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From the NY Times: "The Windows era at Microsoft, long in eclipse, is officially history. Microsoft said on Tuesday that it was splitting up its Windows engineering team and that the leader of its Windows business was leaving."
Microsoft is ready for a world beyond Windows
"We want to move from people needing Windows to choosing Windows, to loving Windows. That is our bold goal," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella three years ago. At the time, Microsoft was unveiling more details about Windows 10, and surprising people with technologies like the HoloLens headset. It was an exciting time of opportunity and optimism that had Microsoft betting on people loving Windows so much that Windows 10 would be running on 1 billion devices within three years. Neither wager worked out — which is fine, because Windows as we know it is no longer critical to Microsoft's future success.
Microsoft announced a new reorganization yesterday. It's the fourth major shuffle inside the company over the past five years, and the most significant of Nadella's tenure. Microsoft is splitting Windows across the company, into different parts. Terry Myerson, a 21-year Microsoft veteran, is leaving the company and his role as Windows chief. The core development of Windows is being moved to a cloud and AI team, and a new team will take over the "experiences" Windows 10 users see like apps, the Start menu, and new features. There's a lot of shuffling going on, but Nadella's 1,300 word memo leaves little doubt over the company's true future: cloud and AI.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @05:49PM (1 child)
It's not like users themselves demand much. e.g. most users would be satisfied with a Windows XP that supported more than 4GB of RAM (thanks to browsers and webpages that take lots of RAM). And for most users Windows 7 kinda served that purpose. But instead we have really retarded stuff like the Metro UI and the Windows 10 _enforced_ near "bricking" updates.
Meanwhile the other strange thing is whenever Microsoft makes their OS crap the "mainstream" Desktop Linux bunch seem to try to make their stuff crappier. There's a window of opportunity for the Desktop Linux bunch to gain significant share by making something that's much better but they will probably shoot themselves in both feet time and time again. "WONTFIX", "WORKSFORME". No, systemd is not much better, it's a near useless change that won't really help normal desktop users much.
There are actually interesting problems for Desktop OSes to solve. More interesting than how to make a Desktop Computer as crappy and restrictive to use as a tablet. Or making them boot a few seconds faster (which could probably have been done without something like systemd.
For example, Virtual and Augmented Reality hardware is going to become more affordable and accessible. Just an obvious feature/problem for an OS - imagine having access to as many screens you want which are as big as you want - limited to the CPU and RAM of your computer. So how can a Desktop OS best augment normal people to be able to do even more? To paraphrase the Perl saying - make easy things easy and hard things viable.
Nvidia, Intel and AMD would be happy to sell the hardware capable of that and more.
But instead Microsoft wants to make our Desktop Computers into tablets. Instead of augmenting people they want to put restrictions and leashes on us. Why the FUCK would I want something like that? Yes my smartphone is convenient for when I have to be on the go but it is so difficult to do more advanced stuff on it.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday April 03 2018, @04:47AM
Actually, systemd does make it better (although the init system and service manager are invisible to the average user). Sane event handling is impossible under sysvinit/initscripts or openrc: USBs being plugged in and removed, bluetooth audio devices being paired and removed, wireless networks connecting and disconnecting.
Of course, it's up to the distros to actually package that up correctly, and they haven't finished doing a thorough job yet.
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