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Comment by TheRealPomax | Hacker News Reader

Who said it will be called Windows 10 when it's done? They're starting with their current codebase, which is Windows 10, and are now working to remove any and all legacy code from it that they can, to get to a reduced codebase for a new OS release. Like all projects, it has a codename for now, and when it's done (but right now, "if" it's done sounds a more realistic assertion) it'll certainly not be called Windows 10 anymore.

Just like when Windows XP was developed: they took the Windows NT 4.5 codebase, and started hacking on that until they'd changed enough to make it "Windows NT 5", but it was never released under that name. The underlying version number, however, was kept. So, it'll probably be Windows 11 (or rather, a Windows "something") with an underlying version number like 10.5.x or 11.x.x

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Microsoft is the one who said it will be called Windows 10 when it's done. They've repeatedly stressed that Windows 10 is the last numbered update to Windows. That's not to say that the underlying technology won't change, even radically - it's just that this will be done through Windows Update as an upgrade to the existing OS rather than a new OS that you won't have access to without purchasing an upgrade.

They realized at some point that they had several concurrent versions of Windows out there that they had to support, and many customers had no apparent incentive to upgrade to new versions. So going forward they ostensibly have a single version that auto-updates, and they provide the OS "as a service".

You can't update between Mobile and Desktop editions, or between Desktop and Xbox, or between Xbox and Hololens, etc.

Yet.

Right now there are a bunch of little forked differences between them all. Microsoft says they are working to merge all the shell differences into a single project (CShell; composable shell), and the point of getting to a clean core (the "Polaris" codename in this article) seems to be to make sure all the rest of Windows modularly slots in on top of that, and a benefit to that is that you could quite possibly more easily change between which modules are loaded/available.

From the Continuum project, we know that Microsoft finds it interesting to be able to switch between Mobile and Desktop editions as much "on the fly" as possible. Could mean they have ideas for switching between Desktop and Xbox modes, too.

> Microsoft says they are working to merge all the shell differences into a single project (CShell; composable shell), and the point of getting to a clean core (the "Polaris" codename in this article)

The clean core is Windows Core OS; Polaris is the desktop-specific composer on top of CShell and Windows Core OS and is also used in this article as the name of a UWP-only Windows edition incorporating the Core OS/CShell/Polaris-composer stack.

Do you have a source for your specifics? From the linked article I assumed that Polaris was just the new codename for the next big phase of Windows Core OS/OneCore/etc work and the article was mistaken or presuming much about a Core/CShell-only edition release plan.

It makes sense that there would be a codename for the desktop-composer on top of CShell, and that would be a far better explanation of things than the article here.

Here's an article which discusses the strategy in some more detail, explicitly identifying Polaris as the composer (but then also seeming to use it as the name for a desktop spin of Windows with Polaris in the stack):

https://www.windowscentral.com/windows-core-polaris

This Windows Central article actually seems to be the source for most of the other recent coverage, so it may be the most complete piece out there.

Microsoft were calling Windows 10 'the last version of Windows' in 2015 - I'd be surprised if they didn't call this some variant of Windows 10.

I'd be more surprised if claims Microsoft made 3 years ago still carry any weight whatsoever today.

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