{"id":17862,"date":"2015-04-01T09:29:49","date_gmt":"2015-04-01T09:29:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=17862"},"modified":"2015-04-01T09:34:42","modified_gmt":"2015-04-01T09:34:42","slug":"what-are-microsoft-flights-and-flighting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=17862","title":{"rendered":"What Are Microsoft “Flights” And “Flighting”?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a term that I\u2019ve heard for a while when talking to Microsoft program managers, and it has started to be used publicly by Microsoft staff. I read it on a post<\/a> by Ben Armstrong:<\/p>\n

If you are already on 10049 and have not yet enabled Hyper-V, you can either follow the above steps, or hang tight while we work on the next flight<\/em><\/span><\/strong>!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rick Claus also used the term in the latest episode<\/a> of the Ignite Countdown show.<\/p>\n

Like all cloud services, in case you don\u2019t know, this is what we\u2019re doing with regards to flighting<\/em><\/span><\/strong> new things into it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Microsoft’s Gabe Aul also explained the term in a Blogging Windows post<\/a> on March 18th:<\/p>\n

\u2026 we\u2019ll have some weeks where we expect builds to flow out (we call them \u201cflighting<\/em><\/span><\/strong> windows\u201d) and some where we\u2019ll hold back<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the term was also used by Aul when he explained <\/a>the frequency of builds for Windows Insiders:<\/p>\n

\u2026 we\u2019d have a candidate build, and we\u2019d flight<\/em><\/span><\/strong> that out broadly within MS to make sure we could find any gotchas \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So what are they talking about? You\u2019ve probably heard that Windows 10, when it RTMs, isn\u2019t \u201cfinished\u201d. In fact, it\u2019ll probably never be a finished product in the view of Microsoft until they release Windows 11 (if there is one). Microsoft will be updating this OS on a regular basis, adding new functionality. I know we\u2019ve heard that sort of thing before, but it\u2019s real this time. Windows Insiders are seeing it now, and the reality is that Microsoft development process was changed quite a bit after Windows 8.1 to make this possible. We know from TEE14 that the same happened to Windows Server<\/a> to make it work more seamlessly with Azure.<\/p>\n

This approach is taken from cloud computing and lightweight phone\/tablet OSs:<\/p>\n