A different kind of Windows?
from The PC InformantWhen people want something to happen, they often start talking about how their hopes are actually going to be realized even when the probabilities are not high. Those who found Windows Vista to be slow and bloated started to seize on any scrap of information to project that Microsoft was going to come out with a new slimmed down, possibly modular operating system. Some even speculated that Windows 7 would be such a system. But as noted previously, informed observers like Ed Bott gave that idea no chance.
Still, hope springs eternal and if not Windows 7, how about Windows 8? Mary Jo Foley has kept a continuing commentary on the possibilities of a successor to the present Windows kernel and in a new post on the subject reports what she has heard (unofficially) about some ongoing Microsoft projects involving alternate operating systems. Among other things she says:
Read MoreI wrote a bit about these incubation projects — codenamed “RedHawk” and “MinSafe” – back in July. Since that time, I’ve gotten a bit more information on these projects and have summarized my findings in a new article I wrote for Redmond Developer News. (And just to be clear, Microsoft officials are still unwilling to talk to me about any of these incubation projects; I am hearing about them from various, unnamed but knowledgeable sources.)
A quick refresher: RedHawk and MinSafe (two different code names for essentially the same thing) are projects from Microsoft’s Developer Division and Windows unit, respectively. The pair are paving the way for Midori, the distributed operating system project under development by Microsoft Senior VP of Technical Strategy Eric Rudder & Co. The word is that the Midori folks are looking to RedHawk as the best way for Midori to get a commercial back-end compiler and minimal runtime.
I heard from one of my sources recently that it’s not coincidental that MinSafe and MinWin have similar names. MinWin — Microsoft’s project to create a slimmed-down Windows core — is related to MinSafe. If I were a betting woman, I’d guess that MinSafe is one piece of MinWin, and most likely, the piece most likely to be commercialized first.
Microsoft’s goal with RedHawk, MinSafe and MinWin seems to be to find a way to make Windows less bloated and more manageable, while creating as little disruption as possible for its developers and customers.
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