Off topic: future of Windows

A little off topic, but since I have put the effort into evaluating Windows 7 v. Windows XP as well as OpenSolaris w/ GNOME 2.24 and openSUSE with KDE 4.3, I thought I would share (for the record, I am still using openSUSE 11.1/KDE 3.5.10 for actually doing work! Once they fix the bugs/glitches in the Kontact PIM--an Outlook killer--I will switch over full time).

I have been using Windows 7 for testing for the last few weeks and it seems so far to be as stable as Windows XP (only one BSOD so far) and unscrewed up a lot of Vista's folly.

The biggest implication is that for most business users is that they can probably expect to make the transition on their next laptops (which always come with some OS pre-installed) rather than having to request that Vista be downgraded to Windows XP.

That said, it looks like Windows is nearing the end of its usefulness, and even Windows 7 lags behind Linux which has a range of graphic user interfaces (KDE 4.3 in particular is visually stunning, fast and very easy to use) can run most Windows software (via WINE or in some virtual machine), and is much more stable (three weeks w/ one BSOD is pretty good for Windows, most Linux desktop users only reboot for kernel updates and unexpected/unrecoverable crashes are less than once a year in my experience. Laptop support is still a bit of an issue, since support for hot switching display settings and problems w/ WiFi after suspend-resume isn't quite there, but for the most part, things work well, easily and predictably).

As far as the future of Windows: I predict they will take (another) a page from Apple and pitch the whole OS and start over (well, Apple started with a venerable open source Unix) with a microkernal design (maybe even doing to Minix* what Apple did to BSD), security by design, with legacy support via WINE. The big part of the OS will be CLR (the .NET runtime standard) with a return to having POSIX as a Windows service (it was dropped from NT 4.0 along w/ OS/2 support when M$ released Win2K). This will be a change for Microsoft, since it will give them a modern OS, but at the cost of making it easier for application developers (including games) to use the same code base to generate software for Linux, Mac OS/X and Windows. This will run contrary to the long standing practice of making it as hard as possible for Windows developers to port their software to non-Windows platforms.

Beyond the fortune telling (which only time will bear out): KDE 4 is available for pretty much any OS which supports C++ and for which there are QT4 libraries. This includes Windows! You can replace the entire Windows desktop with KDE 4 and enjoy all the eye candy and fancy visual effects that Microsoft had to drop from Vista and Windows 7. I don't know if you can drop it in as easily on Mac OS/X, but it runs fine on just about any other UNIX-like OSs with a few odd balls that I don't know for sure (like QNX).

So, if you use XP and are happy, you are not missing any major functionality that I could fine. If youa re using Vista you should probably upgrade unless you got lucky and everything works. Once KDE 4.3 (currently in release candidate status) is stable, you will have a richer UI and more stable OS with Linux. If you are buying a new laptop, it is worth waiting until the vendor offers Windows 7 and go with that, rather than downgrade to XP or get stuck with Vista.

*Minix is a "UNIX-like" operating system that has some similarities to Linux, but uses a very different kernel design. Linux has the option to add modules to the kernel, and you can end up with a very functional, but large, runtime. For desktop and modern laptop PCs this isn't a big deal. For running Linux on your toaster, cell phone, wrist watch or other minimal platforms it usually takes some work to get a conventional distribution to fit on a non-traditional platform. Minix treats most of those things people usually think of as core kernal functions as services and this gives you some very interesting options for slimming things down to the bare minimum, and, if done right, is theoretically easier to design an ultra-stable platform. There are other microkernal OS's out there (QNX being one--it is stable enough that it is used for nuclear power plant control, the controls on a submarine, and the guideance and launch systems used on ICBMs).

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