Roberto J Dohnert writes: “Winsupersite has an excellent two part story on the development of Windows NT and how it has affected the release of Windows 2003 Server.” Read the first part and the second part at Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows.
Roberto J Dohnert writes: “Winsupersite has an excellent two part story on the development of Windows NT and how it has affected the release of Windows 2003 Server.” Read the first part and the second part at Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows.
Half off topic, but with all that development, how come they can’t just make an emulator for Windows 9x stuff? Flame me away… but I’d also like someone to tell me why.
Add “http://“ to the Winsupersite url.
Microsoft buys Connectix and now everyone bashes it for backwards compatibility? I can run windows 95 code on XP, for you math gurus out there thats almost an 8 year gap. It is also possible to run 32 bit code on windows 95 with the libraries installed. I was a little kid when MS released windows 95. Windows 98 is also 5 years old. MS has gone through a major OS rewrite since 98, now using an NT based kernel. Linux breaks compatibility on almost every major release (whice come _often_). I remember Red Hat breaking binary compatibility between beta builds or 8.0. That’s about a 3 week gap. Back then, I was still an old fat guy.
The final part has yet to be published.
You can run 32bit code in win95?! you’re SHITTING ME!!! Never, in a million years! *gets serious*. Win95 _IS_ 32bit. They still used a bunch of 16bit stuff, but the apps WERE 32bit. Thats why you can still run almost anything on win95 as long as you have all the dlls needed. I’ve only seen a few apps that dont install properly on win95.
It’ll be interesting to see if they did get the security right this time around. If IIS is indeed installed locked down by default, they should help quite a bit.
//It is also possible to run 32 bit code on windows 95 with the libraries installed. //
No shee-ite, Sherlock. It was a 32-bit OS.
You’re showing your ignorance.
Where’s the story on David Cutler? He’s mentioned in the timeline, but his significance and contributions to NT aren’t even mentioned. He was essentially the father of the NT arcitecture.
One of the most significant features of NT 4, the move of the window server into the kernel, was rather downplayed. I’d consider this one of the most important features of Windows as it’s the reason why the Windows GUI is the most responsive (imagine the number of context switches required for a Windows pushbutton as opposed to one in X or Quartz)
“We eventually moved the Win32 GUI components and hosted them as an in-process driver. Performance was one side effect. We had had problems taking that API and running it in a different process. So moving the code to the same context as the runtime solved a lot of issues. We didn’t have to do dead lock detection for GDI and USER. It was significant work, but it solved a lot of headaches.”
What was fascinating reading was information on the Windows development process. I can’t imagine how complex the software they must use to sync all the branches is, but I’m certain it puts things like CVS and BitKeeper to shame.
I also got a kick out of how the pulled quotes don’t render properly in Opera 7, but that’s to be expected from “WinSuperSite” I suppose.
Jim: “It is also possible to run 32 bit code on windows 95 with the libraries installed.”
Richard: “You can run 32bit code in win95?! you’re SHITTING ME!!!”
thinking_it_over: “No shee-ite, Sherlock. It was a 32-bit OS. You’re showing your ignorance.”
You people should cut Jim some slack… I’m certain he means Windows 3.1 instead of Windows 95, as it sounds like he’s refering to Win32g.
> “NT 3.51 was a very unrewarding release,” Thompson said
[]
> we basically sat around for 9 months fixing bugs while we
> waited for IBM to finish the Power PC hardware. But because
> of this, NT 3.51 was a solid release, and our customers loved
> it.”
So basically he is saying that he thinks that it is very unrewarding to produce an OS without bugs even if the customers seems to think otherwise..
And in the front page of /., there is an article which reports that Bill Gates have said that people complains of bugs “because it’s cool”.
*SIGH*
I remember not long ago Eugenia mention that IBM has BINARY compatibility of servers from the 70s or 60s in some of its products… That is backwards compatibility. Win2k? ya, i can play most games from 95, but not all (simtower).
As for Redhat? well, i would say this. Linux is, imho, going through more development than windows, at a more rapid pace, and in a nonstardized way. Good or bad, Linux is has grown faster than windows(atleast to what is publicly available). On that same note, Linux has A LOT of room to grow. In some areas, Linux is still in competition with win95(App installing and general usability), while in others, it far exceeds winXP or any NT OS(stability, server). In say, 5 years, when heavy development has either slowed down, or has become more uniform, Redhat will be able to provide compatibility much easier.
This is a question I have asked many times in *nix threads on here and never had an answer to.
SPEED: Yes its possible to get Linux to run as fast or faster than Windows but you need to compile the kernel for your own hardware first. A stock kernel is slow because it is made for various hardware.
OK: SO: Why is Windows’ pre-compiled kernel apparently better at running on “various” hardware: Is it a factor of Kernel structure, driver model, graphics.. or what?
Have you ever coded before? If all you do is debug for a release, it’s not much fun at all. I think that’s what they meant.
Well, and I could be wrong here, but doesn’t Linux use a monolithic kernel and NT uses a microkernel?
I’m not sure of all the highly detailed differences, but if the Window server of NT is part of the kernel, then couldn’t that be attributed to the perceived speed? If all you’re interacting with is a GUI, then GUI responsiveness will translate into perceived speed. If you’re interacting with a CLI then speed can be perceived much differently.
Also, take into account the development process. Windows, as the article describes, has a very rigorous and tightly controlled development process, even with 5,000 people working on the source.
Linux is a much much more open process, that solicits changes and modifications from an entire community, and is managed by people whom not all are working on Linux full time.
This is not to downplay the amazing achievements of the Linux community! This is simply part of the many differences between closed-source (i.e. Microsoft) and open-source (i.e. Linux, Mozilla, etc.) projects.
Are you sure that you are talking about the desktop or the kernel? I compiled my kernel, but the speed changes are really only marginal for what I do. There is not too much of a difference for a desktop user between custom compiling and just using a stock kernel.
I have a feeling that you are talking about the desktop – Windows Desktop vs. GNOME/KDE. You could write a book on why one performs better than the other.
I’ve had a lot of backwards compatability problems with Windows. Linux, it’s usually just a matter of recompiling to regain compatability. I can never play any DOS games on any Windows, and even most of my Win95 apps and games don’t run on XP. 98 -> XP is barely better. Maybe it’s just my luck.
I heard something about NT loading things out of order on boot to gain speed…. don’t quote me, though
Its actually a very good set of articles. I enjoyed them very much. Thank you OSNews for posting the link.
Quote: “So basically he is saying that he thinks that it is very unrewarding to produce an OS without bugs even if the customers seems to think otherwise”
When he says “release” that does not mean producing the product. The days on and after the “release” were unrewarding because the machines were not already waiting in anticipation for it.
Please come on, what’S THIS?
Its just a pro-windows paper, that tries to make peolple believe that windows is a great product, a good design or whatever. I was laughing when i read the part about NT4, because i can just remenber the debacle of this system.
5000 developpers, ……well i guess they are beginners, because Apple or any smaller compagny, or just small teams of developper do better with much less developpers and ressources.
Really, there is nothing in this paper, …..pitiful.
There is nothing about the people who take design decisions. With so many “wars” per day, I wonder when are they actually *working*
It was fun to see the penguin “supervising” a meeting.
Hak said :
“Its just a pro-windows paper, that tries to make peolple believe that windows is a great product, a good design or whatever. I was laughing when i read the part about NT4, because i can just remenber the debacle of this system.
5000 developpers, ……well i guess they are beginners, because Apple or any smaller compagny, or just small teams of developper do better with much less developpers and ressources. ”
please stop your silly troll away. This article is interesting, and not pro something. It just shows how a developper sees the WinNT developprment.
The only major difference a Microkernel offers over a Monolithic kernel is driver support. With a Microkernel like Mach and NT drivers are hotpluggable, meaning you can plug them in without having to require a reboot. A monolithic kernel like Linux and DOS you have reboot your machine or restart the service in order to get it to work.
As for you Hak I just replied to an e-mail with some of the points you brought up. Im going to post it here so you can read it because Im not going to retype it. Names have been Omitted:
” How do you work that out? Apple have created their
> own platform, people know that if you buy a PPC
> machine from Apple you will get their OS but with them
> supporting OPEN standards. They provide a total
> solution people know what they are buying.
> With MS they have taken control of the x86 platfrom
> knocked other OS makers aside and forced people into
> their own standards so they become trapped.
> Besides with the US government as it is i doubt they
> would touch apple, not if they didn’t really do
> anything against MS.
The situation and the differences between Microsoft and Apple are totally
different, with Apple they produce both the computer and the operating
system. So they could price gouge and have total control over the quality of
their hardware and software integration. We have seen price gouging and poor
quality with MS Windows but people still had a choice, they could buy a Mac,
one of the various Linux distros or a Unix variant without sacrificing their
hardware investments. With the PowerPC you have no choice in operating
systems its either the Amiga OS which is basically dead or Mac OS X, so their
is no choice. And as previously stated, Apple would have a hardtime with
supply and demand even with the limited marketshare that they have they cant
keep up with it. The government would not allow any company to control both
aspects of the industry ie. Hardware and Software. Another thing is that
the periphials they would have to support. Everyone flames MS because they
say that the OS sucks, if you look at 99.9% of computer crashes they are
caused by either a third party driver or a third party applications. No
company can keep up with all the drivers that the OS would need, not at that
big a marketspace. Thats why MS now has the device driver rollback and
device protection schemes in Windows, its not to piss off the consumer, its
MS’s way of telling the Hardware developers ” Either get it right or dont
bother to do it.” And from a hardware developers point of view its not easy
doing a driver, you have many things that must be addressed, Kernel timing (
Yes Windows has a kernel) address space, IRQs and memory management just to
name a few. Apple does not have to deal with as many vendors and application
developers as MS does. So yes with what Microsoft has to deal with Windows
is a fine product. As for third party applications, they had a hard time
with MS but the situation has gotten much better. The many problems there
were with the DLL hell we the developers had to go through. Its a shame it
took a long anti-trust trial to make MS see the light but we got through it.
But that goes to quality. If Apple was to have it all I dont think they
would want it. I dont think the Linux guys will want it either. As for the
hardware aspect of it all, If Apple cant keep up with supply and demand it
will try to and quality would suffer a great deal. Apple had a good thing
with the clone project if they would reinstate that and give consumers a
choice then yes it has a high success rate, if it would port to the x86 then
its chances raise considerably. But as long as it holds its ground and say
hell no we wont port then I hate to say it, it’s days are numbered. And yes
the government would stop them before they managed to put all the computer
hardware manufacturers out of business. I am not a Windows zealot, I dont
use Windows but at work at home I use Linux and Mac OS X, I only use the Mac
OS X for one thing, the developer tools. If Apple would port the dev tools
to Windows and Linux and port OS X to x86 then Apple would make a killing.
With Apples dev tools I can pump out a quality application in 2-3 hrs
compared to Visual .NET series which would take me a couple of days. I think
the hardware market is pretty much settled to standardize on the x86
platform, the key now is quality software.
Sorry for such a long e-mail, looking forward to your reply ”
I guess you have to be a developer and work in the industry to actually sympathize and understand what MS has to go through. But as I stated its not all MS’s fault it goes to others as well.
I think your answer really does make sense. Most problems I used to have with windows NT 4 in network environnement seemed to be hardware ones : bad ram, bad chipset, etc…
And linux has the same problem : as it supports more hardware,it has more problems related to that ( think to the Xfree configuration problems : I had a lot of troubles because the input stopped to work every 20 minutes under Xfree4.1, which means you have to reboot, or to kill X through the network. The cause : a bad designed mouse… Funny to notice that buying a mircosoft mouse solved the problem ). PC are built upon hardware principles which are more than 20 years; things like BIOS are really dumb today.
on a good hardware PC, windows NT kernel based OS ( and linux, of course ) work very well. No reboot, no blue screen ( if all your drivers are well written ), etc…
PS : Mac OS X, windows based on NT kernel, linux, etc… All these OS have their strenght. It would be good to see some people to stop trolling everywhere microsoft, apple or linux is written.
“The only major difference a Microkernel offers over a Monolithic kernel is driver support. With a Microkernel like Mach and NT drivers are hotpluggable, meaning you can plug them in without having to require a reboot. A monolithic kernel like Linux and DOS you have reboot your machine or restart the service in order to get it to work.”
You do know this is the case for almost any OS with a modular driver architecture, don’t you?
Solaris lets you hot swap virtually anything, including processors.
You’re not describing a microkernel in the slightest.
The primary difference between monolithic and microkernel architectures is that elements of the kernel which are normally staticly linked and operate in kernel space are offloaded onto “servers.” These would include things like networking and filesystem support.
“If Apple would port the dev tools to Windows and Linux and port OS X to x86 then Apple would make a killing.”
Okay, let’s look at your proposed business model:
1) Company that makes all its money on hardware sales ports its software to the commodity platform so that people don’t have to buy their hardware
2) ???
3) PROFIT!
Seriously, what do you think, that Apple could make enough money to survive off sales of OS X alone?
Some things to remember:
Microsoft’s Windows division lost money last year
Microsoft makes its money off its Office division, not Windows
Seriously, why else do you think Microsoft would maintain Mac ports of Office? Microsoft is an applications company.
The only applications Apple has to offer are the iApps, and their marketability is significantly less than Office.
I think the majority of people who want Apple to release OS X for x86 wouldn’t even pay for it either, but would rather have Apple commit financial suicide and pay a great deal of money to do so, then pirate the fruits of their efforts.
Darius: It’ll be interesting to see if they did get the security right this time around. If IIS is indeed installed locked down by default, they should help quite a bit.
IIS is not installed by default. If you want it, you have to add it through Add/Remove programs->Windows Components. How is that for locked down?
renZYX: So basically he is saying that he thinks that it is very unrewarding to produce an OS without bugs even if the customers seems to think otherwise..
The culture at Microsoft has always been very feature driven. I think that what he’s really saying is it would have been fun to add more new (and customer requested!) functionality.
burns210: Linux is has grown faster than windows(atleast to what is publicly available)
Can you explain yourself more clearly? Do you mean the total LOC in a certain Linux distribution has grown? Do you mean that market share has grown? What are you talking about? In any case, I believe that Windows, both the platform itself and the applications, is a boehemeth software undertaking. I belive that there are more Commercially deployed and custom Windows apps created every day than Linux apps (and no, I don’t count a homework assignment as an app).
Hak
Is that a 3 or a 5 horsepower trolling motor? Do you catch any wide mouths with that thing?
Roberto: With the PowerPC you have no choice in operating
systems its either the Amiga OS which is basically dead or Mac OS X, so their
is no choice.
Hey Roberto, I think most OSNews readers would disagree with you here. There are several different non-Apple Unix, Linux, and alternative operating systems which run on Apple hardware.
If Apple would port the dev tools
to Windows and Linux and port OS X to x86 then Apple would make a killing.
I think we’ve had this discussion several times before on this site, but I guess it is worth bringing up again. Apple is a hardware company. They do not make money on their operating system. To the best of my knowledge, they actually lose money because of the significant R & D costs and lack of installed base. Apple has always made the most money on it’s high end servers and workstations. The OS is something they do to make their product offering complete. Porting OS X to i386 (which I’ve heard has alredy been done internally at Apple) is probably a very bad marketing move for Apple, no matter how cool we geeks think it would be. In the end of the day, Apple is a corporation like any other. I have it from an ex-Apple now Microsoft employee that the corporate culture at Apple is just as money focused as it is at Microsoft, regardless of their external appearance.
Bascule:Microsoft’s Windows division lost money last year
I think you should re-check your sources. The Windows division accounts for approximately $1.5B in earnings per quarter. Office accounts for about the same amount of earnings, with about 1/6 the employees.
Microsoft is an applications company.
Microsoft is very much a platform company. Every piece of software made at MS is designed to improve the platform desireability. If you ever know anyone who works at Microsoft and ask them what the company is all about, they’ll tell you “Windows”. Windows is the numero uno business at Microsoft, without a doubt.
MacOffice was made first, so it has legacy appeal. In addition, it is desireable for MS to support the Mac platform from an anti-trust standpoint.
If Microsoft was to quit producing office for the Macintosh, it would not hurt them one bit. Yes they could survive off of OS sales, They are barely surviving off of hardware sales, Apple has not had a significantly profitable quarter in years. But this article was not about Apple or Mac OS X it is about NT, I used to be like most of you. ” Awwwwwwwww Microsoft stinks, long live Apple HOOOOOOOOOORAH ” Until I got my ” dream” job and I saw what goes on in this business. It is a cut throat industry there is more than software, hardware and what works in other words there are alot of things that go on behind closed doors than what most people know, Alot more and wether you people want to admit it or not the Microsoft guys do what they can, its not a perfect world and there is no perfect OS. Sure you think Mac OS X and Linux are the best things right now but if they manage to succeed and actually knock MS off the top row and they inherit the top notch, in a couple of years you people will be sitting here talking about how much they stink and how many problems they have, sure it would be extremely easy for MS to kick out an OS every 6 months thats buggy as ever, ergo Red Hat, but they dont they try to ensure quality but MS can only do so much. If Microsoft was to try to incorporate every device driver in the world into their OS you would be looking at 20 install CD’s. And yes 99.9% of all crashes come from Application and driver issues the .1% goes to Hardware failure and dont sit there and send me 100 e-mails telling me that the Mac doesnt have hardware failures because yes they do. You people dont know what Microsoft did in order to ship Office v.X, they had to help Apple fix a bunch of bugs so that they could get it out to you. Everytime something goes wrong Bill Gates and Co. gets blamed when not everything is entirely their fault yet if Photoshop on Mac crashes people say ” hmmmmmmmm its a bug they will fix it in the next release.” Do you send them flame e-mail? do you call the customer service desk and cuss Adobe out? Until you walk in the shoes dont be so quick to judge others. And another good point is that if I have a problem that I know is not my code I call Microsoft. In all the years I have been a member of MSDN I have never had Microsoft come back to me with a ” I dont know ” They can either tell me exactly what the problem is and how to fix it or they offer me a workaround. I have tried to get help from Apple on similar issues and I have to wait around for 3 or 4 days and when and if they ever do call me back I get a response like ” Well OS X is still in its infancy and BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH” I may not like Microsofts pricing schemes but in all reality they never have let me down in any dealing I have ever had with em. Now Sun on the other hand I get a ” Give us the code and we will fix it for you ” No thank you, thats why I dont deal with Sun. I think the NT engineers do a great job and if 2003 Server is as good as 2000 Advanced Server I will be a very happy camper and yes with the purchase of Connectix I will use VPC for Windows and I will run Linux in it if Microsoft offers it. I for one say Thank you to Microsoft for all that they do, you people say whatever you want but all the zealotry in the world doesnt make any one look right. It just makes them look silly.
>Half off topic, but with all that development, how come
> they can’t just make an emulator for Windows 9x stuff?
> Flame me away… but I’d also like someone to tell me why.
Windows 9x, other than one of the oddest, most extreme and least portable kernels ever, sported a *seriously* flawed implementation of Win32, so subtly different from NT’s that, for particularly badly written applications, a virtual machine is the only way to properly run them
For example, despite the separation of address spaces, mapped views were shared among *all* processes – this affected views created with MapViewOfFile as well as all DLLs, allowing for example to set the callback of another process’s window to any address contained within a DLL
Other major differences are the notorious first 100 functions of kernel32.dll, exported by ordinal only, that allowed to do lots of cool, but hopelessly unportable things, like loading 16-bit DLLs, calling VxDs, altering the memory of the initial, dormant DOS VM (e.g. to globally set/unset environment variables), etc. that for obvious reasons never existed in Windows NT, and for their “coolness factor” may have been actually used. In addition, 32-bit code cannot thunk to 16-bit code anymore, and the inverse can only happen in a controlled way
I hope that answered your question
> Well, and I could be wrong here, but doesn’t Linux use a
> monolithic kernel and NT uses a microkernel?
Windows NT *used to be* a microkernel, and you can tell it by the presence of a rather crude and very un-NT-ish set of system calls, known as LPC (Lightweight or Local Procedure Call), implementing the classic “message passing + shared memory” microkernel protocol. In today’s Windows it’s used almost exclusively as the local protocol for RPC, but in the original intentions it was meant to implement an user-mode system call mechanism, to allow extending the system without the need to run additional code in kernel mode (for example, the POSIX subsystem of Windows NT, as well as its bigger brother Interix, has a clean microkernel design, implementing all the system calls with LPC). It still serves this purpose, as many USER calls and the whole console API are implemented with LPC requests to a server process, but it’s mainly to avoid rewriting perfectly working and non-time-critical code
NT4 launched in 1996, it’s now 2003, there are still many large companies ( just phone your bank and ask what desktop system they are running ) running NT4 wkstn, credit due imho