Windows Is Dead – Long Live Midori?

parvenu74 writes "A story from Infoworld is suggesting that the days of Windows are numbered and that Microsoft is preparing a web-based operating system code-named Midori as a successor. Midori is reported to be an offshoot of Microsoft Research's Singularity OS, an all-managed code microkernel OS which leverages a technology called software isolated processes (SIPs) to overcome the traditional inter-thread communications issues of microkernel OSes."

TLA conflict

[Bryansix]

There is a Three Letter Acronym conflict with SIP as SIP already means Session Initiation Protocol [wikipedia.org].

Huh?

[circlingthesun]

I though Midori was an open source web browser

Midori is a Linux distro from Transmeta

[3seas]

Midori Linux from Transmeta - Linus T. [sourceforge.net]

Guess MS will just have to change the name....

This is great news!

[Channard]

I hope this is the first of many operating systems to be named after porn stars. [wikipedia.org]

And a drink

[T-Kir]

A green liqueur called Midori® [midori-world.com] and is a noted brand, it would be very interesting if MS did ever release an OS under that name but I think their legal team would do their homework on that one.

Re:Here's hoping....

[Anonymous Coward]

Like Tux, I'm sitting, and smiling... pondering a world where microsoft leaves all the desktops for a strange new world wide web... and then never comes back. Then linux will remain to fill the void: The cold cold operating systemless void.

L

Not Web Based

[ThinkFr33ly]

Midori will *not* be "web based", whatever the hell that means.

Being "internet centric" and connected to "the cloud" is not the same has being web based.

Midori is being designed in such a way that components of the OS communicate with each other in a location independent manner. API calls to a local machine are no different than API calls to a remote machine. These calls will also be "message based" (there are lots of ways to interpret that) and be transactional in nature.

Above these kinds of low level things, there will be a much tighter and more integrated connection to the network. Your profile will roam with you no matter where you are using P2P style communications similar to how Live Mesh works, although supported by core OS components instead of via RSS synchronization.

So if your idea of a "web based" OS is like what I've described above, then yes... it's web based.

But if you're thinking about a subscription-based model where a user must boot their OS "from the web" like a dumb terminal, then you're way off.

Lastly, this thing is at least 7 to 10 years off. Windows 7 will ship sometime next year (or perhaps early in 2010), and Midori isn't even out of MS Research yet. If we saw something like this before Windows 8 / 2015, I'd be damn surprised.

Re:Midori is a Linux distro from Transmeta

[TorKlingberg]

It's Japanese for "green".

Re:Thin Client?

[Legion_SB]

The "crash" jokes may be old, but depending on usage patterns, Windows XP still requires a healthy regimen of "reinstall and start fresh" for long-term use.

In my XP usage lately, I have been unamused at how my torrent client starts throwing "insufficient resources" errors, and the entire XP windowing system starts failing to draw windows correctly, even though there's absolutely no lack of free RAM or hard drive space. Looks like it's time for me to dig that XP disk out again...

Re:Prediction

[negRo_slim]

Bad guys would no longer need physical access to your box, Only access to your network.

Any computer connected to a network is a security risk on one level or another.

Re:Thin Client?

[Lumpy]

Actually midori works great. I have hacked on it for over 3 years now.

http://midori.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

It has been a embedded linux distro that Linus himself helped form for nearly 5 years now...

I see that microsoft has even started stealing other names, or they are fully embracing linux and OSS finally.

Could do it in BIOS, but stupid as hell to do so

[elrous0]

I guess theoretically you could build a BIOS that automatically connected to the net and downloaded your OS at every bootup. But that would be about the dumbest, most inefficient, and most laughably bandwidth-intensive computer setup I can possibly imagine.

Re:Prediction

[quanticle]

Banks are companies, as are brokerages. If you bought a house, there is a stunning amount of personal data stored with your realtor and title agency. Schools contain your entire academic record. Hell, the big 3 credit agencies have records that are very easy to access.

All of these institutions are covered by privacy laws. Example, my school cannot just give my academic record away to anyone that pays. The person asking must either be an employee of the state Department of Education, or a third party that I or my parents have given explicit permission to. Banks, realtors, brokerages, are covered by even stricter laws.

Contrast this with the situation regarding Google, Facebook, et. al. There are no laws covering your personal e-mail. There's no privacy (implied or otherwise) on your Facebook page. If there were, I'm sure that many more of us would be comfortable using these services.

Re:Thin Client?

[Buelldozer]

Never caught on? How can you say that?

A TON of companies are using either straight TS or TS with Citrix on top. It's a dynamite solution for remote workers, helping to secure data, keeping a standardized environment, and providing usable desktops to low power users.

In the SMB space I see clients with as few as 4 people in the office with some kind of TS server installed because of how well it allows you to work remotely.

"Back to the mainframe" has caught on in a HUGE way.

Re:Prediction

[quanticle]

The bank does have all that information. However, the bank is also covered by federal and state privacy laws that prohibit it from disclosing that information to third parties. Many of these online companies, on the other hand, base their entire business model around disclosing the data that you provide them to affiliates.

Re:Prediction

[hamid2c]

About a year ago, I read some of the papers published by Singularity researchers. As much as I remember, there weren't anything about a thin client or a web-based OS. In fact, the main idea of their OS is using programming languages techniques (static type-safety and static memory-safety) to isolate different processes. If you look at Singularity from a hardware view , there is just one big address space (and its corresponding process) but in reality there are many Software Isolated Processes managed by something like JVM or CLR (.Net run-time). As a consequence, the OS gets rid of all of those hardware-costs related to management of different address spaces in Memory Unit. To the extent I remember from my OS course, current operating systems use virtual memory to prevent one process from reading or modifying another process's address space (every process has one big address space from 0 to for example 4 GB and there is no way to have any kinda access to address spaces of other processes. i.e. the physical memory is completely hidden from the processes and they can see only their own virtual memory). As you might know, Virtual memory is completely interlinked with hardware and has its own cost. However, if they don't use hardware to isolate processes, what they use instead? To answer this question, suppose that you have a program that you are sure about its memory safety. That is the program doesn't violate its own memory boundary. In such a case you don't have to check this invariant at run-time on every memory access (or give the program a virtual address space). In fact, Singularity verifies the memory safety of every program before running it. Programs are not pure binaries and are some kinda intermediate languages like java byte-code or MSIL that can be easily verified. You may think by this kinda verification you have a bigger opportunity to download and execute codes on the fly something like JVM and java applets. After all, with having these light processes, you can think of a micro-kernel OS consisting of many processes communicating with each other.

Re:Prediction

[djp928]

You don't understand what a thin client is.

Think if your iPod, every time you turned it on, had to connect via WiFi to a server at your house in order to do anything at all. A thin client has just a tiny OS that basically has no functionality whatsoever except the ability to make a network connection to a server and get you logged in. Windows thin clients are usually run off WinCE or Embedded XP, but you generally have zero interaction with the OS burned into the firmware--it's only there to pop up an RDP screen and let you connect to some other machine.

If all your iPod could do was connect via WiFi to your home computer and run iTunes on your home computer and stream the music back to your headphones, then you could consider it a thin client. But the GP was right--your iPod is just a mini computer. It has its own OS and it runs iTunes locally, not remotely.

Re:Prediction

[gbjbaanb]

1. single address spaces are more common than you think. Not everyone runs Windows (where virtual memory models - in software - were put in place because of legacy CPU architectures)(read up on Large Memory Model windows programming with near and far pointers).
Such things are obsolete today (on 64-bit architectures), but still around in the form of PAE on 32-bit.

2. VMM access is done through hardware, this is not slow.

3. Often the issue with memory safety is not 1 app overwriting anothers, but one app overwriting the same apps - a lot of code runs in "aggregated" processes (eg a web server running code).

4. Remember that a managed memory model (with a GC) does not guarantee memory safety. You can easily get objects that are permanently used and exhaust your memory as a simple example.

5. even if the managed memory model got rid of all the "hardware-costs", it introduces much more serious software costs. In the singularily overview the authors admit they had to make big changes to the GC and admit it is not suitable for all types of application (quote: [microsoft.com] For example, a
generational garbage collector may introduce seconds-long pauses in program execution, which
would disrupt a media player or operating system. On the other hand, a real-time collector
suitable for the media player might penalize a computational task)

6. Next do a search for 'Java memory safety' and see the links that pop up.

Singularity is interesting, but I doubt they'd really make an OS out of it, especially a web-based one. Possibly some of it will find its way into Windows though.

Re:Prediction

[Petaris]

It depends on how your actually doing things. If you are "downloading" office to your computer/terminal and running it there and uploading things as you go you might have constant connections for office. If you are simply viewing a remote display and interacting with it then the only thing you are sending to the server is keyboard and mouse data (short of uploading other data like audio or files from a USB drive) and the only thing you are likely downloading is screen data (essentially live streaming video and perhaps audio). So you *could* be fine with more bandwidth down then up. It all depends on how the system is designed. Those Xterms playing xtank weren't really doing anything local other then sending keyboard data and receiving video data, all the processing and work was being done on the Sun server and it was staying there. That is not saying that you wont hit a road block as far as bandwidth is concerned, just saying that having lower upload speeds might not be an issue.