With DaaS Windows Coming, Say Goodbye To Your PC As You Know It (computerworld.com)

Ostracus shares a report from Computerworld, written by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: Microsoft is getting ready to replace Windows 10 with the Microsoft Managed Desktop. This will be a "desktop-as-a-service" (DaaS) offering. Instead of owning Windows, you'll "rent" it by the month. Microsoft Managed Desktop is a new take. It avoids the latency problem of the older Windows DaaS offerings by keeping the bulk of the operating system on your PC. But you'll no longer be in charge of your Windows PC. Instead, it will be automatically provisioned and patched for you by Microsoft. Maybe you'll be OK with that.

Microsoft has been getting away from the old-style desktop model for years now. Just look at Office. Microsoft would much rather have you rent Office via Office 365 than buy Microsoft Office and use it for years. Microsoft Managed Desktop is the first move to replacing "your" desktop with a rented desktop. By 2021, I expect the Managed Desktop to be to traditional Windows what Office 365 is to Office today: the wave of the future. Or maybe tsunami, depending on your perspective. I'm not happy with this development. I'm old enough to remember the PC revolution. We went from depending on mainframes and Unix boxes for computing power to having the real power on our desktops. It was liberating. Now Microsoft, which helped lead that revolution, is trying to return us to that old, centralized control model.

Comments

Re:We don't have a usable desktop operating system

[UnknownSoldier]

> Linux has VERY poor documentation

Not just Linux but a lot of GPL software does as well in my experience. :-(((

Proof: How many man pages actually have examples.

This is one area the *BSDs do better. (Security too, but that's a separate discussion.)

Re:Way to make money? Force customers to pay month

[TheRealMindChild]

ReactOS will never be a viable Windows substitute. Ever. A HUGE advantage Windows has over even Linux is its platforms. MFC and ATL, Terminal Services, Internet Explorer/Shdocvw.dll, VB6 runtime, etc will just never be implemented. While it may be binary compatible, the software backend just doesn't exist. And if you are ok with Windows sans everything that makes Windows Windows, then you can just move to Linux or something else just the same.

Click bait

[darkain]

What everyone here seems to fail, and it is tagged as such right at the very top of the article, is that this isn't journalism. This article is one person's opinion piece. That is it.

This entire thing, this article, something that has gone fucking viral all day in every goddamn tech site that I visit, is nothing more than an oversensationalistic bullshit opinion piece.

It is a click-bait viral article to drum up views to get advertising dollars, and all you fell for it.

This is not a replacement for Windows 10

[tofus]

The title of this article and the ComputerWorld article are misleading. If you read the original ZDNet article that is being linked to, you will find that this is just Microsoft trying to take a piece of the DaaS market. This will be offered as an additional service, primarily intended for enterprise users. Not your desktop at home.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-got-a-new-plan-for-managing-windows-10-devices-for-a-monthly-fee/

Re:Way to make money? Force customers to pay month

[Tough Love]

That would be ChromeOS, which already has window dragging support coyly tucked away in developer options. Also now runs Android apps and full Linux distros (in a vm in a container, how's that for paranoia).

She is awesome, and Google Docs etc

[raymorris]

> you must have a pretty awesome mom if she wrote linux shell scripts...

She is awesome, thanks. She wrote them for Unix, all the same utilities and most of the same conventions are on Linux.

> I wish there were some stuff to make the transition from Windows hell to Linux easier

Are you the type who enjoys fiddling with the registry? For most people, the switch is transparent. Chrome and Firefox still look and work exactly the same. Facebook is no different, Google Docs is exactly the same.

If you enjoy fiddling with the OS itself, Linux is very different and much easier. It's all about combining simple parts that are reused all over the place. One such simple thing is "everything is a file". Reading or searching your hard drive sectors works exactly the same as reading and searching a text file, because the bare drive is a file. Each partition is a file. A network connection is a file, an email is a file, even your keyboard is a file, which can be read like any other file (though slowly, unless you're a very fast typist). To search ANYTHING you can use the "grep" command. That'll search your drive sectors, it'll search your email, it'll search whatever because grep searches files, and everything is a file. That makes it much easier to learn because for example there is one tool that searches everything. There is another tool called "sort", which sorts - anything. You don't have to learn how to sort different kinds of things with different programs.

That's why the uproar about systemd - it's not a simple, small tool that can be used with other simple, small tools to build whatever you want, to whatever level of complexity you want. Like Microsoft Office, systemd is a big, complex thing with a lot to learn about it. Very not *nix style.

Re:Way to make money? Force customers to pay month

[Junta]

I have two current consoles and I pay no monthly fee...

I also don't even look at a game if there is a monthly fee associated with it.