Mary Branscombe: A deeper dive into Windows 10X

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TechRepublic just published an excellent article by Mary Branscombe (@marypcbuk on Twitter) that digs into the internals of (what we know about) Windo
[See the full post at: Mary Branscombe: A deeper dive into Windows 10X]

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abbodi86, GreatAndPowerfulTech

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The company now officially talks about “a small fall update and a comprehensive spring update”, which has a longer (30-month) enterprise support lifecycle. Major changes like this are more likely in spring updates.

Maybe the fall “Service Pack” is continuing… but probably not. If 1909 has its own bugs & isn’t a “flip-the-switch” version of 1903, we can’t count on 2nH2 being the same. The only thing we can count on… is Win10X is coming.

Bought a refurbished Windows 10 64-bit, currently updated to 22H2. Have broke the AC adapter cord going to the 8.1 machine, but before that, coaxed it into charging. Need to buy new adapter if wish to continue using it.
Wild Bill Rides Again...

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No one at Microsoft said that the fall release was a “service pack”. It was a minor release. New features that had been included with 1903 but not enabled were enabled in 1909. Thus, the “flip the switch” terminology. That means bugs that show up in the newly enabled features will be fixed for 1909. They will not show up in 1903 because the code is not enabled. Microsoft has said this was an experiment. It may or may not continue. The current indications are that it will continue for the 2020 cycle. There have not been any definitive statements from Microsoft yet.

--Joe

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@woody was hoping it would be like a “service pack”. His hopes seemed to be dashed by 1909…

There have not been any definitive statements from Microsoft yet.

There almost never are… especially about bugs until it’s too late.

Bought a refurbished Windows 10 64-bit, currently updated to 22H2. Have broke the AC adapter cord going to the 8.1 machine, but before that, coaxed it into charging. Need to buy new adapter if wish to continue using it.
Wild Bill Rides Again...

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Sounds like more opportunities to break regular Windows on the path to W10X.

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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WildBill, bobcat5536

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As long as this isn’t “locked down” in the same way Win10S was, 10X might be worth pursuing for corporate systems.  Probably not in some cases like if you already virtualize your desktops in some fashion.

The biggest concern I have is that the OS will suspend background apps, removing one of the biggest advantages of a true PC device.  Makes me think they’ll be cheaping out on some of the hardware (namely processor) in order to keep the battery and processor usage lower.  I’d have to try it hands on but I don’t think this is something I could see myself using as a daily driver

Still, looks useful for Kiosks or single-app installs.

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The model Microsoft is pursuing here is actually very similar to what Apple did with macOS Catalina, whereby the entire core OS is “read-only” and then any changes made by the user are layered on top of it though a thin layer of virtualization.  It will make OS updates faster because there’s a much stronger guarantee that the core OS is precisely and exactly a specific set of bytes.

Windows has already had a variation of this virtualization idea since Windows Vista.  For example, there is Registry Virtualization, which allowed pre-Vista applications that tried to overwrite system-wide registry settings to operate, but those changes would be silently contained to that one application.  There is file system virtualization as well.

What Windows 10X is doing is extending that virtualization idea to the entire set of Win32 applications running on the machine.

And in a weird way, they’re actually returning Windows to its original early 1990s Windows NT roots, where the core operating system was a self-contained thing that ran on multiple architectures, and then functional interfaces (called “personalities”) were layered on top.  Back then it was Win32, MS-DOS and OS/2….. now it’s Win32 and WinRT/UWP.

I wouldn’t be too worried about it being “locked down” in a user-hostile way.  It’s more “locked down” in the same way that you could consider Windows NT to be more “locked down” than Windows 9x.  The new areas of inflexibility will be in areas where it was never really sensible to be flexible in the first place.

The Win32 environment should be able to do just about everything it could before, anyways, though there will be some work by driver vendors to move the GUI part of their driver package out of Win32 and into WinRT.  We’re already starting to see that happen, e.g. Intel’s new integrated graphics drivers.

And it’s reeealllly unlikely that Microsoft will force anyone into this new architecture before it’s proven that it can run everyone’s existing applications.  Like, I’d be surprised if it became the default in Windows before 2025.

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AlexEiffel

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Nothing in the post addresses the concern brought up in the post it is replying to: the thing about stopping tasks in the background. Having that built into the OS basically means that this OS is designed to run on low spec hardware, and not on even 10-year-old computers.

From what I’ve read, these virtual containers are limited in other ways that macOS is not. There’s a reason they aren’t pushing this as the latest version of Windows 10 itself–it removed functionality.

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WildBill wrote:

The company now officially talks about “a small fall update and a comprehensive spring update”, which has a longer (30-month) enterprise support lifecycle. Major changes like this are more likely in spring updates.

Maybe the fall “Service Pack” is continuing… but probably not. If 1909 has its own bugs & isn’t a “flip-the-switch” version of 1903, we can’t count on 2nH2 being the same. The only thing we can count on… is Win10X is coming.

We all need to wait for Windows 10XXX. The third times the charm at Microsoft.

GreatAndPowerfulTech

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I just read that Microsoft confirms Windows 10X is dead

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