Windows is Open!

Posting via mobile phone at the Microsoft Asia Pacific Windows Core Technology Seminar in Hangzhou.

At the conference, Microsoft released a CD containing WRK (Windows Research Kernel) for universities. It’s a set of compilable, modifiable, runnable, debuggable genuine Windows NT source code for academia! Microsoft has spent big to push its OS into the teaching world!

Here’s a quick evaluation: I compiled it on my own machine and sure enough, it produced an ntoskernel.exe. I replaced the original version on my machine (haha, what courage), rebooted successfully! I set a breakpoint and used WinDbg for kernel debugging with source stepping. It’s slower than the original kernel, probably because it’s a debug build.

Only the most核心 parts of the OS are released: scheduling, memory management, synchronization, etc. Don’t bother looking for the GUI layer. So it can’t run independently — it can only replace the same-named module in existing Windows. But it’s still震撼. Back on some Valentine’s Day years ago, Windows source code leaked — 600MB — but you could only look at it, not compile it. Back then I worked my butt off just to compile a calculator and a paint program. Not this time.

More evaluation when I have time. For now: although I can’t guarantee the compiled kernel is identical to the Windows you buy, it’s at least compatible. Very useful for students learning OS and Windows kernel. Hope to see more application in China. Domestic professors are very lazy — for large-scale adoption, they’d need配套 PPT and labs.

It seems to not be downloadable online since it’s only for academia. And the licensing says you can only modify up to 50 lines yourself (stingy! 50,000 lines wouldn’t be too many). I wonder if posting details about this on a blog violates the license agreement. Hope views won’t exceed 10,000 and downloads won’t exceed 200.