Operating Systems of Tomorrow?
Before I start, formal warning...
I want to put forth my opinion on what I think might happen post
Vista... After claiming to have spent billions of dollars developing the next major version of Windows (Vista), Microsoft seem to be lost, lost in the wilderness as they are battered from all sides over security, malware, viruses, and now large portions of new features being drop left, right and center because of continual slippage in getting Vista out the door.
I'm asking my self, what can Microsoft do that can help Windows Security in the long term? Has Apple shown Microsoft the way yet again, by adopting a BSD underbelly or will Microsoft dump money into continually patching fundamental flaws within it's OS, to be honest I don't see even Microsoft being that stupid, though it has been know to happen, note Intel with Pentium 4.
I honestly think that within 5-10 years, Microsoft might actually bite the bullet and move to a BSD based system, just like Apple did with OS X. This would give Microsoft a great leap in Security almost instantly. They would have to imitate may of the things Apple has already done, like dropping backward compatibility with Windows 9x/NT to an emulation layer much the same as Apple's Rosetta, however with multi-core CPUs already at hand and Virtualisation being integrated into future processors, creating a 100% seamless and native speed backward compatible layer doesn't seem that far fetched, especially now.
Lets assume for one moment someone high up at Microsoft actually has the guts to put money into something like this, they would have to do something like the following:
- Switch to BSD Code (obviously).
- Either write a subsystem to enable current drivers to work, or as Microsoft has done in the past get all the hardware manufacturers to create new drivers for the system.
- Design a GUI that builds on previous Windows GUI and at least should improve upon it.
- Create a seamless virtualisation subsystem into the OS to handle legacy apps, Rosetta like but 100% native speed and 3D Acceleration.
- Have .Net 2/3+ ? apps run natively on the new system.
This I should add this would be no mean feat, but actually quite extraordinary especially if we take Microsoft's current track record, but I'd have to say worth every penny.
I know I haven't touched on where Linux nor Apple will be by this time, that is purely because Microsoft is and will continue to be on at least 80-90% of all desktop computers for the foreseeable future, unfortunately.
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I want to put forth my opinion on what I think might happen post Vista... After claiming to have spent billions of dollars developing the next major version of Windows (Vista), Microsoft seem to be lost, lost in the wilderness as they are battered from all sides over security, malware, viruses, and now large portions of new features being drop left, right and center because of continual slippage in getting Vista out the door. 