MinWin: 25Mb WIndows. Hypervisor expected?

Could this be the start of a real change at MSFT? [i.e. doing software 'properly' (small, fast, secure)]

First question:

• What if they pick up GPL or similar code & illegally include it.
• How would that be detected??

Timeframe for 'commercial' MinWin is 2010.
The real news here is MSFT's focus on virtualisation...
With their purchase of "Virtual PC", they have the tools to build their next-gen O/S products around VM's.
Licensing???

Another question:

• If MS kernels ship with a hypervisor, how do we dual-boot or run our own VM like XEN?
• Would they be stupid enough to "embrace & extend" the VMI API/paravirt_ops?

The actual talk was on virtualisation and its impacts.. [143Mb]
<http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/conference/2007/video/UIUC-ACM-RP07-Traut.wmv>


<http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=842>

Traut spent most of his time describing Microsoft’s thinking around virtualization, and how virtualization can be used to ease backwards compatibility and other problems Windows users incur.

Microsoft has created a stripped-down version of the Windows core, called MinWin, that will be at the heart of future Windows products, starting with Windows 7, the Windows client release due in 2010.

MinWin is 25 MB on disk; Vista is 4 GB, Traut said. (The slimmed-down Windows Server 2008 core is still 1.5 GB in size.)

but no graphics subsystem

The MinWin core is 100 files total, while all of Windows is 5,000 files in size.

Runs in 40Mb memory. Ascii only

MinWin will be at the heart of future versions of Windows Media Center, Windows Server, embedded Windows products and more.

First good MSFT decision I've heard in ages

Traut said he is running a team of 200 Windows engineers working on the core kernel and Windows virtual technologies.

C.f. 10,000 total on Longhorn/Vista. Say 3,000 coders

(he) said that Microsoft is operating under the premise that “at some point, we’ll have to replace it (the kernel),” given that it “doesn’t have an unlimited life span.

That's important news