Windows 8 Build 6.2.7959.0 M3 Leaked

Downloads of a new Windows 8 leak, Build 6.2.7959.0, are now available in the wild, offered through various illegal sources, including popular torrent trackers.

Windows 8 Build 7959 was leaked at the end of the past week, following two previous releases of the next generation operating system from Microsoft, namely Build 6.2.7955.0 and Build 6.1.7850.

Some differences compared to previous leaks of the platform need to be highlighted. First off, this is the first Windows 8 Server leak, while previous development milestones of Windows 7’s successor that made it out of Redmond were Windows 8 client releases.

While Build 6.2.7955.0 and Build 6.1.7850 were examples of Windows 8 Ultimate, Build 7959 is in fact Windows 8 Server Enterprise SKU.

In addition, testers get the first Windows 8 leak which reportedly belongs to the Milestone 3 (M3) development phase, while the previous two were M1 and M2 Builds.

Moreover, x64 Windows 8 Build 6.2.7959.0 is also the first release that comes in a 64-bit flavor, with the two before it being 32-bit variants of the operating system.

According to information accompanying the leak, the full build of the release is 6.2.7959.0.fbl_srv_wdacxml.110307-1930, indicating that it was compiled on March 7h, 2011, in the fbl_srv_wdacxml branch.

Since coding work on Windows 8 Milestone began at the end of February 2011, this is a M3 release, but don’t expect any official confirmation on this from the Redmond company.

Starting with Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008, Microsoft closely aligned the development of its client and server platforms.

This was true for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 which share the same core, were developed in parallel and hit general availability concomitantly, and will also be valid for Windows 8 and Windows 8 Server.

Personally, I expect Windows 8 client and Windows 8 Server to be developed in tandem and also be released in concert with the same “better together” strategy as they predecessors.

It’s critical to note that although Windows 8 and Windows 8 Server share the same kernel / core and vast majority of components, the two operating systems are optimized for different scenarios.