A lot of people assume that MinWin is a Microsoft effort to completely rewrite the Windows Kernel from scratch. That may be based on earlier (limited) explanations about what it does, or it may have a lot to do with people assuming, due to people’s efforts with open source software, that rewriting the kernel will solve all of Windows problems. Well, Mark Russinovich, Microsoft Technical Fellow and guru of all things NT Kernel, attempts to set the record straight in this 45 minute video from Channel 9. Now, the whole talk is about advancements in Windows 7, and has great info about the new event-based model for Windows Services (dunno what took so long on that one, but I’m glad its there now), and other things. but for the purposes of this discussion, you want to jump in at 28:20, which is where MinWin first comes up.

I’m going to attempt to use my Geek-to-Layman Translator to break down what Mark said:

It turns out that Windows Server Core is not a clean separation of the true core of Windows. When Microsoft first set out to make Server Core, they discovered that lower-level systems were dependent on some higher-level calls, which is a no-no in systems design. When they looked deeper, they found out this was happening all over the place. They realized it was going to take too much effort to make a clean break for Server Core, so they literally ripped out anything that wasn’t necessary for the Server Roles they wanted to support. That’s why you’re not supposed to run any other apps on Server Core (or WinPE, as it turns out) because it might make a call to something that doesn’t exist, and it will fail. If it fails low enough, well, that could be bad for the OS.

That system is not scalable or testable in any way, and makes it very difficult to innovatively deliver future iterations of Server Core. So Microsoft started to chart out the entire Windows dependency graph. And as they saw things that started calling up the stack when they weren’t supposed to, they rearranged the APIs to create a clean separation in the OS.

MinWin is the result of that work. It is not a complete rewrite of the kernel, but a reorganization of the APIs, so that components only call down the stack, and not up it. It is isolated in the build tree from the rest of Windows, so it can be innovated on by itself. It is fully bootable, 25-40MB of disk space, and contains the executive systems, memory management, networking, and optional file system drivers. It’s fully testable, and Microsoft is working on a large suite of test cases to run against it. And it *is* indeed in Windows 7.

Mark also said that, though MinWin is finished, their work in this process is not. Now they’ve gone up in the stack, and are looking at where the next boundary needs to be drawn. Apparently, it is part of a much larger effort to reorganize all of the Windows codebase, and keep things clean and separate.

As an aside, for those of you wondering, a lot of the MinWin magic happens in KernelBase.dll. It contains a lot of the functionality that was refactored from Kernel32.dll, so for compatibility with older programs, they left “forwarders” in there that pass the calls down to KernelBase.dll as necessary.

So rejoice, armchair kernel enthusiasts! Microsoft is tidying house inside “Cutler’s NT”, and Windows 7 is the next step (the first being the componentization work from Windows Vista) in the massive decade-long operation to optimize and refactor the Windows codebase.

 Source: Windows Now

Just saw the headlines on my Engadget RSS feed and just like the rumors said at the start of the week. Ubuntu 8.10 funal is released!!

Linux fans should look forward to performance gains and a new Connection Manager with 3G support, as well as the ability to install from USB drives and built-in BBC content availability. Torrents should be popping now -- and if you haven't hit up the 'bu yet, what're you waiting for?

Head over to Ubuntu's site for details and downloads!

Source: Engadget

Windows Server 2008 R2 showed its pretty face at the Professional Developers Conference today, here in Los Angeles. Hi there, my name’s Oliver Rist and I’m a new technical product manager on the Windows Server team. I’m down here in La-La Land heaving great sighs of satisfaction as we unveil the first sneak peeks of pre-beta Windows Server 2008 R2. Though this release is right in line with our announced roadmap strategy for future Server releases, there are several items of note with R2:

First and foremost, 32-bit is done. History. Archives. Windows Server 2008 R2 is the first Windows OS platform to go 64-bit only, and frankly it was high time. Customers have been unable to purchase a 32-bit server CPU for over two years now, and the advancements in CPU architectures really dictated that we squeeze as much performance out of customers’ hardware purchases as possible. The move to 64-bit is a first step.

You’ll also find that we’ve aligned R2 development around four core technology pillars:

First, there’s virtualization. R2 represents our most pervasive move into virtualization yet, including R2’s undisputed marquee feature, Live Migration. Think physical host migrations of running VMs happening in milliseconds—no service or user connection interruptions. With Live Migration, data centers can truly go virtual and largely divorce management considerations between software and hardware, and all managed from inside a single OS frame.

R2’s virtualization also extends to a new Hyper-V for Windows Server 2008 R2 (think mucho better management, beefier resources for VMs and more). And potentially more exciting, Terminal Services is updating its remote applications feature to include a true Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). Think desktops and applications wrapped in virtualized packages, managed centrally and deployed to Windows 7 desktop with such tight integration most users will be unable to tell the difference between centrally hosted apps and those installed locally. (And don’t worry, a Web Access feature will let Windows XP and Windows Vista users in on the fun, too.)

Our second area of core concentration is streamlined management. R2 contains a host of new server role-specific management UIs. Even better, these are all built on PowerShell 2.0, which hosts a bunch of improvements of its own. For one, you’ll find over 240 new cmdlets inside the R2 box with more coming from other Microsoft platform products. There’s also a new Graphical PowerShell UI that adds developer-oriented features so you can more easily create your own cmdlets, including syntax coloring and better debugging tools. Add to that a new Active Directory Domain Services management console, enhanced Group Policy functions and a remote-capable Server Manager, and IT administrators have a lot to look forward to with R2.

Our Web concentration largely represents updates to IIS 7.0. The Web server is better than ever with new PowerShell management support, bennies gained from new failover clustering updates, and a number of popular IIS Extensions that have been rolled up into this release, including WebDAV and an updated Administration Pack to name just two. New reporting capabilities, better deployment options and more flexible deployment options with support for technologies like SilverLight and PHP—it’s a brave new IIS world in R2.

Last and definitely my favorite is the enterprise workloads pillar. Yes, this covers the heavy-iron features I love so much, like failover clustering, new reliability features and updates to enterprise storage (more iSCSI enhancements, management and more). But it also covers the end-to-end network experience for enterprise users—and that means a very cool Better Together story with Windows 7. Live Migration is getting a lot of spotlight attention, but I think DirectAccess is might be the sleeper feature of R2 and Windows 7. With DA, remote computing essentially becomes invisible for end-users. Using technologies like SSTP and IPv6 combined with way-easy management UIs in Windows Server 2008 R2, admins can build remote computing policies that let users plug into any network, anywhere and see their local network resources—completely secure, no clunky VPN required. As long as there’s an outward network connection, DA takes care of everything in the background and automatically. Awesome. And that’s just one R2-Windows 7 synergy out of many.

I’ll be updating this blog regularly from now on with a deeper dive into R2’s load of new features and its capabilities with the new client. Meanwhile, visit www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008r2 for more details as well as the Reviewers Guide I’ve been putting together for the last several weeks. We’ll be adding a lot of new content over the next several months so keep checking back

Source: Windows Server Divison Weblog

Microsoft Corp. today for the first time publicly demonstrated Windows 7, the next major release of its PC operating system, and the software maker insisted that Windows 7 will reflect lessons learned from the widely panned Windows Vista.

Microsoft also laid out a road map for the release of Windows 7 and handed out a pre-beta version to developers at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC), where it also demonstrated new features. The first public beta of the operating system will be available early next year; it will be followed by test releases and release candidates that incorporate feedback from users of the public beta, said Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft's senior vice president of Windows and Windows Live, in a keynote address.

Windows 7 is still targeted for release three years after Vista, he added. This would put its business release in late 2009 and general availability at the end of January 2010 if the operating system remains on schedule. In his speech, Sinofsky said Microsoft is learning its lessons from Vista, which was widely criticized by users and the press, and spoofed famously in television advertisements by Apple Inc.

Sinofsky acknowledged that some of the criticism was deserved, particularly around Microsoft's failure to adequately prepare its hardware, software and peripheral partners for Vista's release, even though it was more than five years in the making. Early Vista users experienced incompatibility with applications and found that devices and peripherals would not work with the operating system because drivers weren't available.

Source: PRONetworks