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Microsoft's Looming 'Single Windows Ecosystem'
jfruhlinger writes "Xbox on Windows 8? A shared PC-tablet OS? Hints have been coming fast and furious from Microsoft about what their next-generation OS strategy will look like. It may be that at its heart, Microsoft is doing what it should have been doing for the last 5 years: building a set of modular OS components for different platforms that work together when need be, rather than a group of competing and incompatible OSes with superficially similar branding. In other words, the company may be getting out of its own way, at last."
Considering the strength of Windows comes from its backwards compatibility with a large field of Programs(before they were called Apps), it makes sense that Microsoft will want to leverage that over all available media.
It's a very good decision, which is surprising in it's own right.
What will likely happen is that it'll end up like recent Ubuntu releases. In case you haven't been following Ubuntu recently, they've apparently tried to support all sorts of devices, from netbooks to laptops to desktops to workstations to servers. The outcome hasn't been good, and many users have been very unhappy.
What works for one type of device often doesn't work very well for others. Take Unity, for instance. While it might be only slightly shitty on netbooks, it's not pleasant to use on laptops, it's hellish on desktops, and it's an absolute disaster if you're using a workstation. Sure, you can switch to some other desktop environment, but it's a pain in the ass that one shouldn't have to endure!
It's often good to specialize, and not be overly-generic. Being generic often means that you can't do anything well.
One Ring to rule them all...
Hey, at least it will make the jobs of the virus, trojan, and rootkit writers easier -- cover multiple platforms with a single zero-day! That's progress!
It defines what they have been doing already. Reusing their investments in DirectX, .Net, SQL Server, the NT Kernel, Office and Avalon/WPF/Silverlight on different platforms and media. What else do you think "OS components" means? There's absolutely no news or big shift in direction here. This is basically pseudo-technical sounding marketing tripe.
The only ugly duck in the family was Windows CE, and it's dead. Let's move on, shall we!
All those connected platforms running one OS. This kind of exacerbates the monoculture drawbacks.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
"Sure Linux has been doing that already for years, but it was designed that way -- Windows wasn't."
You say that as if what Linux did was a good thing.
There's a reason MS dominated the desktop. They made the desktop work. While some Unix person would just deal with slow graphic performance on a consumer PC, MS did all kinds of tricks and integration to make it work. Just try windows 95 on an old computer. Then try Linux around that time. You will not find it comparable. Windows 95 produces a superior experience by far.
*nix might have been designed a certain way... but its why they lost the war on the desktop. They built it in an ideal manner and closed their eyes when things didn't work nice. They ignored their customers.
It's the same reason why Office became popular. MS did things like save the file in binary to improve save performance. A more *nix minded person would have insisted on a 'proper' file format.
Microsoft has plenty of smart people who were more than aware of the *nix way of building an OS... most of this stuff was figured out a long time ago.
And so MS begins the long transition to the ideal OS, dealing with backward compatibility... the whole works. Can they do it... who knows. Will it be successful... who knows.
But I don't think there's any to be proud of in saying Linux was designed that way.
There's a reason MS dominated the desktop. They made the desktop work.
No, they made the desktop cheap. Windows 3.1 was a joke compared to Unix workstations or even Macs of that era, but a PC with Windows cost less than a Mac and far less than a Sun workstation.
Actually, that Grub2 shit pisses me off more. Tried 11.04 on 4 PCs, Grub2 by itself made it fail on alf of them. On one, a very vanilla mb+CPU/IGP+RAM.HD (no fancy dual-booting stuff, mind you), Grub2 just hung. On the other one, a Nettop with too many partitions for its own good, Grub2 just listed at least one entry for each partition, including the data ones, the restore ones, in a random order. Talk about user-repulsing wall of text as a first impresison of Linux... and don't even dream about firing gedit and editing that menu into shape: it's the new, better grub ! You can't do that anymore !
It ain't broke... Let's fix it !
Then, and only then, do you get to that Unity other shit, where the dock just HAS to be smack in the middle of my dual-screen setup, 'coz letting put it on the side would just be.. .would just be... would just BE ! Next version will put the dock across the middle of the screen, 'coz it's so nice, people need to see it more ! And don't try and put folders on there, 'coz no one needs shortcuts to folders !
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Sure, a Windows NT machine was far less expensive than any of its competition (most large shops skipped 3.11), but what made it work was the simple fact that you could take something directly out of Excel and dump it into Word. You could connect Excel to your dBase or Paradox database, write a macro to do something with it, and print it in near WYSIWYG on any printer. Absolutely no one else could do that at the time. Not Sun, not AS400, not Linux, not Apple.
My mom's coworker had three computers on her desk, a Wang word processor, an Apple running VisiCalc for accounting, and some ugly CPM machine with the customer and case file database. To get data from the customer database she brought it up on the screen and typed it into the Wang. Forget KVMs, none of the three machines had even vaguely compatible plugs on the keyboards or monitors. You'll never hear her bad-talking Windows, because she remembers what her work space was like before.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Tablet PCs failed because they tried to be PCs first and tablets a distant second. The UI was never properly optimized for touch, for example - it was assumed that a stylus and handwriting input is all you need. That is why it fell on its face.
It's cute how Slashdotters think Linux is the center of the universe. Linux on the desktop is so statistically insignificant as to be practically non-existent, and platforms like Android are based on APIs that simply run onto of Linux but were written by commercial companies like Google (a proprietary search and advertising company, no less).
It's cute how Slashdotters think Linux is the center of the universe.
Linux is not the centre of the universe. Linux is the glue that holds the universe together[*]. Even Windows PCs would be a damn sight less useful if it weren't for the presence of Linux everywhere from Google to your home router.
Linux on the desktop is so statistically insignificant as to be practically non-existent, and platforms like Android are based on APIs that simply run onto of Linux but were written by commercial companies like Google (a proprietary search and advertising company, no less).
That's a non sequitur. Since when does liking Linux - and using it professionally or for fun - have anything to do with its commercialisation? Free is still Free. And for the less dogmatic among us, even proprietary software has a place in the Linux world.
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[*] Albeit in a wonderfully inconsistent, semi-anarchic way. ObXKCD: http://xkcd.com/224/
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.