OS comparisons

[KEVIN BROWN]

I am looking for a good article or white paper on technical differences between the operation of the home and pro versions of MS Operating Systems. Specifically I am interested in difference in how the OSs allocate resources to applications.

 

[David H. Lipman]

The boiled down information is that a Home Edition is geared towards what a home user would
do and the Professional version is geared towards corporate environments. Win2K Pro. is a
corporate OS whiles WinME was a home OS. These were superceded by WinXP. WinXPHE is the
home user version and WinXP Professional is the corporate version. That means the corporate
versions are designed for Active Directory and NT Domains. Note that Win2K was not designed
for the home, it was designed only for corp. environmnets. This is one of the reasons Win2K
does NOT support uPnP (but why they can't provide a HotFix update has never been answered in
the MS uPnP News Group). In actuality this is a WinXP question that you asked since there
is no "home edition" of Win2K. WinME might be considered it but it is a completely
different OS and is based upon the Win9x model not a NT model.

In addition:
If you post to UseNet with your TRUE, not a munged, email address then you have invited the
swen Internet worm [aka; W32/Gibe-F] to visit you.

The Swen is news spelled backwards. The reason it is called this is because the Swen worm
harvests email addresses from UseNet News Groups. It has an engine that allows it to post
itself to UseNet News Groups and well as it has its own email engine. From the list of
email addresses that it has harvested, it will then email itself to those addresses.

Dave



I am looking for a good article or white paper on technical differences between the
operation of the home and pro versions of MS Operating Systems. Specifically I am interested
in difference in how the OSs allocate resources to applications.

 

[George Hester]

There is only one Operating System made by Microsoft that comes under those names. It is called Windows XP. Hence there is no difference in how "resources are allocated." The difference in this regard is whether one supports some type of services and the other doesn't.

 

[KEVIN BROWN]

Ok, so until XP essential MS had two product lines, the NT line for the
corporate world and the win98 line for home users. I am not looking at
differences in the tools/applications that come with the OS. I am more
interested in Kernel to Kernel comparisons. I was under the impression that
the corporate versions were built around a more sophisticated Kernel than
the home versions.

The fact that win2k has no home counter part is noted.

--
K B

"If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked
something."


There is only one Operating System made by Microsoft that comes under those
names. It is called Windows XP. Hence there is no difference in how
"resources are allocated." The difference in this regard is whether one
supports some type of services and the other doesn't.

--
George Hester
__________________________________
I am looking for a good article or white paper on technical differences
between the operation of the home and pro versions of MS Operating Systems.
Specifically I am interested in difference in how the OSs allocate resources
to applications.

 

[George Hester]

Yes the kernel is very much different in NT versions and in the DOS type. Windows 95;98;ME had basically a DOS kernel. It was when you get down to brass tacks, a 16-bit operating system. Oh I know it was 32-bit but then so was Win32S. Which died a thankful death. But NT was always 32-bit. Very little 16-bit in that.

Now Windows NT4; 2000; XP; 2003 (32-bit) all use the same NT kernel. The kernel has improved over the years but it is still basically that which was developed by David Cutler (basically the Father of NT); Lou Perazzoli; Darryl Havens; Gary Kimura; Mark Lucovsky; and Steve Wood.

If you want to know more about the NT kernel a good starting point is Helen Cutler's book Inside Windows NT although that is mostly Windows NT 3.51. Later editions describe NT 4 in more detail. For the Windows 95;98;ME kernel any good book on the development of DOS would be sufficient.

 

[David H. Lipman]

George:

Good points however, Win9x/ME are 32bit Kernel OS's except they rely on DOS vectors (DOS
interrupt calls) and are based upon the 16bit memory model of 64KB registers.

Dave



Yes the kernel is very much different in NT versions and in the DOS type. Windows 95;98;ME
had basically a DOS kernel. It was when you get down to brass tacks, a 16-bit operating
system. Oh I know it was 32-bit but then so was Win32S. Which died a thankful death. But
NT was always 32-bit. Very little 16-bit in that.

Now Windows NT4; 2000; XP; 2003 (32-bit) all use the same NT kernel. The kernel has
improved over the years but it is still basically that which was developed by David Cutler
(basically the Father of NT); Lou Perazzoli; Darryl Havens; Gary Kimura; Mark Lucovsky; and
Steve Wood.

If you want to know more about the NT kernel a good starting point is Helen Cutler's book
Inside Windows NT although that is mostly Windows NT 3.51. Later editions describe NT 4 in
more detail. For the Windows 95;98;ME kernel any good book on the development of DOS would
be sufficient.

 

[George Hester]

Ah there you go. I knew there was some 16-bit in there somewhere. Thanks for clarifying that Dave. I won't make that mistake in the future.

 

[KEVIN BROWN]

It is always something. It is difficult to cover everything in a 10 line NG
post.

This is the kind of discussion detail I was looking for. Thanks for the book
tip.

--
K B

"If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked
something."


Ah there you go. I knew there was some 16-bit in there somewhere. Thanks
for clarifying that Dave. I won't make that mistake in the future.

 

[Torgeir Bakken (MVP)]

Ok, so until XP essential MS had two product lines, the NT line for the
corporate world and the win98 line for home users. I am not looking at
differences in the tools/applications that come with the OS. I am more
interested in Kernel to Kernel comparisons. I was under the impression that
the corporate versions were built around a more sophisticated Kernel than
the home versions.

Hi

WinXP Pro and WinXP Home have the same code base, so I doubt very much that
there is any difference in the kernel and how they allocate resources to
applications.

 

[Jeremy Winston]

[...]
In addition:
If you post to UseNet with your TRUE, not a munged, email address then you have invited the
swen Internet worm [aka; W32/Gibe-F] to visit you.

....but if you keep your AV s/w up to date, that's not much of a concern.

-Jeremy(*Spam* OTOH...)

 

[David H. Lipman]

AV software installed, updated and configured properly then yes it is not much of a concern
but then there is the harvesting by spammers. Also to be considered, any new virus, worm or
Trojan that the AV software that you have has not added signature files for yet. VX'ers
(virus writers) learn form there peers and use what works well and don't use what doesn't.
Having a built-in NNT client and harvesting email addresses has worked well so I think we
will see more infectors use this methodology in the future.

Dave



| David H. Lipman wrote:
| > [...]
| > In addition:
| > If you post to UseNet with your TRUE, not a munged, email address then you have invited
the
| > swen Internet worm [aka; W32/Gibe-F] to visit you.
|
| ...but if you keep your AV s/w up to date, that's not much of a concern.
|
| -Jeremy(*Spam* OTOH...)
|
|

 

[Dan Seur]

Kevin - reading this thread to date it occurs to me that a couple of
concepts affecting kernel structures haven't been mentioned, and you
might be interested.

Modern processor architectures have 2 different "states": supervisor and
user. Supervisor state is all-powerful, with direct access to all CPU
instructions and system resources; user state is limited and can execute
only a limited set of CPU operations. In the world of "common"
Intel-based operating systems, the Unix, OS/2, and NT families make full
use of this distinction; DOS (and Windows systems other than
NT/W200x/XP) never did.

The "kernels" of the advanced systems are thus able to exert much more
control over user applications than are DOS and the simpler systems;
only the kernels run in supervisor state. This leads to great increases
in stability, integrity, and securability as far as these systems are
concerned. DOS-based systems, at least in my opinion, can't really be
said to have a kernel in any sophisticated sense. Any user app can reach
over and destroy the heart of such systems directly, with no trouble.

Along with the supervisor/user state capability, other processor
architecture features such as relocation and paging registers and the
like enable what you see in the advanced systems: no user application
deals directly with hardware - they deal with "virtual" hardware, under
the control and protection of the kernel. And user apps can be written
as if they own all system resources - including more RAM than may
actually exist - without mutual interference (if the system and app code
are well written.)

There's a wealth of this sort of info on the web. Some of the above
terms are good search arguments. I hope this note isn't way off the mark.