> This was more of a fun proof of concept rather than something usable. Virtually nothing can run due to critical missing files such as common dialog boxes and common controls.
[0]: https://x.com/XenoPanther/status/1983579460906487835?t=7jLSz...
Besides this old debate is pretty silly because I doubt anyone could propose (and get a majority of us to agree on) a formal definition of an operating system that would allow us to unambiguously say "that's an OS competent", "that's an OS", and "that's just software that ships with the OS" across a suite of OS's.
"Windows 7" brings a lot of connotations, including the ability to run Windows 7 software. Without that what makes it different to Windows XP?
Sure but are those connotation consistent across people (this thread would tend to say no)? If not, that is essentially the core of my argument that nobody agrees on what "OS" means.
Back in the day, MS did even release Nano Server as a standalone OS, from what I gather it was generally <500MB. Pretty decent for a Windows you could actually run applications on.
When that old hardware dies, it would likely be replaced with a similar design rather than more evolved hardware. This would mean we’d have to develop for longevity. Developing for longevity, could mean that software would flourish. Software flourishing could include malware and inefficient software sold to fight malware. Therefore, it is more secure and efficient to continually evolve operating systems to require new hardware, to reduce longevity and the flourishing of software.
https://github.com/shorthorn-project/One-Core-API-Binaries
That adds various NT 6 APIs and even compatibility modes for various newer versions of Windows up to Windows 11. At a glance, it appears to have support for Vulkan, Direct3D 10 and Direct3D 11 through software rendering, with the option of using WineD3D to get hardware accelerated Direct3D 10 and 11. I assume old WineD3D-PBA binaries run very nicely on that.
Interestingly, the developer suggests that installing graphics drivers from newer versions of Windows might be possible at some point, which I assume would provide native hardware acceleration for newer graphics APIs and support for recent graphics cards:
> WDDM is not impossible, only very hard. Currently initializes and the subsystem runs, but every driver fails to communicate with it's internal hardware due 2000/XP/2003 doesn't have support for MSI/MSI-X interrupt, required to WDDM drivers works;
https://github.com/shorthorn-project/One-Core-API-Binaries/i...
I worked on porting certain Software Defined Networking product to Windows platform, for use with Hyper-V. Nano Server was new and we tried to target it as one of the options, especially since it was implied to be recommended way to deploy Hyper-V hosts. And yes, IIRC it took less than 500MB, but it couldn't run most windows applications (for example, GUI was missing).
So much was stripped out that at one point I ended up with reverse-engineered Windows Update packaging (unfortunately lost my notes) because the oldest form of Windows Installer, the one used with INF files for drivers, could not be used fully - specifically, we could not run any kind of action in our own DLL when initializing the drivers. And messing with the right registry keys was fraught with peril.
Do not recall all issues, but essentially we were trying to create a package that could be applied with DISM.EXE onto Nano Server image.