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Windows Microsoft Operating Systems Technology

Microsoft Hints at New Modern Windows OS With 'Invisible' Background Updates (theverge.com) 167

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Microsoft still hasn't officially confirmed the existence of its rumored Windows Lite operating system, but the software giant is dropping some pretty big hints about the future of Windows today. From a report: Nick Parker, Microsoft's corporate vice president of consumer and device sales, appeared on stage at Computex today to detail the company's vision for a modern operating system. While Parker didn't unveil Windows Lite, a rumored lightweight version of Windows for dual-screen and Chromebook-like devices, he did reveal how Microsoft is preparing for new device types. These new devices will require what Microsoft calls a "modern OS," that includes a bunch of "enablers" like seamless updates. We've seen various promises about Windows Updates being improved over the years, but Microsoft is now promising that "modern OS updates are invisibly done in the background; the update experience is deterministic, reliable, and instant with no interruptions!" No interruptions and done in the background sounds very different from the Windows Update experience available on Windows 10 today, and it sounds far more Chrome OS-like. This "modern OS" is also secure by default according to Microsoft, meaning the state is separated from the OS and compute is "separated from applications," which sounds a lot more cloud-powered than what we're used to today. Microsoft also wants this modern OS to work with 5G connectivity, and to include a variety of inputs like pen, voice, touch, even gaze.
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Microsoft Hints at New Modern Windows OS With 'Invisible' Background Updates More

Microsoft Hints at New Modern Windows OS With 'Invisible' Background Updates

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  • But will it be Windows compatible? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 ) on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @09:06AM (#58671694)

    Sounds great if they can pull it off, but designing a modern OS with these features isn't that hard (by which I mean, it's really hard, but not so hard only Microsoft can do it). But migrating Windows itself to that state - now that's hard. It's also the only thing that really matters. Otherwise ChromeOS got them licked already.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Lack of versioning in dlls? You mean in the filename, right? Because dlls do have versions embedded in them.
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Rob Y. ( 110975 )

            I think the problem with Windows is that you can't remove a file if any process has it open. Linux and unix don't have that problem, because the 'file' as listed in the directory is just a link to the actual underlying file. So you can delete the link without the file actually going away, allowing you to swap in a new file that's pointed to by a new link in the directory that contained the old one. And the original file isn't deleted until no more processes have it open.

            Not sure why Windows can't do that

          • As https://slashdot.org/~darkain [slashdot.org] says, Windows can most certainly load multiple versions of the same DLL. Your accusation is completely accurate for Windows 95 and earlier and partially accurate up until Windows Vista. But not since.

            Darkain's wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

            It's true that GNU/Linux uses soft links to the latest version. What you might not know is that Windows also uses links (albeit hard ones), see:
            https://blogs.technet.microsof... [microsoft.com]

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by darkain ( 749283 )

        Yeah, Microsoft should really do something about the lack of versioning support in DLLs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • In Linux we don't do this, we just replace the existing version of the library for future applications while allowing those currently running to continue to use the unpatched library.

        Which is why you also see applications or daemons sometimes fail or crash following an update. When a process has already loaded *some* of the libraries but not others, if you update the libraries underneath, the process may load an upgraded library and use it for objects created with the previous version. Basically, Linux "deals" with the consistent update problem by ignoring it.

        To be fair, if you write naive installers yourself for Windows, you could potentially run into a similar problem. However, if you

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DeVilla ( 4563 )
        It sounds like IBM's iSeries (AS/400) has something similar to the Amiga in it's kernel and up. Likewise the power firmware had something similar (but different from iSeries). I'm pretty sure iSeries still has the same support. I'm not sure if there have been any radical changes. I used to maintain that code, but that was a long time ago. Very fun stuff.

    • I expect that Windows 10 can deal with it, But I think the Update Program has too much legacy code sticking around from earlier versions of Windows, that just required a reboot, mostly because the OS wasn't expected to be up for days on end.

      Much like when you install a Windows 95 App on Windows 10. It asks you to reboot your PC, while if you ignore it 99% of the time your newly installed app will run fine.

      Most Updates are not updates to the windows kernel, but just services that are running in the backgroun

    • IMO you got that backwards: it's not hard but it's too hard for Microsoft to pull off.

    • Microsoft could accomplish this stuff relatively easily by basing it on Linux. Windows runtime would be replaced by forking WINE and improving its compatibility to a degree that only Microsoft could, or by using VMs to run ultra-light versions of actual versions of windows; there could be an XP VM, a 7 VM, a 10 VM, etc. Updating can occur in the background without blowing up the system. You can even patch the kernel without rebooting.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I would expect them to run the legacy stack in just another virtual machine. Maybe it's a kind of lightweight and disentagled Windows Server Core with UI for small devices.

    • Will this new OS be based on a Linux kernel, now that MS ships Linux kernels in each windows copy ?

    • Hard means it takes a company other than Microsoft to pull it off. If Microsoft can do it then it's probably an industry standard by that time.

  • Seamless updates on Windows (Score:5, Informative)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @09:09AM (#58671702)
    Seamless updates on Windows means that now they will be able to yank out Start button, redesign UI under you, and patch in ads into solitaire all without rebooting your system.
    • So....basically what they're doing with Office 365 now. Recently I came in to find my office had updated itself to a whole new theme WITHOUT my authorization. Worse, no way to go back. I'm not anti-MS by any stretch....but yeah, I'll pass.

      Yo Grark
      • Yeah, that's pretty stupid: Changing the UI without alerting the user. Now that everything is software as a service or/and updating continously things can change unexpectedly all the time and that can get annoying fast.
        I wish Windows would let you choose from several UIs, I'd choose a sane and stable one and don't look back. Btw, on Linux I swap between KDE and Xfce when I feel like it and that's great

    • It must be a miserable life where changes to a UI, is considered a big threat to you.
      For most of us, we learn to like the changes which are good, and deal with the trade offs.
      If there is a better option really available, then we switch.

      • It must be a miserable life where changes to a UI, is considered a big threat to you.

        Not as miserable as being someone who can't use commas properly.

      • Consider these questions:
        1. How many hundreds of hours are wasted by constantly having to re-learn UI's?
        2. What advantage(s) are there of the new UI over the old one?
        3. Is it worth the time it takes to find everything again?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shanen ( 462549 )

          Forces people to learn to think more flexibly.

          Don't tell my wife. Her old smartphone finally died and she is not enjoying the learning experience with the new one.

          However the underlying problem is that there is NOT ONE BEST user interface for all people. Everyone is slightly different and wants to do different things in slightly different ways. This is a problem for the corporate cancers because profit maximization requires expense minimization. Multiple UIs always have more expense than one UI.

          Hence the in

    • When I first read your comment I thought you were talking about Linux.

      Linux updates have always been far more disruptive than Windows updates for me.

      Systemd, for example, was a massive departure (especially in many negative ways) from what came before it. It destroyed my Debian installation when I first "upgraded" to it. Worst of all, it didn't even offer me any benefits. It just made my user experience worse.

      It was a similar situation with PulseAudio. My Linux installation was working fine, I did an update

    • Re: Seamless updates on Windows (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."

    • That's because it's all in the cloud now. The new windows system will essentially be a glorified browser. Like the Windows 8 "metro" apps and smartphone apps, you take a collection of UI definitions and URLs, wrap it up in some sort of XML like container, stick it in the store, and call it an "app" even though not a single line of code might not have actually been written.

      They've already put Office applications in the cloud (inferior to the desktop variants of course), they have or will have Visual Studio i

  • Updates (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @09:09AM (#58671708)

    I wish that MS could come up with a system for updates that would allow them to be automatically installed and so that at the most inconvenient time possible your computer will automatically reboot.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      This will be part of its look ahead feature where it knows what you want to do tomorrow.

    • And let's make sure that this "invisible" process consumes at least 98% of your CPU cycles.

      Oh wait, it already does that.

    • Or, have it wait until you really need to shut down your laptop and then declare that it is installing updates and you need to leave your laptop on until it is done. Then keep it stuck on "30% complete" for a randomly long period of time regardless of how much the installation is really done.

  • Does "invisible" mean that Microsoft will be bringing back QA to their release process?

  • Secure by default (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stealth_finger ( 1809752 ) on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @09:12AM (#58671722)
    Secure by default eh? Well, that's me convinced. I wonder why they didnt do that before?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by sinij ( 911942 )

      I wonder why they didnt do that before?

      Obviously, they realized that insecure by default wasn't working as intended. So now they have set secure=1 in autoexec.bat right out of the box. Progress!

    • Well, they actually have a reason for that: Windows evolved from DOS and that was single-user and had no concept of security (users, permissions) and security was thus added piece by piece over the years until we got to where we are today.

  • Invisibly breaking stuff (Score:5, Insightful)

    by damaki ( 997243 ) on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @09:12AM (#58671724)
    I can't wait for my Windows to slow down to a crawl then get broken invisibly beyond repair, with no user interaction and nothing that clearly states that an update is being applied or was applied.
    Are those guys for real? Do they really think that this end user and system administrator frigging nightmare is going to be welcomed? Techies want to know that stuff happens. Non-tech people hate when stuff breaks randomly.

    • What magical version of Windows are you running Now? What you described seems to be out of the Box Windows from version 1 onward.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by damaki ( 997243 )
        I had to disable background download updates because of the annoying random impact on my ADSL internet connection and on CPU usage. Youtube was slow on Windows Update downloads. My CPU is a low end 2yo dual core Pentium. It can run heavy virtualization stuff and recent games but get maxed out from windows update package decompression+Windows Defender and installation on my SSD (CPU bound operation there). So I keep my Windows 10 Pro up to date manually. FYI now that my internet connection was upgraded to fi

      • His complaint isn’t that Windows shouldn’t be updated. His complaint is about giving no warning or notice that an update is happening or has happened. Given MS track record where announced Win 10 updates that caused problems, it leaves users and administrator guessing as to what happened.

        For example, my Internet just stopped working after an update. Luckily I have more than one computer to know that it wasn’t the ISP or router that went down. Googling eventually found the root cause is tha

    • Are those guys for real? Do they really think that this end user and system administrator frigging nightmare is going to be welcomed?

      Why not? We put up with it in the days of Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Ahhh time to bring back the yearly format.

  • And the most important feature (Score:5, Insightful)

    by taustin ( 171655 ) on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @09:15AM (#58671728) Homepage Journal

    is that monthly fee, or you lose access to all your stuff, which, for security purposes, you understand, is tied to a valid, active account, not a particular computer, making in accessible from any computer - as long as you keep paying (and paying and paying) every month.

  • Buzzword compatible!!! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Comboman ( 895500 ) on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @09:28AM (#58671790)

    Microsoft also wants this modern OS to work with 5G connectivity

    I know 5G is the newest marketing buzzword but, wouldn't ANY version of Windows be able to work with 5G connectivity as long as it had a driver for the modem? It's just wireless internet, only faster.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You're reading it wrong. It's not that 5G will work with this future version of Windows... is that Windows will NOT work without 5G. And this is because Microsoft envisions new PCs as thin terminals, just like Chromebooks. Put there just enough power to run a browser and the ocasional game, and voilà.

      That's the "Lite" part. Seamless OS updates are possible because the OS and apps willl basicallt run in the could, and you will not be able to run without the cloud. Redmond is finally materializing their

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Just adding a driver for 5G won't make Windows smart enough to realize it can upload telemetry from your PC at any moment it feels like. It needs to periodically turn on 5G, silently mind you, and it also needs to see if the mothership has requested real-time telemetry of this particular user, keeping the 5G on if necessary.

      See? There are a lot of 'good reasons' why Microsoft wants this 'modern OS' to work with 5G connectivity.

    • It will also be compatible with IoT and DevOps. Blockchain doesn't matter since it's an outdated concept nowadays

    • No. In much the same way that you couldn't just through a 3G SIM reader into a Windows 2000 machine and expect it to use data. Windows needs to know what to do with the device too. It's not just a driver issue, but there's middleware that needs to handle it. Sure you could do it like the early days of Bluetooth where the driver came with the Bluetooth software stack. Or you could do it like bluetooth connections to handsets where it emulates a network card, but what you're left with is an ugly hack and like

  • ... is the apparent decline of Microsoft's Windows update releases. This announcement seems to say that Microsoft's update process will become invisible to the customer. While that is an admirable goal, what about all the problems with the results of that update process? In other owrds, the update process is merely a transport, will the invisible update process be transporting a higher quality set of updates, or the same-old steaming meadow muffins? Will we continue to see data being erased, PCs turned

  • This is essentially an Operating System as a Service. This is a solution in search of a problem. This would integrate your OS to become dependent on the cloud. This would certainly result in increased data collection. This is clearly designed to take away more control from the user over their computer than Windows 10. This is clearly designed to encourage increased use of cloud based services. All of this is good for the Operating System provider. It simplifies things tremendously for the provider.

    None of t

    • This is a solution in search of a problem.

      The problem is Microsoft's continued obscene profits.

    • Also, Operating System as a Service will lead to Operating System as a Paid Service. Windows will come with your laptop, but after a 3 month trial period you'll need to pay $X a month or your OS will collapse into a minimal state - rendering it virtually worthless. Right now, Microsoft knows it can't get away with this, but if they push Operating System as a Service enough, they might be able to shift it to a paid service later.

  • I am willing to bet that the whole system will be a bunch of containers sitting on a microkernel. The micro kernel will probably very rarely get updated if ever. All the other things we think of as 'windows' will be containerized and thus could shut off and replaced on the fly.

    • It won't matter. OS compromise isn't a problem; context compromise is.

      People get all upset about kernel-level exploits giving system access. That's cool. You run your Web browser with access to Downloads and Documents. Downloads and Documents are also where you store all your credit card data, passwords, your secret corporate project documents, tax records, and so forth.

      Just getting access to your user account gives an attacker ultimate access to everything you do. This isn't CloudOS on thin clients

  • It will also ship with WinFS

  • ... is for each of us to be paying them an actual unabashed monthly SUBSCRIPTION every month. That has been the non-enterprise Holy-Grail goal for of Big Software now for decades. Those consumers with any IT knowledge at all need to continue to stand firmly against it and educate everyone else how quickly awful things will become if Big Software gets its Holy Grail.

    Microsoft also wants this modern OS to work with 5G connectivity, and to include a variety of inputs like pen, voice, touch, even gaze.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Bah. Business will pay the monthly subscription, it fits well with their accounting systems neatly. Joe SixPack is moving to the phone, he doesn't need winders. The few remaining can suck eggs because MS doesn't care or need to care about them. Gaming? Buy one of their game things.

    • ... is for each of us to be paying them an actual unabashed monthly SUBSCRIPTION every month. That has been the non-enterprise Holy-Grail goal for of Big Software now for decades. Those consumers with any IT knowledge at all need to continue to stand firmly against it and educate everyone else how quickly awful things will become if Big Software gets its Holy Grail.

      Oh, you mean like they stood up against that $9.99/month Office suite?

      They won't even fight for shit that takes essentially no IT skill to maintain.

  • While doing things like recording your music and CNC machining, you cannot expect to do anything else without causing a noticeable loss in performance that can ruin your work. There are applications for just testing it in Windows systems, and the results are often not only frustrating, but in the case of some computers, it cannot be fixed. Gamers will also know the truth, that the idea that you can update your computer while using without problems is just wrong as cellphones that never need to be restarted.

  • Can be had right now.
    It's called "Windows Embedded" and you can customize what to install down to the smallest detail, even foregoing the GUI if you wish.

  • "Mickysoft will get it right THIS time!" (Score:3)

    by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @10:41AM (#58672214)

    If Microsoft couldn't get seamless updates that didn't bork the system every other week working in the past 20 years what makes you think THIS time will be ANY different??

    There is a reason microkernels exist: Stability.

    The COST is that performance suffers.

    You can have security OR performance. Pick ONE.

    The other part of the problem is that deprecated and insecure APIs are still used by thousands of programs (and developers.) As soon you start switching to a new API you have the chicken-and-egg problem -- no one wants to use an API that no one else uses. It is basically WPF all over again. Sure demos [microsoft.com] look impressive but almost no one uses it because the majority of customers are still on Windows 7 and don't care about flash-in-the-pan fad APIs from Microsoft that don't provide backwards compatible solutions. (The strength and weakness of Windows.)

    --
    SJW, noun, Stupid Juvenile Whiner: a mentally deficient person who turns their brain off (stupid), has a tantrum (juvenile), complains about bullshit issues no one gives a fuck about (whine), and scream insults at everyone who disagrees with them (Ad hominem fallacy).
    Examples: Your typical Redditard, Femnazi, or Microshat shill who is incapable of understanding people have different opinions, wants, and needs.
    Typical excuse: Haters gonna hate. (Because disliking ONE scene in a movie automatically means you MUST hate the ENTIRE thing! /s **Facepalm**)

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @10:51AM (#58672256)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Seriously, look at all the patches MSFT has pushed out over the last year, and how often they ended up bricking computers of those who had set their WinX computers to auto-update.

  • I wonder how they are going to manage to update the NT Kernel [ntoskrnl.exe] seamlessly without rebooting.
    And I mean update AND pass control to it from the running kernel.

    I don't know if this is even possible in any modern Kernel...
    I know Linux can add security patches at runtime, but can the whole kernel be replaced?

  • The only OS where I can say - here's a random Windows (x) server in my environment - GUESS how it's configured!
    Why do I say GUESS? It's because it's such a bitch to figure it out with group policy after policy. I had one recently that the last policy removed all the other ones. So it was wide open.

    Now not only do I have to worry about the policy BS, I also have to worry if something was updated behind my back?
    I'd like to say - "Microsoft is a very responsible company and I'm sure they'd own up to any mistak

  • Now they're going to make Microsoft ChromiumOS, haha.
  • That would be the end of it then :)

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