Microsoft Getting Ready For Non-Windows Era

Can you imagine a world without Windows? Even if you may not, Microsoft is contemplating just such a world. According to reports, the software giant is working on a project code-named Midori which will be an Internet-centric, non-Windows OS. The report was broken by David Worthington of Software Development Times, who wrote, "Microsoft is incubating a componentised non-Windows operating system known as Midori, which is being architected from the ground up to tackle challenges that Redmond has determined cannot be met by simply evolving its existing technology."

He further added, "Midori is an offshoot of Microsoft Research’s Singularity operating system, the tools and libraries of which are completely managed code. Midori is designed to run directly on native hardware (x86, x64 and ARM), be hosted on the Windows Hyper-V hypervisor, or even be hosted by a Windows process."

This is good news as Microsoft's current OSes have stagnated and the company needs to develop 'new' products, instead of just 'stuffing' them and then doing some 'face lifting'.

Reportedly, the project is so critical to Microsoft that the company has chosen Eric Rudder to head the project. In September 2005, Microsoft appointed him as senior vice president to work directly with Bill Gates. Rudder focusses on some of the company's key advanced development efforts as well as overall technical strategy.

Microsoft is said to be building everything from ground up because when its engineers first designed their OS, there was no such Internet; so keeping that in mind it was designed. Today Internet has become more pervasive so they need to keep in mind cloud and thus build the OS focussing on the fact that "users move across multiple devices, consume and share resources remotely, and the applications that they use are a composite of local and remote components and services. To that end, Midori will focus on concurrency, both for distributed applications and local ones."

However, don't expect Midori to be out in another 2-3 years; right now it's time for Windows 7.

GNU/Linux and Mac guys, are you listening?