Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday announced the release of its Windows XP embedded operating system with Service Pack 1, meeting its promise to deliver new Windows XP Embedded technologies within 90 days of the client release.
Microsoft Rolls Out XP Embedded OS
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So a product that’s JUST released comes with a fixpack already? HURAH!
BTW – Thank you mister hacker for not formatting my hardrive.
It came out with SP1. That means it has Windows XP SP1’s codebase.
How can they embed such a vast, bloated operating system? Is this just a new version of WinCE?
The same way Linux and even BeOS (BeIA) became embedded. By keeping only the features and code that are needed for embedded systems.
How can you call XP vast and bloated?? Do you have any idea what you are talking about?
Most of XP’s bloat is *obviously* unimportant things like API support (all the way back to DOS), drivers (don’t need them now, do we?), inbuilt applications like IE/WMP (best of breed in my opinion). I would have no doubt that XP stripped down to basic kernel and boot code would be suprisingly small.
And despite all the extra “bloat” Windows XP still installs in less space than required for a typical Linux installation.
Basically, because a typical Linux installation is equipped to do a lot more than a typical Windows installation does. All those libraries, things like Perl, Python, et cetera.
And despite all the extra “bloat” Windows XP still installs in less space than required for a typical Linux installation.
A “typical” XP install is about 1.2GB. A “typical” Linux install is about 800MB. Obviously you too have no idea what you’re talking about. Hehe
-fooks
No one is comparing like to like. An 800MB Linux installation comes with multiple web browsers, editors, shells, desktops, e-mail clients, etc.
Linux with KDE and the same amount of software as windows in a typical install would be under 400MB
Bloated? Obviosuly, you know nothing about Windows XP. It uses a lot of compatiblity DLLs to become binary compatible with legacy apps (that kept Microsoft’ monopoly), plus tonnes of features. These stuff can removed by device makers. XP Embedded is for devices with have specialize needs, they would remove stuff they don’t need at all for operation.
Fooks: Depends on a “typical” installation of Linux, it can go from 500MB to 2GB. It really depends. “Typical” installations varies from distributions to distributions.
Comparing Linux and Windows is next to imposible, especially in terms of space needed for installation. But I’m guessing there isn’t really a big difference in space for Linux with applications to replace bundled Windows space.
With 800MB, you may get in a lot of text editors and terminal eumlators, but not multiple web browsers (Mozilla, IIRC, itself takes 20MB). Linux+ Neccesary libraries + KDE for me is 300MB, BTW 🙂
Now add in MPlayer or Xine, XMMS, gaim, Cinelera – and watch the MBs start to rise. Plus, GTK+, Qt 1, Qt 2, TK, and OpenMotif for legacy application compatiblity.
rajan I have above in 790 something mb , gentoo/linux .
To tell the truth, I never actually counted them all together. That’s the big difference between Linux and Windows. Linux is so modular you can take something out and put something in. The bad thing about that is it causes the dependancy hell (you can never install apps on Linux without once in your life downloading dependencies from the Net).
Windows XP Embedded has been around for a while now in the form of sysinternals.com ERD Commander.
While I admit to little intimate knowledge of Windows CE, it’s portability across platforms would make me suspect that it’s closely related to NT and therefore XP. Unless CE is the sole exception, Microsoft has never written an OS from scratch, further indicating that CE may be NT code.
“And despite all the extra “bloat” Windows XP still installs in less space than required for a typical Linux installation.”
This is a ridiculous statement without a lot of qualifications. Typically, XP is going to grab around 1.5 – 2Gb of your drive and you don’t have anything to say about it one way or another. Depending upon what parts of Linux I want, I can trim the disk space used to under 100Mb. If I want to install a whole bunch-o-stuff, I can expand a Linux installation to more than 3Gb. It’s a matter of choice. If I could easily install XP with a similar ability to configure it how I want it, I might take it seriously.