I’m a sucker for Beta programs. The feeling of getting some shiny new software in your hands is a good one. So a couple of weeks back I joined the Quebec beta on Microsoft Connect. (Formal name Windows Embedded Standard 2011.) I decided to test drive it as an OS for building an appliance, and Kannel seemed a good choice for a very basic setup. More on that later – first a few introductory lines on Windows Embedded (and explaining how it’s related to mobility).

Ever since Microsoft got started with the Windows product line they’ve worked hard to have an OS variant ready for every need. Well, obviously they didn’t have that back when they released Windows 1.0, but they’ve continually worked towards it as a goal in my opinion. Up until Windows NT the desktop computer was the main concern, but with NT Server they branched into servers as well. (Digressing for a short history lesson – did you know that Mr. Bill G himself recommended OS/2 for workstation use and not Windows for Workgroups? Microsoft and IBM were in cahoots at the time and collaborated on both OS/2 and Windows NT 3.1. You could install a Windows app in OS/2 and it would simply work, and in many cases work better than it’s native environment. Wouldn’t work the other way though. Eventually things soured between the two business partners, and OS/2 Warp flopped even though it was a great piece of an operating system.) Not feeling everything was covered by these two editions work started on a stripped down version of Windows known as Windows Embedded/Windows Compact Edition. This was also to form the platform for the Windows Mobile line later on. (Trivia bits: Windows CE 4/5/6 releases all got their codenames from whisky.) Now I know there’s a lot of differences between Windows Mobile and Windows Embedded even though some of the core bytes are the same, but nonetheless I found it interesting to get to know Embedded a little closer.

A benefit of Windows Embedded is that it’s designed to be run on computers with low specs, so I thought maybe I can recycle some old hardware. My initial purpose was to build a media center, but the media center bits aren’t included in this release so I had to nix that idea. The next thought I had was to build a Kannel server just for the fun of it. I usually promote running services on a server OS not a client OS, but beta is beta, and it’s not like I would recommend this for a 24/7 production environment.

Windows Embedded is highly modular, and you can nail down exactly which elements of Windows you want to install. Never going to use a feature? Don’t install it in the first place. This does mean that you need to know what you are doing. Don’t expect .Net applications to work if you didn’t include the necessary module for that.

You have two main options for deploying Windows Embedded – create a custom image with answer files, or just boot off the iso you download from Connect. I inserted the iso in a Hyper-V guest, and fired it up. (A virtual appliance might seem pointless to you, but it’s so much easier to test and do screenshots before going with real hardware.) This is what it looks like:

  
“Build an Image”.

You can go for a pre-defined template, or roll your own custom image. I chose “Minimum Configuration”.

You can modify both included drivers, and features to get it just the way you like it. Really cool is that you can change to a bootable USB stack which means you can run Windows off a USB stick – and not just install from a stick like Windows 7.

Overkill deluxe, but it’s the default size for dynamically expanding disks in Hyper-V, and it doesn’t actually consume that amount of gigabytes either.

Shouldn’t take too long.

Windows Update doesn’t really work as of know with my minimal installation.

 
The stripped down template doesn’t even include the regular Explorer Shell. Just the cmdline. (Obviously you might want to include the shell for some scenarios – like actually testing and playing around a little with your new OS.) As you can see in the bottom right corner it is based on Windows 7 so it has UI elements matching the regular Windows experience.

Mounted the Kannel files as an iso, but would work equally well copying from a USB stick.

2 cmd shells is all I need for the basics.

Seems to be running like they should. Oh, yeah, you might want to test your Kannel.conf before loading it into your “appliance” since you don’t have Notepad

The http daemon is running too. Needless to say this was tested from a different computer.

Now this isn’t rocket science or anything, but goes to show how you can have a little fun sidetracking a few hours from your most used operating systems. Oh, right, specs. It’s running totally smooth with 512MB of RAM, (it will refuse to install with less), and the entire vhd file takes up 624MB of space after compacting the drive. Not too shabby if you ask me.