Windows is “Dead OS Running” but Windows 7 will save Microsoft

On Monday, two Gartner analysts presented a paper at a conference in Las Vegas entitled “Windows Is Collapsing: How What Comes Next Will Improve”. The focus of the paper was Microsoft’s growing operating system complexity, the number of applications that no longer work across versions, such as most modern software requiring Windows 2000 or later and not operating on Windows 95, 98 or ME, and the general bloatness to it all. History bears them out as even today, many software programs written only a year or two ago still do not run on Vista, especially if they involve device drivers.

Gartner’s analysts identify exactly what many consumers have known since Vista was first leaked, namely that Microsoft’s operating system model is growing unworkable. Where they differ from most consumers is in that they do believe hope looms on the horizon from Microsoft’s next-gen OS, codenamed Windows 7.

A version of what is believed to be the future kernel of Windows 7, called MiniWin, was demonstrated last October at the University of Illinois by MIcrosoft’s Eric Traut. The OS operated in minimalistic form, requiring only 33 MB to boot and run a minimalistic web server. The system had no graphics engine and came up in text mode, similar to Linux. During that demonstration he showed an instance of Windows 7 running inside Microsoft’s latest Virtual PC software. The entire instance was allocated 40MB and after booting up it had 7MB free.

The Gartner analysts believe that this next version of Windows will contain this revamped, tight kernel, along with a new model for future applications which will shed a great deal of the legacy baggage that Windows 2000, XP and Vista have had to carry along to maintain their support and hold of the software communities.

Whether this idea of a sleeker, slimmer Microsoft Windows-based OS ultimately pans out or not, it is invigorating to see the signs of potential out there on the horizon. One of the biggest attractors for alternative OSes like UNIX, Ubuntu Linux or other Linux flavor, is the size of the install and its relatively straight-forward device driver model. While these are potentially more complex and difficult for new users to engage in for setting up new systems, there is enough difficulty and bloat in Windows today that many more users are taking the time necessary to migrate to another OS. RickGeek is one of those as well, a long-term Ubuntu user as of the time of this writing.