Is Microsoft getting ready to kill Windows?

[Cyrus_the_virus]

No, I'm not talking about killing Vista. Microsoft is already burying that living dead operating system as fast it can. I'm talking about killing Windows itself. That's the conclusion I've drawn from David Worthington's story about Microsoft's plans for Midori, a next generation operating system.

According to Worthington, who managed to get his hands on Microsoft's internal documents, "Midori is an offshoot of Microsoft Research's Singularity [a limited open-source] operating system, the tools and libraries of which are completely managed code. Midori is designed to run directly on native hardware (x86, x64 and ARM), be hosted on the Windows Hyper-V hypervisor, or even be hosted by a Windows process."

Microsoft's objective for Midori, writes Worthington, is no less than replacing Windows. "Microsoft is carefully mapping out migration strategies to move customers from Windows to Midori, its planned legacy-free operating environment, virtualization, and a composite application model that permits applications to be hosted by both OSes, are key to the strategy."

It's about time!

Windows, for all its popularity, has been outdated trash almost since its beginnings. Its chief twin problems, from where I sit, have always been that it's a single user operating system in a multi-user networked world and its programming model that can't tell the difference between data and code. Put them together and you get such useful, but totally insecure, program interfaces as DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange), OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) and ActiveX.

The result is an operating system where it's easy to exchange date between programs like Excel and Word, and just as easy to infect systems with malware via Internet Explorer. Windows was insecure from day one and nothing, Nothing, will ever change that. Its insecurity is built in. Is it any wonder that 16,000 Web sites a day are being compromised to bring malware to Windows systems? With Windows as the most popular desktop operating system, it's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Midori, on the other hand, is being "from the ground up to be connected." That's key. If they do that, then they might have something worth using.
"Microsoft [also] intends for Midori to be componentized from the beginning to achieve performance and security benefits." That's also good news. I have to say that I like the sound of Midori.

The sooner Microsoft kills off Windows and moves to Midori the better as far as I'm concerned. There's only one thing they need to do to make it perfect. Singularity is already sort of open source, how about making Midori really open source?

Now, Microsoft will never go with the GPL. That just isn't going to happen. But why couldn't Microsoft use a version of the Mozilla license or Sun's variant on it, the CDDL (Common Development and Distribution License)? That way, Microsoft still gets to call the shots, but they also get the potential advantage of open-source developer support.

Yes, it would be a radical change. Yes, I know some people, like blogger and former Microsoftie Robert Scoble,dismiss the idea of Windows being replaced out of hand. But, doesn't Microsoft need a revolution?

Vista's going no-where. Linux and Mac are both gaining on the desktop. And, Windows 7 may yet turn out to be just Vista SP2, since I note that now the plan is for Windows 7 to remain a 32-bit operating system. If I were in charge of Microsoft, I wouldn't be thrilled with any of this.

Unfortunately, Ballmer is at Microsoft's controls. Ugh.

I doubt that he has the vision to see that Microsoft needs to reinvent itself for the 21st century. Still, just the fact that Eric Rudder, senior vice president for technical strategy at Microsoft, is in charge of Midori gives me some hope that something may come of it. Come to think of it, there was a time when Rudder was considered as someone who might take Microsoft's helm. Now if Ballmer were to be fired and Rudder took charge... hmmm...

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[koolbluez]

hmm.... the competition forces MS to start afresh... no doubt.. it'll costa hellotta much when released... fresh ideas r costly, naa...

BTW... Midori is associated to the color GREEN... green with envy of other's success.. hmm... MS...

MIDORI is a bright-green color refreshing musk-melon flavored liqueur.

[x3060]

i don't think its gonna happen, but if it does it will be a really nice move.

[iMav]

Singularity takes form as Midori

[gxsaurav]

They won't replace Windows for a long time, Midori is going to be integrated in Windows 8

[casanova]

Hmm. So atleast not until 2013.

[ax3]

micro r facing solid competition ..........

[anandk]

Its called Evolution, everyting evolves over a period of time. So will Windows. In fact its not even sure if it will be christianed as Windows 8. And its a long way still ...

[Liverpool_fan]

Who cares? I use Linux.
The moment games run in Linux or I'll purchase a console, I'll ditch Windows completely.

[goobimama]

Users had so much trouble dealing with a move to Vista. God alone knows what will happen when they lose the Windows name. I don't think it will be a good marketing move on MS's part. Is it like Windows? Will my apps run on it? Is Windows also going to be introduced?

People sure are dumb. But you can't blame them for that.

[iMav]

Originally Posted by goobimama

People sure are dumb. But you can't blame them for that.

So true. No one ever blamed you for buying that Mac of yours.

[Cyrus_the_virus]

Related:

Microsoft has serious plans to do away with Windows

It's one thing to have a skunkworks operating system project, Midori, that could conceivably replace Windows. It's another to actually have plans on how to switch users from Windows to Midori. Guess what? Microsoft actually does have such plans.

According to David Worthington, Microsoft isn't only building a Windows replacement operating system, its "carefully conceptualizing a way to move millions of users away from the existing Windows codebase and onto Midori, a legacy-free operating system."

The plans, which are far from being finalized, indicate the Microsoft is really running scared of Mac OS and Linux on the desktop. "Midori's legacy-free objective [is] a preemptive strike against non-Microsoft operating systems, enabling the company to compete head-on by enticing customers to replace Windows with Midori instead of a non-Microsoft OS," wrote Worthington.

I know many of you still have trouble with the idea that the Mac or the Linux desktop could possibly challenge Windows. Microsoft disagrees. Look at the numbers.

Context, a European business and consumer technology research firm has just reported that pre-installed Linux was sold on 2.8% of all PCs bought in the UK in June 2008. Doesn't sound like much? In January 2007, desktop Linux's marketshare was 0.1%. As for Apple, in its last quarter the company sold more Macs than in any previous quarter and its sales marketshare in the States is now up to 14%.

This isn't the 90s anymore. In the aftermath of the Vista sales flop, Windows is no longer an automatic choice.

Microsoft knows that and seems to be seriously considering a future without it. Specifically, Microsoft seems to be considering three different paths. In the first, Midori would run under Windows. This doesn't sound terribly practical and Microsoft appears to realize this. The second plan is "the development of an executive for Midori that is based on and would run in parallel with the Windows executive." This would amount to little more than an augmentation to Windows.

The final plan, and the one that strikes me as the most interesting and easiest to develop, is to actually create Midori as a legacy-free new operating system and use a built-in hypervisor to run Windows in a virtual machine. This could work. Virtualization is quickly becoming mainstream as people realize that not only can you really run multiple operating systems efficiently on a single machine, but it can really save you money.

For Microsoft, it would also have the advantage of ensuring near 100% fidelity of the Windows experience for users and their applications. Underneath the hood, the engine would be running Midori, but end-users would still see their familiar Windows applications.

Of course, you can already do that today. For example, I use VirtualBox to run Windows XP SP3 on my Linux systems. Windows, I might add, runs with a lot more stability on top of Linux and VirtualBox than it does on native hardware. Red Hat, with its KVM plans, foresees running everything and anything on top of Linux-based virtual machines.

Will Microsoft actually make the jump? As I said before, I think a lot depends on the management. Ballmer doesn't inspire me with any confidence. If he were a GM executive I can see him insisting that the company invest more in the Hummer because of its profit margins while ignoring that with the price of gas no one is buying them anymore. For those who don't follow the car industry, GM is now trying desperately to sell its Hummer division.

Even if Microsoft does pull the trigger, I can't see Midori showing up until 2013. By that time, it may be too late to stem Microsoft's decline. Still, I find it interesting that Microsoft is even considering a radical operating system shift. This really isn't Bill Gates' Microsoft.

Source

[shadow2get]

Microsoft has kicked off a research project to create software that will take over when it retires Windows. Called Midori, the cut-down operating system is radically different to Microsoft's older programs. It is centred on the internet and does away with the dependencies that tie Windows to a single PC. It is seen as Microsoft's answer to rivals' use of "virtualisation" as a way to solve many of the problems of modern-day computing.

Midori aims to uncouple its software from the hardware it runs on

Tie breaking
Although Midori has been heard about before now, more details have now been published by Software Development Times after viewing internal Microsoft documents describing the technology. Midori is believed to be under development because Windows is unlikely to be able to cope with the pace of change in future technology and the way people use it. Windows worked well in an age when most people used one machine to do all their work. The operating system acted as the holder for the common elements Windows programs needed to call on.

"If you think about how an operating system is loaded," said Dave Austin, European director of products at Citrix, "it's loaded onto a hard disk physically located on that machine. "The operating system is tied very tightly to that hardware," he said. That, he said, created all kinds of dependencies that arose out of the collection of hardware in a particular machine.

If Windows ends up being less important over time as applications become more OS agnostic where will Microsoft make its money?
- Michael Silver, Gartner

This means, he said, that Windows can struggle with more modern ways of working in which people are very mobile and very promiscuous in the devices they use to get at their data - be that pictures, spreadsheets or e-mail.

Equally, he said, when people worked or played now, they did it using a combination of data and processes held locally or in any of a number of other places online. When asked about Midori by BBC News, Microsoft issued a statement that said: "Midori is one of many incubation projects underway at Microsoft. It's simply a matter of being too early in the incubation to talk about it."

Virtual machines
Midori is widely seen as an ambitious attempt by Microsoft to catch up on the work on virtualisation being undertaken in the wider computer industry. Darren Brown, data centre lead at consulting firm Avanade, said virtualisation had first established itself in data centres among companies with huge numbers of servers to manage.

Putting applications, such as an e-mail engine or a database, on one machine brought up all kinds of problems when those machines had to undergo maintenance, needed updating or required a security patch to be applied. By putting virtual servers on one physical box, companies had been able to shrink the numbers of machines they managed and get more out of them, he said.

"The real savings are around physical management of the devices and associated licensing," he said. "Physically, there is less tin to manage."

Windows' history makes it hard to adapt to a more distributed age

Equally, said Mr Brown, if one physical server failed the virtualised application could easily be moved to a separate machine. "The same benefits apply to the PC," he said. "Within the Microsoft environment, we have struggled for years with applications that are written so poorly that they will not work with others. "Virtualising this gives you a couple of new ways to tackle those traditional problems," he said.

Many companies were still using very old applications that existing operating systems would not run, he said. By putting a virtual machine on a PC, those older programs can be kept going. A virtual machine, like its name implies, is a software copy of a computer complete with operating system and associated programs.

Closing Windows
"On the desktop we are seeing people place great value in being able to abstract the desktop from actual physical hardware," said Dan Chu, vice president of emerging products and markets at virtualisation specialist VMWare.


Computer users in the future are likely to be much more mobile

Some virtual machines, he said, acted like Windows PCs to all intents and purposes. But many virtual machines were now emerging that were tuned for a particular industry, sector or job. "People take their application, the operating system they want to run it against, package it up along with policy and security they want and use that as a virtual client," he said.

In such virtual machines, the core of the operating system can be very small and easy to transfer to different devices. This, many believe, is the idea behind Midori - to create a lightweight portable operating system that can easily be mated to many different applications. Microsoft's licensing terms for Windows currently prohibited it acting as a virtual machine or client in this way, said Mr Chu.

Michael Silver, research vice president at Gartner, said the development of Midori was a sensible step for Microsoft. "The value of Microsoft Windows, of what that product is today, will diminish as more applications move to the web and Microsoft needs to edge out in front of that," he said. "I would be surprised if there was definitive evidence that nothing like this was not kicking around," he said. The big problem that Microsoft faced in doing away with Windows, he said, was how to re-make its business to cope.

"Eighty percent of Windows sales are made when a new PC is sold," he said. "That's a huge amount of money for them that they do not have to go out and get. "If Windows ends up being less important over time as applications become more OS agnostic where will Microsoft make its money?" he asked.

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[MetalheadGautham]

80% of windows sales come from new PCs.
THATS the line I was looking for.
It states that MS may have 90% market share, but not all use it out of their own choice.

[gary4gar]

That is bound to happen.
As we progress to new age web driven desktop.
Google is the Future.

[shantanu]

looks like horse $ to me ! i have heard of midori, but its not going to replace i am sure about that !

[MetalheadGautham]

Originally Posted by shantanu

looks like horse $ to me ! i have heard of midori, but its not going to replace i am sure about that !

Yeah. I think the title should have been "Is Microsoft getting ready to kill Windows NT ?"
Now it sounds more normal. They killed windows classic, which was dependant on DOS and brought in Windows NT. Next might be Windows Midori. Who knows ? But the brand equity of windows is so high, that many blindly buy an OS if its sold as "the latest version of windows". They can't dare to remove windows as a name from their OS.

[The Conqueror]

Sure, a change is expected.

[threeonethree]

why cant they remove "windows" when intel can remove "pentium".

windows is a whacky name anyways.

[shantanu]

lol ! i can see something in ur post BOY ! , Intel Pentium was a product that discontinued ! and it had the Significance which was limited, windows is a enourmous funding project for Microsoft and it is just not a name, 50 % people know windows is computer lol !