Windows 8: One OS to Rule Them All? (Can Microsoft tackle desktop and mobile with one OS?)

Windows 8 is on the horizon. Microsoft has designed the next-generation flagship operating system with a split personality that straddles the line between the familiar Windows 7 desktop, and the flashy Metro interface used with Windows Phone 7. Can Microsoft successfully tackle desktop and mobile with one OS?

Microsoft is not new to mobile devices. It had a smartphone before the Apple iPhone revolution came along, and it was pushing tablet PCs before the Apple iPad made it cool. But, as long as Microsoft’s history with mobile devices is, so is its stubborn desire to make everything about its Windows OS.

The original Windows Mobile was--as much as it could be--Windows ported onto a much smaller form factor. Windows tablets were more or less Windows laptops, but with the physical keyboard removed and replaced by a stylus for input.

What Microsoft failed to realize, and what Apple and Google have since proven, is that the mobile experience is different than the desktop experience. But, Apple has been moving in a direction to converge iOS and Mac OS X in some ways, and Google seems to blur the line some with Android and its Chrome OS--so Microsoft apparently wants to double down with an OS that can simultaneously run desktops and tablets.

Fair enough. The Windows 8 developer preview version I have now is pretty rough around the edges, but it has some pizazz, and definitely shows some promise. It still seems sort of “Jekyll and Hyde”, though--it can either be a flashy Metro UI tablet, or it can be a Windows 7 desktop.

I've had good luck (recently) with drivers on Linux. By recently I mean in the last 4 - 5 years. Before that, yeah, it was very hit or miss. Last time I connected a new printer to my home network (Epson, a name brand) introducing it to Ubuntu took a few mouse clicks and it pulled down the driver from the net and was ready in less than 2 min or so. The (at that time) Win XP system needed the driver disk and lots of fumbling around to get it to recognize it. My wife's Mac (OS/X) still "loses" the handle on the printer from time to time and you have to delete it and re-install it all over again via a procedure that is the worst of the 3 systems. (manually enter raw IP addresses, guesses at queue names, then go and find a driver for it, etc.)

As for the UIs. Between work and home I end up using XP, Win7, Red Hat, and Ubuntu. Red Hat has KDE 3.x, Ubuntu was Gnome 2.x based until the Unity fiasco started. :-( Honestly, they're all pretty good UIs IMHO, some differences, but none stand out as being really great compared to the others. Unity is the most different, buggiest, and worst of the lot. Like I said, bad enough I'm going to switch OSes for no other reason than that. I could slap Gnome or KDE or another window manager on Ubuntu, but I'm just lazy enough to want to run my distro "out of the box" plus it is as good of an excuse as any to fool with Mepis again and a KDE 4.x UI, see how that works. Yes, I realize those reasons are somewhat contradictory. ;-)

I believe there is.

I think the biggest risk is going with Arm and Intel/x86 based processors. How will the apps work between them? Will all apps have 3 different installs? one for each x64, x86, and Arm?

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