Windows Is Dead – Long Live Midori?

parvenu74 writes "A story from Infoworld is suggesting that the days of Windows are numbered and that Microsoft is preparing a web-based operating system code-named Midori as a successor. Midori is reported to be an offshoot of Microsoft Research's Singularity OS, an all-managed code microkernel OS which leverages a technology called software isolated processes (SIPs) to overcome the traditional inter-thread communications issues of microkernel OSes."

Comments

Prediction

[kalpol]

web-based == subscription model.

Re:Prediction

[icsx]

Exactly. Microsoft is preparing for virtual computing which means that you have only screen, keyboard and small terminal with internet connection at home. All data and stuff gets placed into Microsoft server and you are using your terminal only to access it - from anywhere that you want.

Re:Prediction

[Hatta]

How does one have a web-based operating system anyway? If you're running your OS inside a web browser, what is the web browser running on? Is it just turtles all the way down?

Re:Prediction

[MightyYar]

If the replacement rate for a desktop computer is 3 years, and everyone buys for $250 and Windows for $130 - that's less than $400 over 3 years... or just over $10 monthly.

If I had a website that offered full MS Office functionality and compatibility for $10/month... wanna bet I'd have some takers? They'd need 366 million customers to equal their current revenue using this model.

Worldwide, PC sales are supposed to grow to over 250 million/year by 2010, so while their target would be ambitious - it is feasible if they could rope roughly half of new PC buyers into this new model.

Re:Prediction

[negRo_slim]

If I had a website that offered full MS Office functionality and compatibility for $10/month...

I concur, there would be probably be tremendous interest. I just wonder if it being a Microsoft branded product wouldn't be a detriment to it's success as opposed to it being judged purely on the merits of what it offers. But allow me to play the devil's advocate for a moment and suggest for gamers this might not be such a bad thing. (Potentially) Less OS on the hard disk could mean lower resource utilization and I'm sure a few enterprising users would find further ways to enhance performance maybe something a kin to tuning current Window's services so as to prevent unnecessary network access?

Re:Prediction

[nizo]

Wanna check your email? That'll be $1. Wanna post to ./?? That'll be $2.

[after searching Clippy pops up]

I'm sorry, I was unable to process your credit card number on file. To see all of the search results, please enter a valid credit card number.

Re:Prediction

[Pincus]

The 366 million seems ambitious, but an online model would also curtail some piracy. The equivalent of copying my Windows disk would be to give out my i-Windows login, meaning they would just use my desktop.

Of course, why not, especially if the cost is high, share it between users? Especially if it will support multiple desktops, won't every household maintain one OS for multiple users?

Re:Prediction

[ivucica]

If there was a free alternative with sufficient compatibility which I don't have to pay for, I would still not subscribe to such a service.

The problem arises when I start being forced to do it. For example, when the machines start using trusted computing to expel a free OS and a free office suite.

Re:Prediction

[PixelSlut]

But you don't need consistent access to that data at all times of day. Storing your work documents with Google or something (in a non-backup way) strikes many of us as a way to potentially screw yourself over when you suddenly desperately need a certain file and your network is down or something.

Also, in terms of practicality I have to say that I wouldn't know what to do with a few hundred thousand dollars myself. What am I going to do, stuff it under my bed? I feel like there is a purpose in having institutions that make it their business to do with my money what I can't really do myself. For me it's not out of paranoia that I don't store files with Google, but that I don't see the point. I don't NEED Google to store my files, I've been doing it for years myself.

Re:Prediction

[Lord Apathy]

Well it all depends on how you use it. Back when I was married to The Bitch we had one master computer running linux that we both used. Sharing time on it was a bitch because I used it for work, and she used it for play. To solve this issue I rounded up a old '486, a 20 MB HD, and a 15" display. Piece of crap. I installed a very slimmed down linux, just enough to boot and connect the X server to central host.

She had her play computer and I had a work computer and everything was fine.

Actually there is was a interesting turn on that set up. After we separated her and some of her cult buddies broke in to my house and stole that X terminal I made her. I found out through a friend that they did that because they didn't me reading the email she left on "it" or having access to her icq logs. I found it very amusing that she had stole the wrong computer.

And if you wondering. Yes, I did look through the icq logs and email. I did show them to the judge and use them in court. I found out her nuttiness was more nutty then I ever imagined. I found out she had been abusing my son and what she had planed. So if your going to bitch about her privacy or some such BS, save it.

Re:Prediction

[westlake]

I wonder... where do you keep your money? Banks are companies, as are brokerages.
.

The banker is not a blabbermouth.

He isn't looking over my shoulder whenever I dictate a letter.

He isn't reading our internal reports and planning documents - and - no matter how richly deserved - he isn't feeding the minutes of our daily conference calls to Scott Adams and The Simpsons.

Re:Prediction

[mpeskett]

How do you undercut free? Why don't you ask Microsoft that, they've been doing pretty well despite the presence of free alternatives for some time now. God knows how, but if there's anyone who knows how to compete with free and win, its Microsoft.

Re:Prediction

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Do you work for Citrix?

You describe thin client architecture, or hosted computing. I totally agree, this is known, established technology. But from your comment you don't seem to understand these in any amount of detail.

Both Citrix and RDP clients, and moreover X, can transmit primitives to a client when dealing with a hosted application. However, generally "serving up nothing more than a picture" is slower than issuing higher level commands as far as performance is concerned. In simple terms, telling the client "draw dialog box asking 'Do you want to continue | Yes | No'" is less bandwidth than a bitmap of the dialog box.

X, which I am most familiar with, takes this concept very far. You can run an application off a remote computer (X client), which will still use your *local* video card/computer (running the X server) ((yes, client/server notation is kind of reversed in X)) and run 3-d apps over a relatively low bandwidth connection with fluidity. Imagine trying to do that with a compressed bitmap being pushed over the pipe -- it would be a bad slideshow.

RDP does transmit high level instructions, and can be relatively fast. It even has switches for "bitmap caching" of common things, and can compress data too. In my experience deploying the two, RDP is far from bloated and universally faster when compared to ICA, although ICA definitely offers a greater degree of control and customization in the server environment. We do use ICA exclusively, but I think it is primarily for business and historical reasons.

From your last sentence:

>'probably run the whole thing on VM -- most large companies are doing that now for there employees'

I assume you are not mixing up running a virtual machine on a server to host a Windows Citrix Server / running a Virtual Windows session for a remote client and running a Windows Server to host a Citrix application. The first is a Virtual Machine, the second is just a hosted application. You didn't really separate the two concepts.

My corporation runs Windows Server and has Citrix hosted applications for our main five business apps. I detest our setup for controlling access (which was handed to me and I am in the process of changing) which used a Juniper VPN host to allow clients access to specific servers, but that is a separate story.

Re:Thin Client?

[Akaihiryuu]

It doesn't...they are describing a thin client. While I agree that thin clients are nice in a lot of situations, there is no way in hell I would use a thin client as my primary OS. And I will not use a thin client at all (well, outside of a corporate/work environment anyway) unless *I* control the server for it. If I want to put a couple thin client terminals around my house that run off my Linux server, fine. I'm curious how they think a thin client will work as a primary OS anyway. It won't...you have to have SOME OS on the computer. And I really don't think anyone is going to be using PXE over the internet.

Re:This is great news!

[Arionhawk]

I hope you're being sarcastic, because Midori is just a feminine Japanese name meaning green.

Re:Huh?

[bigstrat2003]

No, she's an anime character!

Defense against Linux boxes?

[Sockatume]

The Eee and its ilk have shown that people are willing to buy Windowsless boxes, which is an affront to Microsoft's business model. You have to wonder if Midori is a "plan B" to allow them to continue to get revenue from Linux users. Alan, Bob and Clarence may well be willing to pay $10 a month for "Windows access" on their Eees if it lets them use Office, and this way Microsoft have a guaranteed revenue stream whatever OS people actually buy with their machine. Especially if it's agressively marketed and bundled.

Proprietary Javascript

[c0d3r]

This probably means that M$ is going to add a bunch of proprietaries to Javascript through IE and start adding language features to make a proprietary platform. Even so more, probably access to the win32 api via javascript. Even more so, probably JITed c#, wait.. wasn't java supposed to do this?

What's old is new again...

[_Knots]

This is almost exactly the same thing, in spirit at least, as Inferno (http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/), which started in 1995 and has been under continuous development since. Managed kernel, runs on real hardware, uses software isolation between managed threads... oh, and has code flying, for real, right now. :)

Re:Thin Client?

[mlts]

It seems that every ten years, someone re-invents the thin client.

First it was dumb terminals connected to a mainframe, then to a serial port box so one can connect to a UNIX box.
Then came XStations which used various (direct, indirect, broadcast) forms of XDMCP to find a host to download microcode and run apps from.
Then, it was JavaStations where people talked about fast broadband access to stuff on the ISP's server, and not to worry about all their private documents being stored offsite.

This just seems like more of the same, perhaps an offshoot of cloud computing. It will work for a couple niches here and there, but as a whole, Net based operating systems will fail, as people want to keep their stuff private on their own systems.

Same disadvantages apply. Security of stored files for example -- I trust my external TrueCrypt encrypted drive that uses both a long passphrase and a set of keyfiles a lot more to securely store my Word documents than I do some random ISP's computer.

Trivia ...

[Bob-taro]

"Midori" is Japanese for "green". It is also a common female first name.

I don't know how either would apply to an OS, unless it has some connection to this.

Some confusion about Singularity / Midori

[argent]

With the ability today to run an OS, applications -- and even an entire PC desktop of applications -- in a virtual container using a hypervisor, the need to have the OS and applications installed natively on a PC is becoming less and less, said Brian Madden, an independent technology analyst.

Brian Madden is either talking about something else, or he's confused by references to hypervisors elsewhere. Midori will run under Hypervisors... but as one possible deployment of the OS, not as an essential part of the system. Singularity is more like ".NET" taken to the next level, with the entire OS running without hardware memory protection (let alone hypervisors), so it can run anywhere... even as a module inside another application... without any specific hardware support.

Interesting part is not that it's web-based...

[NittanyTuring]

...but that it is based on a new programming model. Many ideas are coming from the programming languages research community. All code will be type-safe and memory-safe. Interaction with the OS and other processes will make much more use of immutable data structures. Concurrency will be pervasive. It will be like one giant Erlang environment.

Wouldn't really work outside of America

[shdowhawk]

I mention America specifically as a generic example that everyone understands for one reason. "Unlimited Internet Bandwidth". This type of a model (even if it is a model where MOST of the OS is on current hardware but then randomly checks the internet for it's main "modular" pieces, vs having it all on the Hard Drive as we current do) cannot work well because other countries actually have to pay for speicifc amounts of bandwidth.

And even now, I've read random articles talking about ISPs (in america) which are considering moving to the "Pay for Bandwidth Tiers" models. WTF is the point of getting an OS that eats up all of your bandwidth just to stay turned on and be running a screen saver? It would need to randomly connect out and update things after all...

Some might argue that this is already being done, and that "caching" would solve the problem ... except that caching would negate the whole purpose of an online-OS (it needs to always have the latest thing to work well). Currently windows ALREADY connects out and randomly checks things and uses bandwidth, but it's NOT downloading entire modules as something like that would require.

Sorry, but if I lived somewhere with Pay-As-You-Go internet (I'm considering moving to Australia) I sure as hell wouldn't pay more money to an ISP on a monthly basis just so that I can use the "latest and greatest" windows.

Vaporware

[rsmith]

Anyone remember Cairo? ;-)

Re:Not Web Based

[pohl]

Midori is being designed in such a way that components of the OS communicate with each other in a location independent manner. API calls to a local machine are no different than API calls to a remote machine.

This strikes me as being similar to a design goal shared by Plan 9, and its spiritual descendant Inferno, both of which were based around the 9P protocol.