So it won't take up 30+ Gb of disk space then, and run like a pig on three legs?
Will it run faster in the cloud? Does that mean my private information will not only get hacked faster, it'll have ready=access provided to the NSA?
Sounds like someone is having fun with rumors. First, Microsoft is responding to a market where its biggest competitors do store most people's data on line and smart phones and tablets have become appendages to a remarkable percentage of humans, literate or not.
Second, Linux/Unix/BE/Berkeley OS/Zenix/... are hacks that serve their purpose for proprietary value added resellers. The Apple model has always needed to restrict OEM developers because their business was created to serve a limited market. That is part of why Xerox, which created the Windows environment, knew it couldn't productize it, and sold rights to Apple. Many of the core developers of the “Star” then went to DEC, where there were discussions of the tablet, and working samples almost twenty five years ago.
OpenVMS is certainly solid, but those who worked inside VMS and Windows NT know the truth; Windows beginning with NT is VMS with some embellishments. The number I heard was 600 million dollars for DEC not to sue after Dave Cutler settled permanently at Microsoft. Over thirty years ago, Cutler, whose Marine discipline blended with architectural brilliance, predicted that VMS was clearly the most stable and extensible minicomputer OS, should become the world's standard. DEC couldn't make the transition, like many companies built upon hardware manufacture, and, after two efforts to retrieve Cutler, gave up and worked with him after he moved with part of his crew to Microsoft.
.Net is the evolved VMS dynamic link libraries, using the old concept of a virtual machine to isolate functionality from differences in processor architecture. There is no way Microsoft will try to force enterprise companies to trust a ‘cloud’ service. Computer hardware is cheap. Most people not behind faraday cages and necessarily disconnected from the Internet are a big part of Microsoft's business, and will continue to be serviced.
Many at FR will remember that Microsoft Windows NT once supported MIPS, Alpha, Power PC, X86, and ARM, and would have supported any other vendor's architecture if the vendor paid for porting and support costs. Remember, DEC created the StrongARM, twenty years ago to address the low-power needs of several enormous customers. DEC’s semiconductor group applied their knowledge to the clean ARM architecture, something they had lots of experience doing, tripling the base clock speed on ARM-conformant processors.
While it was handy, as a Unix bastard (mix of System V and Berkeley) developer, to bring up the source when writing, or to fix something, Cutler and his crew, now at Microsoft did the right thing and decoupled everything they could. Letting VARs and OEMs make changes to privileged code in the kernel puts the reliability of the system at risk, and has been used by some software vendors to hog resources to make their application appear to be a superior performer. “Wizards” love the job stability created by Unix and its hundreds of variants, and appreciated the minimal start-up cost. Maintaining a proprietary OS is a nightmare, only justifiable for executing a proprietary application. An employer of mine was the world leader in their technology, but had twice as many engineers supporting the Unix variant than working on enhancing their unique market advantage.
The current Windows RT model is not unlike Cutler's ELN from twenty five years ago. But at the time, there wasn't enough profit from the real time sector to justify the project. It was the antithesis of the spaghetti coded real time kernels still causing many companies headaches. Real time Linux was always a joke (except to marketing), because Linux, based upon Unix and its predecessors, was created for text processing and was not “event driven” like VMS' predecessor RSX-11, also by Dave Cutler and his associates. Time will tell if the clever architecture under Windows RT will gain market share. Technically (and the architecture is well-described on the Microsoft site), it is full of good ideas and with a rich development environment, but the markets will tell.
Computer market is saturated. People are not replacing their computers any more often than they replace their automobiles. Software doesn’t wear out (despite some claims here on FR.) People don’t see a reason to upgrade their programs to the latest and the greatest bloated release. What to do? Inventions, inventions, fads. Tablets, phablets. All still not enough. Let’s have a subscription based operating system. Like cable or satellite TV. Like satellite radio. Suckers will pay up each month.
Microsoft is now just another government agency, the Ministry of Computer Control.
I too will be going to Linux here soon. I just wish a Linux distributor would make an OS specifically for a desktop computer.
Let's face it, everything Linux makes is for server operations and is not specifically geared towards the desktop. Linux has a golden opportunity to gain a huge portion of the computing market, why don't someone take it?
“Windows 10 might be controlled using eyesight”
Right. And I also heard that Windows 11 will be controlled with farts.
No, a million, trillion times no.
The only way I will buy cloud based software is if my employer foots the bill, ie Adobe Creative Cloud. As far as using cloud based software for consumer use, no thanks I got enough bills.
A terminally dumb idea.
Not only will the technologies change but the business models will change right along with them. This has *always* been true. we don’t really know where the technology is going to end up (OK, cloud you say but is this really a full description?) so I’m pretty sure we don’t yet know what business models will emerge.
Having said all of that - M$ stopped being relevant about the time Gates left. OK, OK, they still do some business related to MS Exchange and some more business related to servers and AD but they’re basically coasting on past success here. I think the smart people have mostly left M$ and the ones left are probably tied up in knots by the suits and the bean counters.
What I’m saying is that I do not know what the computing landscape looks like 10 years out or even 5 years out but I do think that M$ will continue it’s well established slide into irrelevancy as far as setting the future course. To the extent that they continue to sell product it will be a pure inertia play. My $.02.
There already are cloud-based Operating systems
http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/solaris/solaris11/overview/index.html