Windows Kernel Version Bumped To 10.0 171
jones_supa writes: In Windows, the kernel version number is once again in sync with the product version. Build 9888 of Windows 10 Technical Preview is making the rounds in a private channel and the kernel version has indeed been bumped from 6.4 to 10.0. Version 6.x has been in use since Windows Vista. Neowin speculates that this large jump in version number is likely related to the massive overhaul of the underlying components of the OS to make it the core for all of Microsoft's products. The company is working to consolidate all of its platforms into what's called OneCore, which, as the name implies, will be the one core for all of Microsoft's operating systems. It will be interesting to see if this causes any software compatibility issues with legacy applications.
Guffaw! So much overhaul it's FOUR better! (Score:5, Insightful)
Neowin speculates that this large jump in version number is likely related to the massive overhaul of the underlying components of the OS to make it the core for all of Microsoft's products.
Really?
I think "make the version number match what the marketing dept wants" is the more likely reason.
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Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows... oh, what is Apple up to now? What? WINDOWS TEN!
Re:Guffaw! So much overhaul it's FOUR better! (Score:4, Informative)
They actually had a good reason to skip 9. Too many third party products checked whether they were running on Windows 95 or Windows 98 by matching the string "Windows 9". It would have been the Microsoft version of the Y2K problem.
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That has nothing to do with the kernel version number.
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They ask Mr. Redenbacher and he told them to go ahead with 10.
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Previous comment was: "Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows..." implying software version, not kernel, which unlike what TFA was talking about, is an integer, not a decimal.
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The actual reported Windows version is a decimal:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-u... [microsoft.com]
Its synomymous with its kernel number (though that generally has further versioning, such as 6.1.7601.17592).
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The windows version number and its kernel number are synonymous. When youre on Windows NT 5.2, you're on XP /2003. 6.1, Vista / Server 2008. And so on.
Re:Guffaw! So much overhaul it's FOUR better! (Score:5, Informative)
That's the reason given but it makes no sense. The Windows API doesn't give out names like that. The Windows 95 version was internally identified as version 4.0. Windows 98 was version 4.10. (ME was 4.90, and a separate flag indicates if the system was Windows NT-based, allowing programs to known the difference between Windows 95 (4.0) and Windows NT 4.0.)
So that explanation makes no sense.
Even more, if you check out the documentation on getting version information, the version returned is now tied to the application manifest as of Windows 8.1 anyway [microsoft.com]. So you'll only ever get version 6.2 (Windows 8) back unless you explicitly target later version of Windows, meaning the jump to version 10 can't cause problems with older software.
This whole "Windows 9*" check thing makes no sense. Well, except for Java applications, because Sun actually built Java to pull the version number and then translate it into a string rather than expose it via any public Java API. I guess the idea was that you shouldn't need to know the OS your Java app is running on, but as anyone who's done anything with Java knows, that never actually works in practice. As far as I know that's the only case where you'd ever be doing version checks against strings under Windows.
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Bad programmers seldom use APIs correctly.
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Java had tons of capability problems when Oracle changed a string in a copyright file unrelated to the version after acquiring it from SUN.
Keep in mind I have not written java code for a long time now. But there was a method to check I think in java.lang somewhere.
Want to know why these apps failed? They used RMI to bypass the platform and use win32 apis to go check strings in c:\program files\jre etc or they use WMI to check the owner of the copyright. Instead of using a =, the incompetent programmers used
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You are assuming they were getting it from the API and not spelunking thru some system files or the registry to get it.
I once worked with a guy who reverse engineered the windows handle structure. Just so he could rebuild it and change fonts on the fly (instead of repaint which was choppy and flickery). He pulled it off because it was close to the win3.0 windows structure (which MS had published at one point).
My point? The windows API is *huge* not everyone knows every little detail. You didnt have acce
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My point? The windows API is *huge* not everyone knows every little detail
Case in point, parent is apparently unaware that the WMI Win32_OperatingSystem class provides multiple different ways of getting the OS version, and 2 of them will return the plain-text OS version.
As I recall, WPIW is a notable program that relies on both Windows version # and plaintext name for filtering.
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Sure it does.
PS> $os = get-wmiobject -class Win32_OperatingSystem
PS> $os.caption
Microsoft Windows 8.1 Pro
PS> $os.name
Microsoft Windows 8.1 Pro|C:\Windows|\Device\Harddisk0\Partition2
PS> $os.version
6.3.9600
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I'm not so sure. I think it's for esthetical, psychological, branding reason. Windows 9 feels too close to Windows 8.1.1 and it reads "Windows Nein".
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They realized they couldn't sell Windows to Munchen, DE, if it was called Windows Nein - is all about replacing LiMux.
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Yeah, but they didn't just skip version 9. According to Microsoft's internal versioning scheme for Windows, Windows 8.1 is actually v6.3. Microsoft decided to skip 6.4, 7, 8, and 9.
So no, this is unlikely to be the result of anything other than Microsoft finally saying, "Let's have our internal versioning scheme match the marketing versioning scheme, and just make all references to Windows show 'version 10'."
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> except this is about the kernel version and not the distribution name/version.
As I and others have pointed out, TFA is about the kernel version but the responder's comment to which I was replying was clearly about the OS version. It's one of those things that's called A Side Issue.
> If you knew anything about GNU/Linux you would have had a clue about what the article was about.
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Condescending Man!. I do have a clue about what the article was about, thanks. A good
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Then they used a very crappy method of version checking - the command line "ver" command doesn't return anything like "Windows 95"
Doesn't matter as these companies only hire inexperienced Indians to develop the software so the CEO can get his bonus.
An app failing due to a stupid version check done incorrectly brings in revenue as these customers will now have to pay twice :-)
I have seen this in the medical industry where an outdated version of IE is targeted on purpose knowing it will create demand for another purchase later on when websites stop rendering correctly. It doesn't make economic sense to hire good coders who prevent futur
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There was a very real and very technical reason for the jump. I mean really, why would anyone bother to copy Apple? Nobody cares about Apple anymore.
I agree. Ever since they tanked in the early 90s, I haven't looked back.
As for me, I buy Mac products -OSX and iOS for me.
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I don't know if it's marketing so much as it is dev support.
Most end-users certainly wouldn't see the kernel version. Computer properties doesn't report the internal version, and certainly nowhere on regular branding would it make mention of it. What marketing material has Microsoft put out in the past that made mention of the kernel version (where that version wasn't equal to the product name anyway - e.g. 3.11)
Some developers, on the other hand, would probably be quite annoyed if there's a version 7 ker
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Open any of Windows' core applications (except IE) and navigate to the about page.
Bam, Kernel version plastered right under the marketing name:
Windows 7 Ultimate
Version 6.1.whatever
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Of course there's places where you can find it. There's even places where you can find it in proximity to the marketing name. Neither of those are necessarily marketing material, though. :)
Unless you know something more about application's 'About' screens suitability for marketing and communications, of course
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The Windows kernel version has almost never matched the marketing versions:
Windows 95: 4.0
Windows 98: 4.10
Windows ME: 4.90
Windows 2000: 5.0
Windows XP: 5.1
Windows Vista: 6.0
Windows 7: 6.1
Windows 8: 6.2
Windows 8.1: 6.3
(Note: Starting with Windows 2000, the versions are NT versions, Windows 95/98/ME are actually numbered based on the DOS Windows (as in Windows 3.1).)
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Some developers, on the other hand, would probably be quite annoyed if there's a version 7 kernel which doesn't match with Windows 7, a version 8 kernel which has nothing to do with Windows 8, and a version 9 kernel which seems awfully close to Windows 95/98.From that point of view, Microsoft should really have started this with Windows 7 - but Windows 10 is the next major opportunity to so after having to skip Windows 9 anyway.
Probably this, but who says they'll keep bumping it? Maybe they really wanted to do 7 now and 10 was the first non-confusing number. Maybe Windows 11 => 10.1, Windows 12 = 10.2, Windows 13 = 10.3, Windows 14 = 14. Like so many point out, it's not really a number anyway and you don't do arithmetic with it. 10 > 6 the same way 7 > 6, either way it's a major version bump. I doubt anyone in marketing even knows what kernel version they're running and if they did they wouldn't care.
It's the API (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason Microsoft never bumped the version number is because of backwards compatibility. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, many programmers have misused the old Windows APIs that check version numbers in a way that breaks compatibility of their apps going forward. That is, they're checking against future version of Windows rather than previous versions, and as such, their programs would refuse to run if the internal version number had been bumped from 6 to 7 (or 8). Whenever that sort of thing happens, people inevitably blame the OS rather than the application that had the bug in the first place, and as such Microsoft has resorted to some rather extraordinary measures to preserve backward compatibility, even going so far as to intentionally replicate bugs in special program-specific compatibility modes.
The GetWindowsVersionEx() API function is overly-complicated and notoriously easy to accidentally misuse. It appears that Microsoft finally had enough of that, and depreciated it [microsoft.com]. It will now actually only report accurately up to Windows 8.1, even in future operating systems, to ensure people can't accidentally or intentionally misuse them. They've been replaced with a set of "too simple to possibly misuse" functions that look like the following:
IsWindowsXPSP2OrGreater()
IsWindows7OrGreater()
IsWindows8Point1OrGreater()
There's one function for each major OS version + service pack, and it only checks in an equal-to-or-greater fashion, as you almost always want to do for broad compatibility checks. Notice also how you can't even check against future Windows versions until new API functions are released. I think now that MS has this safer API in place and enough time has passed since the initial problems were detected, they can get the internal version number back in sync with the more visible public number.
There's probably some marketing push in there, because I've seen people (wrongly) claim that since it was just a minor version bump in previous versions, it proved that there were only minor changes to the kernel, blah, blah... Maybe it bothered some particularly anal developers, but I doubt many really cared. It's just an arbitrary number to check at the end of the day, and we're sort of used to dealing with those.
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Whether intentionally or unintentionally, many programmers have misused the old Windows APIs that check version numbers in a way that breaks compatibility of their apps going forward.
Don't quote me on this but I was under the impression that the Windows versions API never exposed the name of the version, only the kernel number. As someone above noted there was a separate flag for NT kernels vs whatever the other was called.
The only examples I've ever seen for matching windows versions were in Java applications and in theory there should be no compatibility issues there. Even in the last slashdot story about this there was code examples and they were ALL Java.
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This isn't about the Java "checking the name of the Windows" string issue. That was just someone's supposition, and probably off the mark, in my opinion. This was a real problem both in Windows programs as well as with installers, where incorrect logic would cause the program to spit out a message saying "Sorry, the program isn't compatible with this version of Windows", but if that check were removed the program would actually install or run just fine.
The GetVersionEx() function returned a struct filled
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bIsWindowsXPorLater = (osvi.dwMajorVersion >= 5 && osvi.dwMinorVersion >= 1);
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Sort of ironic for me to introduce a bug in code designed to show off an intentional bug, the point of which was to show how easy it was to make a silly mistake. Yes, that's what I meant to type, thanks.
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It will now actually only report accurately up to Windows 8.1, even in future operating systems, to ensure people can't accidentally or intentionally misuse them.
Not quite. It will report the version number up to whatever OS version is the highest listed as supported in the application's manifest. In other words, you'll never get back an OS version higher than the one in existence when you were making the app.
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s/depreciated/deprecated
Oops, dang. You're right. I'm not sure why my brain picked that word - I should know better.
In my defense, I suppose one could argue since MS is now having that function return technically incorrect results, it's not only deprecated, but also depreciated, right?
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If you're launching belly laughs at a mere four since the release of Windows 8.1, have a doctor on hand for ~7/yr since the release of Chrome 3 [wikipedia.org] and ~8/yr since the release of Firefox 3.6.18 [wikipedia.org].
RELEASE NOTES
New major version!
- Removed support for the blink tag
- Upped the version number
perhaps it's time to scuttle legacy applications (Score:3)
Windows has so many piles of APIs and hooks rotting in the corners, unpatched for 15 years and longer, that it's perhaps time to blow up the known universe and start afresh.
the danger is that it becomes open competition for all business and consumer apps. but with a fully sandboxed emulator, as Apple did, the well-behaved stuff should get enough life to allow CrankyCo to take down their FrankenCode and streamline the apps around the core data.
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Windows has so many piles of APIs and hooks rotting in the corners, unpatched for 15 years and longer, that it's perhaps time to blow up the known universe and start afresh.
You just described WinRT aka Metro.
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This.
It just means that kernel version numbering has been robbed of it's use by the marketing department.
Never mind that the only people who would actually care about kernel version numbers are the same kind of people who actually need it to have some significance. All this "10.0" version number will do, is for the technical community to start using more meaningful version identifiers like build numbers or dates or perhaps some other internal number that hasn't been discovered by the marketeers. It just mea
It must be better (Score:1)
Objectively, Windows 10.0 is slightly over 56% better than Windows 6.4.
really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Driver ABI change (Score:5, Interesting)
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Agreed, this is the big takeaway, that they are moving off 6.*. The reason they skipped 7, 8, and 9 is rather obvious, that Microsoft wanted to align the kernel version with the product version.
It's not like skipping 7, 8, and 9 causes any additional compat issues.
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If seven ate nine, I can imagine them wanting to stay clear of the whole cannibalistic feud.
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6 is nervous, because 7 8 9
Hint. Say it out loud.
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The reason they skipped 7, 8, and 9 is rather obvious, that Microsoft wanted to align the kernel version with the product version.
So ever release of windows then on it's new fast release cycle will involve a major kernel change then? Fantastic.
Or rather Microsoft kernel devs where the last holdouts against the marketing team which finally managed to force their way in and kill the last group of people with any sense at all in the company. It was only a matter of time I guess. They had backup in the form of UX designers and accountants who were all stronger than the kernel devs due to the constant exercise involved with raising their a
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They named it 10 because of shit software version checking the OS the wrong way.
Re:really? (Score:4, Informative)
They didn't rewrite the kernel from scratch so that puts it into 6.4 - 6.99999 range.
Just a minor nitpick... Software version numbers are not decimal numbers but separate units (major.minor).
After 6.9 comes 6.10. After 6.99999 comes 6.100000.
Re:really? (Score:5, Interesting)
They didn't rewrite the kernel from scratch so that puts it into 6.4 - 6.99999 range.
Just a minor nitpick... Software version numbers are not decimal numbers but separate units (major.minor).
After 6.9 comes 6.10. After 6.99999 comes 6.100000.
Just another minor nitpick... Windows stores OS versions as an unsigned 64 bit integer, consisting of four 16 bit ordinals. When displaying a "friendly" string version of the version, the four ordinals are separated by periods.
So 6.99999 is not a possible version, as 99999 overflows a 16 bit unsigned integer.
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That's not how Microsoft does it.
Windows 3.0 -> 3.1 -> 3.11
MSDOS 6.0 -> 6.2 -> 6.21 -> 6.22
Well, at least that's how they did it. Nowadays version numbers don't seem to mean much in Redmond.
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... Mac OS X 10.9.5 -> Mac OS X 10.10.0?
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For what software? Certainly not any I use, nor the various versions of MS-DOS from the company in question I used back in the 80s and 90s.
Back from the 60s one heavily used convention was: [major-version] dot [minor-version] dot [revision]
The dots are separators not unlike those in an IP address, not decimal places (of which more then one of doesn't make much sense)
Within the same major-version number the API would remain backwards compatible. New commands may be added in, but old existing commands should both still exist and still function identically.
Within the same minor-version (rev changes) the API would remain identical and data/file f
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The change in kernel version was long overdue - if you compare XP to Vista, and then Vista to 8.1, the latter is just as much of a gap.
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The change in kernel version was long overdue - if you compare XP to Vista, and then Vista to 8.1, the latter is just as much of a gap.
Not really at the kernel level besides some power management features. Services and gui there is a vast difference.
But it does make more sense to put everything together unlike a Linux OS it comes together and the pieces are not installed separately.
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There's actually quite a lot of incremental improvements at the kernel level since Vista. These things do accumulate.
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OneBorgMind.
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OneBorgMind.
You will all become one with the borg. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own.
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Yeah but this is Microsoft we're talking about here.
"We are One. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be researched and then left unused. We only use One."
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OneRing - to rule them all, and set up the next round of fights. (damn I've gone cynical this week)
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Honestly, I was very surprised that chose Windows 10 over Windows One.
In the words of Linus Torvalds (Score:2)
Version numbers? We can increment them!
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Right up until you want a way to define API changes and continue to maintain back branches.
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I can think of a few pros and cons of date code based versioning
pros:
1: they can give a quick indication of how old the software is to someone not familiar with the software and the history
2: they are less prone to bikeshedding over when it's appropriate to increase each component than multi-part version numbers. This is expecially true of large projects where different components move at different speeds. Single montonically increasing numbers
cons:
1: they usually end up much larger than a simple version nu
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Of one his computers runs Windows?
Of course there will be... (Score:5, Funny)
It will be interesting to see if this causes any software comparability issues with legacy applications.
Of course there will be - in any large pool of people of any calling there's going to be morons - the sort of morons that sniff the OS version string for things like "Windows 9" and then assume it's Windows 95 or 98 and refuse to work; instead of using the proper channels to query for the OS version number.
As a PHP programmer I can testify that morons can indeed program. I'm one of them.
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I'm not so sure about that. OSX is already on what, 10.7 or something like that? I doubt most people would fall for Windows 10 vs. OSX 10.7 [insert cat name here]. That STILL looks like Windows is behind, so it'd be failed marketing if it was a marketing gimmick.
I'm pretty cynical when it comes to tech companies, but I don't think Microsoft's marketing is quite that stupid nor their dev teams quite that stupid.
IMO, they probably wanted to bump the kernel number ... and decided to bump it to match the ve
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I'm not so sure about that. OSX is already on what, 10.7 or something like that?
The current version of OS X is 10.10.1. (10.10 is Yosemite. They stopped using big cat names with 10.9, which was Mavericks.)
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I doubt most people would fall for Windows 10 vs. OSX 10.7 [insert cat name here].
Well most people (and maybe Apple has a better handle on this) say: OS X [Marketing Name]. Techs use 10.7 and it is in the internals of the OS.
I'm pretty cynical when it comes to tech companies, but I don't think Microsoft's marketing is quite that stupid nor their dev teams quite that stupid.
I don't think the Dev teams have much to say in the marketing name. I'm sure there are internal code names that they use instead (Blackcomb, Longhorn, etc.). Like many things MS, their marketing department has a few major misses: Squirting, Zune, C#, Windows Vista Basic Home Internet Extreme Edition, Xbox One. I think MS tried to emulate Apple's method with Vista
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Personally I think it's just an excuse. How many Win 9x programs still exist that would be tripped up by Windows 9?
Lots of programs that were written when Win9x was still popular are still around... an example given in the last /. story about MS skipping Windows 9 is jEdit [sourceforge.net]. As of right now, the current revision of that file (r23738), last modified about a year ago, still detects the OS as Windows 9x if the OS name supplied by Java contains either "Windows 9" or "Windows M".
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But that's not a Windows program. That's a Java program and that is the coder's issue not MS. The Windows API that returns the Marketing Name have been deprecated as far as I know.
I don't what distinction you're trying to make between a Windows program and a Java program. Windows is an OS, Java is a programming language. Java programs can run on Windows. And sure, it's a problem with the code, but Java programs are popular in big "enterprise" apps, so MS is especially interested in keeping those apps running. The last thing they want is for some company to not upgrade thousands of copies of Windows because a program that company needs won't run on the new version. "DOS ain't done unt
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If you think that MS changed from Windows 9 to Windows 10 for the likes of Java I think that you're naive. For their own Windows APIs, they might have done it, but not for a competitor. That's the competition's problem. However this is the reason they deprecated the exact API that returns the Marketing Name in favor of one that uses the Kernel number instead. Even then people were coding for minor vs major kernel versions. MS could have bumped it up to Kernel 7.0 and things would still break if coders were
They should've gone to 11 (Score:1)
For when you need that extra level of noise.
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That's Apple's move.
Latest version is 10.10.1. they seem rather reluctant to go to 11.
Great. (Score:2)
Every time they overhaul things, they break stuff right and left. Why can't they leave things alone that are working properly?
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Every time they overhaul things, they break stuff right and left. Why can't they leave things alone that are working properly?
Because it's never quite worked properly. So far it's just worked good enough, but all those who work on it know that it can work better.
But what about the API's? (Score:2)
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Yes. And if you have the GUID for 8.1 in the manifest, then you'll get back 8.1.
Basically, the OS will never again tell you the version number that you did not explicitly declare that you know how to handle (via your app manifest).
Good business advice (Score:1)
Gates probably ran in to Volkerding on Caltran last week...
Or may be... (Score:2)
sadly, no that will not be the case.
It's just version number harmonization (Score:2)
They've done it before. For example, Word for Windows: it went 1.0, 2.0, and then 6.0 because Microsoft wanted all the Office programs to have the same version, and Excel happened to have the highest version number. Another example is Windows itself: Windows NT went straight to 3.1 for the original (1.0) release because that's where the DOS-based consumer Windows was.
It's not unheard-of from their competitors either.
There's really no significance to this story other than a psychologically-important number
OneCore? (Score:3)
*Freddy Mercury impression*
One Core, One System!
The bright neon looks oh-so tacky.
They've screwed it up, it's now worse than wacky!
Oh oh oh, give them some vision!
No true, no false, the GUI will only do a slow waltz
No blood, no vein, MS zombies wanna much on your brain
No specs, no mission, the code's just some fried chicken!
*Switches to Gandal*
Nine cores for mortal tasks, doomed to die()
Seven for the Intel lords, in their halls of silicon
Three for the MIPS under the NSA
One for the Dark Hoarde on their Dark Campus.
One Core to rule them all, One Core to crash them,
One Core to freeze them all and in the darkness mash them!
In the land of Redmond, where the dotnet lies!
all about roman numerals and moving to Linux (Score:2)
They can also start calling all computers running Windows X/X Windows, X Boxes. So really, using 10 just makes everything fit with marketing better since the Windows brand is so last century.
LoB
Upward compatibility (Score:2)
> It will be interesting to see if this causes any software compatibility issues with legacy applications.
The odds are in favor that many legacy applications won't work.
Neowin is an idiot (Score:2)
"Neowin speculates that this large jump in version number is likely related to the massive overhaul of the underlying components..."
The version number and the amount of work on a project have nothing to do with one another. Does he (or they, whatever the hell a neowin is) really think that 40% of all the work that has ever gone into windows happened in this iteration? Version numbers are assigned by marketing and management. You have to name your product something, but what it is named has nothing to do wit
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Every version number has been bumped!
Yeah, think of how much work this was. We had to create new entries in the inventory database, and... and... everything!
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I'm voting for hit DEL at the login screen to bypass.
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Kernel, not potato.