Windows NT Kernel

Discussions center on the history, architecture, origins (e.g., VMS, OS/2 influences), and technical superiority of the Windows NT kernel compared to Windows 9x series and other OSes.

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3,197
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#7674
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2007
3
2008
13
2009
25
2010
69
2011
91
2012
87
2013
138
2014
92
2015
132
2016
205
2017
173
2018
193
2019
201
2020
229
2021
243
2022
296
2023
354
2024
372
2025
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2026
30

Keywords

RAM MS e.g MIPS AIO UNIX IMO VMS en.m FAT nt windows windows nt kernel xp os ntfs 95 vms internals

Sample Comments

EamonnMR Jul 8, 2021 View on HN

I was not aware that NT shared OS/2 lineage.

hypercube33 Jul 13, 2024 View on HN

NT is closer to a mainframe OS than 9x and it came out in the win3 era

eru Apr 7, 2016 View on HN

Might have run on a Windows NT variant. That was sort-of supposed to be a microkernel.

hoistbypetard Jan 22, 2022 View on HN

Windows NT was. That has about the same relationship to Windows 10 that the Linux kernels designed for 486 do to modern Linux.

asveikau Jun 6, 2018 View on HN

You're thinking of the 9x kernel. NT was pretty good.

simonsays2 Dec 6, 2018 View on HN

NT was not based on OS/2. The author is misinformed.

exe34 Nov 1, 2025 View on HN

NT the kernel is quite good. windows nt itself was not always great.

trollian Oct 29, 2022 View on HN

Microsoft did this with NT too, IIRC...

freeone3000 Nov 28, 2020 View on HN

There's a reason that XP and subsequent client versions were based on NT :)

ygra Apr 12, 2017 View on HN

Windows NT is a completely different kernel, so was 9x. So Microsoft actually changed kernels at least twice.