premise that “at some point, we’ll have to replace it (the kernel),” given that it “doesn’t have an unlimited life span.
Traut did not mention Singularity — Microsoft Research’s built-from-scratch microkernel-based operating system — during his talk.
Instead, Traut spent most of his time describing Microsoft’s thinking around virtualization, and how virtualization can be used to ease backwards compatibility and other problems Windows users incur. He did not speak specifically about how Microsoft plans to incorporate virtualization in Windows 7, but did stress that virtualization should not be viewed as a crutch, in terms of improving existing code. He said Microsoft considers application virtualization, like that it provides via SofGrid, presentation virtualization (Windows Terminal Services and “enhancements to core Windows functionality” are all other ways that the company can improve users’ Windows experience.
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Mary Jo has covered the tech industry for more than 25 years for a variety of publications and Web sites, and is a frequent guest on radio, TV and podcasts, speaking about all things Microsoft-related. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).
Disclosure
Mary-Jo Foley
Freelance journalist/blogger Mary Jo Foley has nothing to disclose. WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). I do not own Microsoft stock or stock in any of its partners or competitors. I have no business ventures that are sponsored by/funded by Microsoft or any of its partners or competitors. I have not accepted any consulting funds from Microsoft, any of its partners or its competitors for any studies/projects.
Biography
Mary-Jo Foley
Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 20 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She has kept close tabs on Microsoft strategy, products and technologies for the past 10 years. In the late 1990s, she penned the award-winning "At The Evil Empire" column for ZDNet, and more recently the Microsoft Watch blog for Ziff Davis.
Got a tip? Send her an email with your rants, rumors, tips and tattles. Confidentiality guaranteed.
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Related Discussions on TechRepublic
Did you know you can take part in these discussions with your ZDNet membership?Talkback Most Recent of 120 Talkback(s)
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I wonder...
Will this "MiniWin" require only 32MB of RAM? 
Grayson Peddie10/19/2007 05:31 AM -
Wouldn't that be nice?
Then only the user apps will be resource hogs.
Michael Kelly10/19/2007 07:25 AM -
Hopefully the user apps
would get trimmed down as well as there will be less for them to tie into (A few apps definately come to mind!)
John Zern10/19/2007 07:55 AM -
RE: Stripped-down 'MinWin' kernel to be at the core of Windows 7 and more
Sounds like a linux kernel..... Now how are they going to prevent developers from accessing it so they can cut the OS down to a manageable size?
nwoodson@...10/19/2007 06:02 AM -
Wiat for the law suit
I agree, it does sound like a Linux Kernal.
Now all we have to do is wait for Microsoft to sue Linux for violating their minimum kernel patent.
I've been expecting Microsoft to start using Linux source code in their kernel in the way that Apple based their os on Unix. If Microsoft has really learned anything, instead of a lawsuit, we will find the ability to run Linux apps without the need to recompile.
As for size? Considering that Dos and Win3x a whole lot less space, 25 megabytes is still to big. I'd like something that I can run on my old 486 laptop with 8 Meg of ram. You can't find a recent version of Linux to do that these days.
Maybe one day I will have the resources to build my own OS that can be installed from 3.5 floppies.
satovey@...10/19/2007 09:37 AM -
rarsa10/19/2007 10:07 AM -
rarsa10/19/2007 10:15 AM
-
Wait for the law suit
"Maybe one day I will have the resources to build my own OS that can be installed from 3.5 floppies."
What are floppies?
(Just teasing you)
aussieblnd@...10/19/2007 11:18 AM -
Only 3.5"
when did that happen. Mine are good 8" in size.
alaniane@...10/19/2007 12:30 PM -
Stripped-down 'MinWin' kernel
"how are they going to prevent developers from accessing it "
Wellll it's on 25 meg on disk with 2 gig of security locks on it!aussieblnd@...10/19/2007 11:15 AM -
it's just a Linux ripp-off
M$ just lifted the Linux code and called it MinWin.
By 2010, with all the new bloated features it will be called MaxLoose and will require 1 TB of memory to start.
You better stick with Linux, the genuine OS, not some M$ crummy knock off.
Linux Geek10/19/2007 07:10 AM -
You don't know what you're talking about, don't you?
Everyone, troll alert! Don't feed a troll!Grayson Peddie10/19/2007 08:56 AM -
Considering that it's a Friday I will forgive you.
I Don't know what you Don't you?
nomoremicrosoft10/19/2007 04:39 PM -
THEE WOLF10/19/2007 04:46 PM -
Linux, UNIX, heck even maybe a Mach ripp-off
I smiled when I read the story, and even the response to which I am responding.
Windows appears to be going down the path to become more an more like that "30 year old" operating system all the time. Separation of the GUI, heck even text console from the core of the O/S makes a lot of sense. Push as much to user-space as makes sense.
The reality is that the open source kernels have evolved to become incredibly stable and flexible. Open source kernel development hasn't slowed, the core of the MS kernel really has slowed. There actually may be the potential that kernel development by MS could be shelved to save engineering effort and money. Why not? The kernel is the most important part of the system that most users never see if it works well.
If MS can produce a shell/GUI that sits on top of Linux/BSD/whatever and still keep compatibility and performance, the users may remain happy, they save time, and money. Heck, MS could even build a few bridges to the open source community and improve their image. Kind of like an olive branch, if people could possibly believe it.
Sooner or later MS will realize that if you cannot beat them, join them. Consider that MS is smart enough to turn a potential loss into a big win. Conceptually they could bringing real developers back to do the hard kernel work happily and better yet, for free. Slap a nice smooth GUI on it that doesn't break compatibility and profit.
sys_engineer10/21/2007 03:58 AM
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