|
|
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7
MinWinA minimalistic variation of the Windows API and core libraries, known as MinWin, was developed as part of the Windows 7 architecture. The MinWin development efforts were aimed towards componentizing the Windows libraries and reducing their dependencies, with a view to carving out the minimal set of components required to build a self-contained system.[31] MinWin takes up about 25 MB on disk and has a working set (memory usage) of 40 MB.[32] It lacks a graphical user interface and is interfaced using a full-screen command line interface.[33][32] It includes the I/O and networking subsystems.[31][33] MinWin was first publicly demonstrated on October 13, 2007 by Eric Traut. The demo system included an OS image, made up of about 100 files, on which a basic HTTP server was running.[32][34]
Incidentally, the name MinWin was also used earlier to refer to what is currently known as Server Core in Windows Server 2008.[31][33] Both efforts are intended to consolidate and modularize the core of Windows; however, the two are quite different in implementation. With Server Core, the functionality of the OS is constrained according to server roles, and unneeded components (which will never be used as the role isn't supported) are removed from the binary image. However, the dependencies still exist in code, and the code cannot compile without the components. In contrast, with MinWin, the dependencies are consolidated into MinWin and what is not needed is removed at the code level itself. As a result, the code compiles even without any extraneous components and builds a stripped-down self-contained OS image.[33][31]
Contrary to widely publicized rumors (e.g. [35]), MinWin is based on the same NT kernel as the rest of the Windows family. In an interview with Ina Fried of Cnet's News.com, Steven Sinofsky described the Windows 7 kernel as a further evolution of the Windows Server 2008 kernel, itself an evolution of the Windows Vista kernel.[36]
MinWin Core: 25MB on Disk and 100 FilesPosted by James Vastbinder on Oct 26, 2007 12:00 AM
Community .NET Topics Operating Systems Tags Windows7, Windows, Microsoft On October 13th at the University of Illinois Eric Traut first showed a version of Windows code-named Windows 7. In the demonstration Eric allocated 40MB of RAM to the virtual machine and ran the stripped down operating system with 10 active processes taking up only about 33MB of RAM.
The actual kernel of the new Windows version is claimed to be about 4MB in size. Further reductions included for a minimal install:
- 100 Files
- 25MB in disk utilization
- no graphical user interface
- minimal http server
- boot time of less than 20 seconds
When looking at statistics like this, speculation is rampant. A common theory is that Microsoft is returning a single code base, but no official announcement has been made to date. At present Microsoft maintains several versions of Windows with separate kernels:
- Windows Server 2008 / Windows Vista
- Windows Server 2003 / R2 / XP / XPe
- Windows Server 2000
- WinCE 4.x / PPC OS / Smartphone OS
- WinCE 5 / Windows Mobile 5
- WinCE 6 / Windows Mobile 6
A return to a single kernel code base would seem to be a logical next step. Especially given the work being done in the Server and Tools division on the Phoenix project and a move to a single code generation platform.
What do InfoQ readers think?
[ 本帖最后由 lxl1638 于 2008-8-2 01:31 编辑 ] |
|