MinWin
MinWin is a term used informally by
Background
Through the history of Microsoft Windows, the core of the operating system was generally designed to be a single large, inter-related set of components. With successive releases, the set of components considered to be the core of Microsoft Windows numbered into the thousands, with numerous
In an April 2003 interview coinciding with the release of Windows Server 2003, Rob Short, the vice-president of the Windows Core Technology group, explained that creating a command-line version would involve "looking at the layers and what's available at each layer and how do we make it much closer to the thing the Linux guys have -- having only the pieces you want running. That's something Linux has that's ahead of us, but we're looking at it. We will have a command line-only version, but whether it'll have all the features in is another matter. A lot of the tools depend on having the graphical interface."[1] Windows Server 2003 was seen by reviewers such as Direction On Microsoft's Michael Cherry as having reduced the reliance on graphical tools to configure the operating system,[2] but the operating system itself still required the full graphical interface to be installed, even on servers where it would never be needed.
After Windows Server 2003's release, Rob Short assembled a team of kernel architects at Microsoft, with the intention of untangling and documenting the dependencies within the core operating system. The kernel development team had realized that they were having difficulty being able to "predict the impact of changes and to make broad, cross-group changes to Windows",[3] and the new kernel architecture team would aim to improve software engineering practices both within the Windows kernel itself, as well as with the other components of Windows. To do this, every component of the operating system (consisting of about 5,500 distinct files in late 2005,[3] during the development of Windows Vista) was assigned a "layer number" that represents its dependency position relative to other components, with lower-numbered components being closer to the core of the operating system, and higher numbers representing high-level components. With this information, the core architecture team began to address a range of issues where low-level components were reliant on high-level components, and finding ways to resolve those dependencies. In doing so, a number of new options for creating focused sub-sets of Windows for different purposes became possible.
Larry Osterman, a developer on the Windows Audio team at Microsoft, described the effort in a November 2008 posting to the
Releases
While Microsoft has stated that MinWin will not be released as a stand-alone product, the various iterations of MinWin have shipped in every Windows operating system release since Windows Vista.
Windows Vista
The first use of the term "MinWin" by Microsoft was in 2003 during the development of Windows Vista, known at the time by its codename, Longhorn. MinWin was described at the time as consisting of approximately 95% of the total Longhorn code base,[6] with the additions for each edition of Longhorn layered on top of that. While the name MinWin was never used as part of Windows Vista's marketing efforts or in presentations to developers or IT professionals, some of the kernel architecture team's componentization and refactoring work was shipped with Windows Vista.
Windows Server 2008
One of Microsoft's goals for
Andrew Mason, the program manager at Microsoft responsible for Windows Server Core, explained in a February 2008 interview for TechNet that Windows Server 2008 (both the full installation, as well as Server Core) is built on top of this smaller set of components.
Windows 7
In October 2007, Eric Traut, a developer at Microsoft, demonstrated a self-contained MinWin system, made up of about 100 files, on which a basic HTTP server was running.[10] [11] Traut noted that MinWin takes up about 25
Several months after Traut's demonstration, some confusion arose from an interview by Ina Fried of CNET's News.com with Steven Sinofsky, the vice-president of Windows engineering at Microsoft. Sinofsky described the Windows 7 kernel as a further evolution of the Windows Server 2008 kernel, itself an evolution of the Windows Vista kernel.[13] This was interpreted by web sites such as Slashdot[14] to mean that Windows 7 would not include MinWin. Mark Russinovich suggested that some of the confusion surrounding MinWin may be related to the imprecise use of the word "kernel";[15] MinWin is not, in and of itself a kernel, but rather a set of components that includes both the Windows NT Executive and several other components that Russinovich has described as "Cutler's NT".[16]
Windows Server 2016
In Windows Server 2016, Nano Server is an option without the 32-bit compatibility layer or graphics.
See also
- Architecture of Windows NT
- Windows Vista startup process
- Hybrid kernel
References
- ZDNet. Retrieved 2008-11-01.
- ^ Michael Cherry (April 14, 2003). "Windows Administration Moves Beyond GUI". Directions On Microsoft. Archived from the original on November 19, 2008. Retrieved 2008-11-01.
- ^ a b "Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture". Channel 9. Microsoft. December 23, 2005. Retrieved 2008-11-01.
- ^ Osterman, Larry (November 13, 2008). "windows 7 != MinWin". Archived from the original on June 15, 2009. Retrieved 2009-02-28.
- ^ Paddock, Brandon (November 13, 2008). "windows 7 != MinWin". Archived from the original on June 15, 2009. Retrieved 2009-02-28.
- ^ Paul Thurrott (May 2003). "Longhorn Setup and Deployment Strategies". SuperSite For Windows. Archived from the original on 2016-11-13. Retrieved 2012-02-09.
- ^ Thurrott, Paul (April 1, 2005). "Longhorn Server Preview". SuperSite for Windows. Archived from the original on November 13, 2016. Retrieved 2012-02-09.
- ^ Yaniv Weinberg (2006). "INF 207 - Windows Server Longhorn – End to End Technical Overview". TechEd presentation. Microsoft. Archived from the original on 2012-12-09.
- ^ David Tesar (February 24, 2008). "Windows Server 2008 - Server Core PM Andrew Mason". Microsoft. Retrieved 2012-02-09.
- ^ Long Zheng (October 19, 2007). "Eric Traut talks (and demos) Windows 7 and MinWin". Retrieved 2007-10-20.
- ^ "r | p 2007: Machine Virtualization - Eric Traut - YouTube". 2013-04-29. Retrieved 2022-10-04.
- ^ Mary Jo Foley (October 19, 2007). "Stripped-down 'MinWin' kernel to be at the core of Windows 7 and more". ZDNet. Retrieved 2008-11-01.
- news.com. Retrieved 2008-05-28.
- ^ "Slashdot - Windows 7 Won't Have Compact "MinWin" Kernel". May 28, 2008. Retrieved 2008-07-23.
- ^ Ed Bott (March 31, 2008). "Is MinWin really the new Windows 7 kernel?". Retrieved 2008-11-01.
- ^ Robert McLaws (October 30, 2008). "Mark Russinovich Explains MinWin Once and For All". windows-now.com. Archived from the original on November 3, 2008. Retrieved 2008-11-01.