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This is win32 and does not represent the NT kernel in any way. There is a load of stuff they had to port from win16 which was shit and have been stuck with it e

by hp50g 14y ago

This is win32 and does not represent the NT kernel in any way. There is a load of stuff they had to port from win16 which was shit and have been stuck with it ever since that effectively compromises NT's architecture. GDI in kernel space was a pragmatic choice considering the other competitors on the workstation market were basically HP, Sun and SGI and they all had nearly graphics acceleration. NT itself is flipping marvellous :)

EvanAnderson 14y ago
I like to tell people "Deep inside all the Windows NT distributions there's a great OS dying to get out...". REACTOS gives me hope that, someday, there'll be a distribution of an NT-based operating system w/o Win32. (Interix on top of NT w/o Win32 would have been close to what I'd have been interested in seeing...)
- Surio 14y ago
  :) +1 for REACTOS. I am one of those that is looking forward to that one becoming mainstream... They have a GSOC running this year too. I hope they get enough traction to get it in some shape. Here's to that project's success.
- hp50g 14y ago
  TBH win32 was pretty good and well thought out. How it was plugged into NT and how it evolved wasn't.
- pjmlp 14y ago
  The "Inside Windows " book series are a nice way to get an overview how the Windows kernel is implemented.
- asveikau 14y ago
  > I like to tell people "Deep inside all the Windows NT distributions there's a great OS dying to get out...". I was a dev in the Windows organization for a few years and this is the conclusion I came to as well. When people complain about development on Windows, they're rarely talking about NT or even Win32. They're usually talking about some layer on top. Even the example here about spawn() - that function is from the CRT, which honestly is a very crummy and poorly maintained library, but more importantly it isn't really "Windows" and couldn't really be called "the Windows API" - it's just some library that gets new versions alongside releases of Visual Studio. And that spawn() function, ironically enough, mostly exists so that people who know the fork + exec pattern will feel at home.

by hp50g 14y ago

EvanAnderson 14y ago

I like to tell people "Deep inside all the Windows NT distributions there's a great OS dying to get out...". REACTOS gives me hope that, someday, there'll be a distribution of an NT-based operating system w/o Win32. (Interix on top of NT w/o Win32 would have been close to what I'd have been interested in seeing...)

Surio 14y ago
:) +1 for REACTOS. I am one of those that is looking forward to that one becoming mainstream... They have a GSOC running this year too. I hope they get enough traction to get it in some shape. Here's to that project's success.
hp50g 14y ago
TBH win32 was pretty good and well thought out. How it was plugged into NT and how it evolved wasn't.
pjmlp 14y ago
The "Inside Windows " book series are a nice way to get an overview how the Windows kernel is implemented.
asveikau 14y ago
> I like to tell people "Deep inside all the Windows NT distributions there's a great OS dying to get out...". I was a dev in the Windows organization for a few years and this is the conclusion I came to as well. When people complain about development on Windows, they're rarely talking about NT or even Win32. They're usually talking about some layer on top. Even the example here about spawn() - that function is from the CRT, which honestly is a very crummy and poorly maintained library, but more importantly it isn't really "Windows" and couldn't really be called "the Windows API" - it's just some library that gets new versions alongside releases of Visual Studio. And that spawn() function, ironically enough, mostly exists so that people who know the fork + exec pattern will feel at home.