Windows 7 coming

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/18/vista-successor-rumored-to-be-on-track-for-2009-release/#comments

http://weblog.infoworld.com/enterprisedesktop/archives/2008/01/windows_7_goes.html

 

How about Microsoft smooth the wrinkles out of Vista first?

 

Way too soon?

 

microsoft will never learn...

 

Okay okay. Can someone tell me the 6 OS' before Windows 7?

I know there's
I think the first was just windows...
95
98
2000
ME
XP
Vista

thats 8 counting the new "windows 7"

 

Maybe you're talking about windows 3.1?? lol, i still remember when i used to use that

 

If you run "ver" at the command prompt, Vista will display as Microsoft Windows Version 6.0. So, the next version would be Windows 7 They'll rename it before then most likely, of course.

 

you forgot 3.1

It went like:
Win 3.1
Win 95
Win 98/Win 98 SE
Win 2K/Win Me
Win XP
Win Vista
"Windows 7"

 

You forgot:

 

Ooooo Cheater!!!!!!!


I'm gonna tell Wiki on you..

 

Will this new windows be for business only?

or can consumers get it as well?

 

Why wouldn't it be for everybody?

 

because microsoft hates large markets!

 

+1 rep to Lithus for remembering the versions of Windows before 3.1 (the reason it was called 3.1 instead of 1.0 in the first place).

Just a side note on that topic, I noticed Vista SP1 Beta 1 was Build 6001 - wouldn't that give it the same version number as Server 2008, if Server 2008 has 6.0.6001 as the chart says it will?

And while a successor to Vista can't come soon enough (well, at least, if ME's successor was any indication - I sure hope Blackcomb isn't worse than Whistler), I won't believe a date until I see something official. We all know how long it took Vista to actually arrive.

 

how about they fix vista first, vista has so much potential to actually be much better then XP and they already want to replace it? idiots at microsoft....

 

first i'll establish that i am late on this.

but what!???

they're replacing Windows Vista????????

What is going on??????? why?

its a little mind boggling now because i just bought my laptop about 4 months ago...

so that means people will be saying, i've got Windows 7 basic, premium, ultimate edition?

 

Microsoft prefers to roll outs a new OS like every 2-3 years. The reason for this can be see with the release of Windows Vista and moving people from XP. If you let people use the same OS too long they get too comfortable with it and its harder to get them to migrate to a newer version. The 6 years between XP and Vista made people TOO comfortable with it and harder to get them to switch. It also lets them keep up with the current hardware trends a lot easier.

As for the different SKU's I doubt we will see that again they got a lot of heat of the lacking of features in Windows Vista Ultimate and the general confusion of all the different ons available. Most likely there will be a business edition and a home edition and quite possibly a Basic edition (although maybe not not a lot of machines come with it as a default), and ones with all the EU specials as well.

 

does windows 7 also mean DirectX11? i think that would make everything worse, since theres only a handful of games that support 10 at the moment and rolling out a new one would really stop developers from doing anything good

 

I have no idea how the company came up with Windows 7; by my count it should be at least Windows 19. Let's go over a few versions: Windows 1.0, Windows 2.0, Windows/286, Windows/386, Windows 3.0, Windows 3.1, Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Windows NT, Windows NT 3.5, Windows NT 4, Windows 98, Windows SE, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows CE, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. I guess calling it Windows 19 would indicate how they can't seem to get it right. Love how they spell widescreen wrong.

 

v7.0 is going to be the kernel version number. That's why its called 7.

XP is v6.0, Vista either is or will soon be v6.1.

 

I though XP was 5? With 2000 & NT 5.0

@Shortgreen & Dutyhunter: It takes time to build an OS, and Vista & 7 teams are not the same, so they can have simultaneous developement.
Windows Blackcomb was supposed to be released in 2004-2005 but it was canceled, thus Vista began only in 2002-2003, thus a 2007 release. The blackcomb team has continued to Windows 7, wich might already have been in developement in a few years. Microsoft said Vienna between 2009 and 2014

 

Why is this such a shocker to people? Vista has been out for a year, and this release is at least a year away. 2 years on an OS is fine. MS is still working on Vista, but it makes not sense to devote everyone to Vista. They need forward progress, regardless of the potential of Vista. Props to Microsoft. Get back on your schedule, release some new, good software for us.

 

Well, using "ver" here, it say Windows XP is version 5.1.xxxx

 

I don't know you guys, but I think Microsoft has been preparing Seven for all those 6 years after XP release. Vista was some kind of middle-road release just to update some things and don't let Linux-based OS to get any more percantage in the market.

I think Microsoft will show Seven as the best OS ever made.

 

I wonder if Vista is going to be like Me - no one cares for it and it gets no love (except, it doesn't have as many bugs of course), provided everyone thinks Se7en was awesome.

Way to go Microsoft, for ripping the title of a fantastic movie

 

Hrm... I've always thought that Vista would end up being like ME. Just... not as bad as ME was. I still will probably end up with it on my gaming rig as I want DX 10...
I'm looking forward to 7. I'm sure it's been in dev since about the same time as Vista (MS uses multiple teams that compete to make the same product). But I'm wondering if it had the same pitfalls that the Vista team had run into.

 

I just hope my t7500 will be able to run windows 7, but i'm looking forward to it

 

It should be fine. MS does do something at least to make sure "old" processors can still run it. My single core ULV U1400 does a halfway decent job with Vista, though I personally hate the OS.

 

vista wont become a windows ME or 2000 since they pushed too much from all the hardware compatibility and stuff, i mean almost all the extra stuff i buy has that sticker windows vista compatible or vista ready and stuff im amazed how ms pushed everyone of the hardware makers to support vista. + its been a year and on 90% on laptops. thats probably millions of laptops with vista sold! no way are they going 2 dump it for windows 7. i will revolt lol.

 

I agree, Vista was a stepping stone, Seven will be alot better, Microsoft cannot screw up this bad again or there gunna lose money.

 

Ha you guys crack me up! Try surfing a BBS in DOS at 300-1200 baud! You guys are just spoiled now days. Its all about the bells and whistles now, and its still not good enough for some of these users. People will always find something to complain about but you just don't know how lucky you are to even have a GUI. I know, I know, I'm showing my age lol! I remember connecting to Texas Instruments mainframe waaay back in the days of pre-internet and happy we got it to work. Ah the good old days of private BBS's and modem protocols.

 

true no one is content anymore with what they have, lots of people will whine and complain because they expect more and havent been around long enough to appriciate it. earliest i used is windows 3.1 ^^ i appriciate windows and GUI for what it is.

 

^^ my first was right when os 7 came out.

Honestly though, I like vista. If the new version has nothing more than bug fixes, I would still be happy.

 

Hmm , How hard can it be to build an operating system.

If there is some massive leap in performance from newer operating systems then why havnt these updates already of been applied to the current systems. Windows 7 cant be that amazing , they must of predicted what hardware will develop like from the beginning.. Whatever happens i want to see a new kernal.

Personally i think vista was so hardware demanding , all this Vista ready and vista home premium certified is rubbish. Im guessing its just a trick to push hardware manufactures higher because the development in hardware was not on target for microsofts predictions.

 

Fake: http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/24/first-shots-of-windows-7-leaked-and-by-7-we-mean-vista/#comments

 

Are you kidding me? How hard can it be?

Well, the introductory course for OSes is taught during SENIOR year at my college. Most of the security, networking, and other subject courses are left to graduate school. So those capable of writing an OS have quite a lot of learning to go through.

Memory management, driver models, interfacing with hardware, making APIs for other programs to install with and use, etc, etc.

Look at MS, who employs thousands and thousands of people. Many of them work on Office or Windows. So they have a large chunk of people making an OS. If it is so hard, they wouldn't need do many people. Oh, and don't forget their OS basically has to work for just about any PC configuration. Dealing with 1000000s of unknowns and still getting the job done? - Priceless. Maybe we do not like what's been put out recently, but still...any time your computer boots its a feat of engineering and programming.

Linux? They have a worldwide community of software developers writing the OSes out there. Yeah, it isn't that easy.

Mac OS? Apple does not have as many programmers AFAIK, but they base their OS off of Linux (I think) and tweak it for their specific needs. They add their features, make it work ONLY on their hardware (or at least only design with their hardware in mind). So they have it somewhat easy in my mind, but its still one heck of a job.

So next time, if you want to insult the programming community, do a little research and find out something meaningful about their field before you bash them. You'll get flamed less doing that. Or better yet, if it is so easy just go create LiteOS and be done with it. You can make the OS that finally beats Vista (that isn't XP based), interfaces with all the PCs in the world, runs any program made for any major distribution of Windows and Linux...ever. Oh, and make it impervious to viruses and also guarantee that the OS will never never never crash. THen come back to this thread and say its easy.

 

Excuse me. I code in quite a few languages (Mainly for websites) like PHP , javascript , and have recently gone onto C , C++.
More latley ive been concentrating on 3d animations on Maya so my C++ has gone a little rusty but even still, Its not that difficult , Personally I find the troubleshooting and getting rid of all the bugs far more time consiuming.

Mac OSX , is certainly not based on any current linux distro. Its based on the Darwin BSD (afink).

Now yeah its not a simple job creating a operating system, I didnt say it was. Bbut it dosnt take a force of thousands of people 7 years...

 

More likely, 7 reuses a lot of the code that was scrapped when Vista was restarted.
Originally, Vista was intended to be written from scratch, all new and able to do amazing things.
A couple of years ago, Microsoft halted that project, and switched to building a "new" Vista on top of the XP/Win2k3 codebase, to save time in order to reach a reasonable release date.

But that means they have something like 4 years of code lying around from before they made that switch. They dropped it from Vista to save time, not because there was anything inherently wrong with it. So it'd seem to make sense that 7 simply picked up where Vista switched tracks, so it quite literally becomes what Vista was intended to be.

Of course, that's just speculation, but imo it'd make sense.

Vista is 6.0, XP and 2K are 5.x (5.1 and 5.0 respectively, since they share mostly the same codebase). Before then, Windows NT was completely separate from the 3.1/95/98/ME line.
On the NT side, 2k was preceded by NT 4.0, and I believe the first NT release was 3.1 (to coincide with Windows 3.1, the non-NT version we all know).

So yeah, calling the next one 7 makes fairly good sense. It's not 6.1, since that would imply it's only a buffed up Vista. 7 is a completely new revision of the NT kernel.

Depends on your ambitions.
For a second-year project at university (computer science), we wrote a small kernel in a couple of weeks. Of course, it didn't do much. You couldn't load programs dynamically (you picked one program to run, and compiled it into the kernel). it had a basic telnet client so you could control it over the network, but had no support for screen or keyboard on the host machine itself.
But it worked, and it took a couple of weeks for three people to make.
So it doesn't *have* to be hard.
But then there are real OS'es... You know, the ones that are actually useful in practice.
Those are huge undertakings. I could go on and on about all the components that are absolutely required just to get a semi-acceptable kernel up and running. Then you need to build the actual OS around it, with all the little utilities and features you take for granted, and you need it all to run on an infinite number of hardware configurations.
And then you need it to be compatible. Users expect that. In Windows' case, that's a huge burden.

So to answer your question: It can be pretty damn hard, if you want your OS to be competetive.

Oh good, you know javascript. That makes you qualified to judge the scope of an OS.

Here's some news for you. Getting rid of all the bugs is part of it. It's not far more time consuming than writing the code, because it's *part* of writing the code. And as you've noticed, it is time-consuming. Even in your small C++ practice projects. It's quite a lot harder in an OS.
And an OS has the unique challenges that you have to do *everything* yourself. When you write C++, you can take the standard library for granted. Of course you can write to a file, or read data from a network socket. And when an error occurs, you can throw an exception and handle it elsewhere.
Guess what, someone has to implement all that. Can you guess who?
When you're coding a kernel, you can't use the standard library, because it's not there yet. You have to write it. You have to write the file system. You have to write the thread scheduler. (Which is a fun challenge, btw, and might give you an idea of what's involved in creating an OS).
You can't call malloc() or new, because those have to be implemented by the OS.So yeah, you have to *write* those functions. Which leads to virtual memory. You have to keep track of which memory pages are reserved to which process. You have to store the page table mappings, you have to handle the page faults (and all the other CPU interrupts).
You have to handle crashing applications. You have to catch the errors that they didn't. You have to clean up after them, making sure all their memory is released, that all their OS resources are freed.

Oh yeah, and you have no proper way to debug your code. If an error occurs, the computer crashes. You don't get a nice little error output window saying where the exception occurred, or where your little printf() statements show up to help you pinpoint the bug. The system just locks up. Then you change a bit of code, reboot, and see if it happens again. Want to guess at how much time you end up spending watching your computer reboot, over the course of a day?

You know that's not true. Looking at the development of any recent OS, it *has* taken thousands of man-years. So apparently it does need that much, if it is to compete with todays standards.

Linux and Windows have both been in development for 20+ years. Every new release builds heavily on all that previous work. if you add that up, I think you'll find it's taken a lot *more* than "thousands of people 7 years".

Of course it doesn't have to take that long... Unless you want a result as big and powerful as Windows, Linux or OSX. Oddly enough, people seem to want that.

 

See, now you made Jalf mad. I pity your poor soul !

 

Sorry , I was just saying what I thought. Eeeek.

 

Now that was funny! If you really want to know what its like to write OS code then try learning the assembly programming language. Half a page of code just to move the cursor. You can think of assembler as machine/hardware level code (think device drivers). Once you master assembly you only have a dozen other program languages to master then you can start to write an OS.

Windows may not be perfect but you don't even want to try to image how many man hours of writing code it represents. The price you pay for an OS compared to the actual man hours to produce that OS is a joke (be it Linux, Windows, or Mac).

-Reby

 

Fake Windows 7 video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-crFaYLW-xk
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/01/24/is-this-what-windows-7-looks-like/#comments

 

lol, actually not at all. (I'm not the one who said "So next time, if you want to insult the programming community..." )

I just thought I'd try to explain *why* an OS is a big project. Of course it's hard to judge just how complex it is when you haven't tried writing one.

But yeah, writing an OS on par with Windows is a *huge* undertaking.
Writing a new OS from scratch, one that doesn't have to run existing applications, and only has to run on the hardware you happen to have access to is doable for a single person. The problem is that "real" operating systems are so much bigger. Not all of it is what you or I would consider necessary (do we really need to support DOS applications, for example? Or the registry hack that allows the original SimCity to work when it should crash)
But it's important if you want people to buy the OS. No one will buy a Windows that doesn't run their Windows applications. All of them. Not just the ones from the last 3 years, but ones from Win3.1 too.

That's what takes a huge project, and turns it into a gargantuan one.

 

I didnt realise anyone would find my comment insulting, sorry guys.

 

I'm not insulted.

 

Neither am I...I was joking about it!

Seriously? - 1/2 a page of assembly just for a mouse movement? Eeek...

And that's coming from a guy who has programmed a VGA controller and a Tetris game all in assembly.

 

lol just because u know java script and c++ that makes you qualified to analyze an OS?

saying what you think with a high and mighty feel is something else

jalf said all ive got on my mind and more

 

IMO, vista is ME but not as buggy,

98 - ME -XP
xp - vista -7

vista is just a stop gap, heres hoping the leap from xp - 7 will be like 98 - xp!

 

Shouldn't 7 be like 2K then?