Why does windows 2003, NT etc have an i386 folder?

[kuyaglen]

The i386 folder has all the cab files for whatever os your installing, at least with NT, 2003.
With installing nVidia's Linux drivers, you have packages for i386 based systems.
Am I assuming correctly that windows has a its kernel based on unix/linux kernels?

-Thank you.
-please be gentle.

[bigstusexy]

Nope, NT use to run on a vearity of different systems, Intel x86, various rics based systems and what not. the I386 folder is for x86 based systems, I think that the 64bit versions might keep their files in a different one (like x86-64 I dunno)

Even if it doesn't different folders, this folder naming convention is left over from then

[korpse]

i386 is refering to the hardware platform (CPU to be specific). It has nothing to do with linux.

[[MS]]

As others pointed out, i386 is the platform that version is compiled for, what type of CPU it can run on.

i386 would be your standard desktop,
IA64 would be your Itanium versions,
x64 would be your 64bit x86 processors,
and of course, there's the old PowerPC and DEC Alpha version of Windows...

Then, there's this :)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/usewinemb/ce/supproc/default.aspx

It's just a easy way of keeping different version of programs organized.


> Am I assuming correctly that windows has a its kernel
> based on unix/linux kernels?
Linux? I don't think so, the first code in the WindowsNT product line was written over 15 years ago (1989?). I'd imagine all the products available had some impact on design though, incliding UNIX.

[Ranma_Sao]

For x64 it's stored in the AMD64 directory. The name change of x64 came to late for us to change the install directory name.