Obese Windows
(credit: The New York Times)
Microsoft Windows has put on a lot of weight over the years says The New York Times posting by Randall Stross, Windows Could Use a Rush of Fresh Air.
Beginning as a thin veneer for older software code, it has become an obese monolith built on an ancient frame. Adding features, plugging security holes, fixing bugs, fixing the fixes that never worked properly, all while maintaining compatibility with older software and hardware — is there anything Windows doesn’t try to do?
Painfully visible are the inherent design deficiencies of a foundation that was never intended to support such weight. Windows seems to move an inch for every time that Mac OS X or Linux laps it.
The best solution to the multiple woes of Windows is starting over. Completely. Now.
The posting goes on to say
In some crucial ways, however, Microsoft would enjoy advantages in developing its own “Windows OS X,” as we might call it, that Apple did not: the power of today’s quad-core machines and sophisticated virtualization software would allow older software applications and hardware peripherals to be used indefinitely with little or no performance penalty, making a clean start far easier for customers to accept.
A MONOLITHIC operating system like Windows perpetuates an obsolete design. We don’t need to load up our machines with bloated layers we won’t use.
Thank you Randall Stross for summing up the state of Windows. Unfortunately, as long as cash flow keeps Microsoft in the black, I don’t think Microsoft will deviate from the Windows core.
I don’t think Microsoft has designed an operating system from scratch, except for a research exercises that produced “Singularity.” DOS was purchased from Seattle Computer Company, 16-bit Windows had DOS at the core, and 32-bit Windows NT and its siblings, were derived from the Digital Equipment Corporation VMS and RSX-11 operating systems.
Writing an operating system and surviving in the market place, is an extremely difficult thing to do. Operating system programming is most likely the most difficult kind of programming there is, and it takes years to mature the code. Take Unix for an example.
Unix is approaching 40 years of age. It was designed to be portable, multi-tasking, and multi-user. The surviving siblings demonstrate that the design is still a winner.
Common contemporary operating systems, except Microsoft Windows, are derived from Unix. This includes Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, HP/UX, AIX, Free BSD, Open BSD, etc…
Microsoft looks to be stuck with Windows until they eat crow and buy into the Unix universe. I think they would be committing a slow and painful suicide if they try to go it alone.
…John
