Danny Escasa quoted from http://www.reactos.org/en/newsletter_54.html
> The Windows version that ReactOS officially targets has been > a point of confusion for some time now. There are actually two > specified targets, one involving the NT kernel and the other for > the Win32 > > subsystem. Officially the ReactOS kernel still targets the Server > 2003 kernel, also known as NT 5.2. This target changes fairly > slowly. > > On the other hand the Win32 subsystem target is always at the > latest Windows version released, which would be Windows Vista as > of the writing. This is why there are often commits stating updates > or implementations that are Vista based. When Windows 7 is > released the Win32 target will shift again, but this does not > mean a decision will be made to shift the kernel target as well. The Windows OS architecture is actually very interesting once you start to understand it. The NT kernel's design is clearly influenced more by VMS than Unix so there are some very interesting differences there. Because of its closed source nature, it was much harder to get info about it before, but the 'Net has really opened up the info channels. Like the quote above mentions, the NT kernel is capable of hosting different subsystems. In fact, a POSIX subsystem was (is?) available on NT (could be as far back as NT 3.x or NT 4.0). In theory, one could implement a Linux compatible subsystem running on top of the ReactOS kernel! This would be extremely interesting because that could potentially mean Linux programs will get access to the vast universe of Windows drivers. ================================ The Webmechs Webpress http://www.webmechs.com/webpress _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List http://lists.linux.org.ph/mailman/listinfo/plug Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
