MinWin And Small Linux OS’s Will Replace Windows In 5 Years

The demise of Windows will most likely not come from the desktop linux emergence, but from cloud operating systems. This article is far from being another flamebait making baseless predictions – I will explain step by step what lead me to my conclusion.

Reviewing all sorts of web 2.0 start-ups and more recently, cloud operating systems I’ve realized what Microsoft is so scared about. Microsoft is scared about losing marketshare; losing Outlook customers to webmail services such as GMail or Yahoo! Mail, losing Word and Excel customers to Zoho and Google Docs. The trend is more than obvious.

What is less obvious to end-users at this time is the existence of cloud operating systems, of which EyeOS, an open source solution, is the most advanced. EyeOS provides enough functionality to sustain a work environment, with productivity applications, integrated compatibility with Office documents and easy import/export of files. It doesn’t support Photoshop yet, but in a couple of years it might support Gimp, an open-source alternative to Photoshop.

The emergence of the ‘cloud computer’ metaphor urged, in my opinion, the creation of MinWin:

Its most recent and most well-known variation as a minimalistic, self-contained set of Windows components.

MinWin is Microsoft’s response to small Linux OS’s – and is significantly crippled compared to DamnSmallLinux, assuming that what I got from several sources was correct. Microsoft might just kill itself if this statement from Eric Traut is correct:

MinWin would not be offered as a stand-alone product, but would instead be used as the basis for future operating system releases.

As much as I like writing really long sentences, a diagram will better explain what I think will become a standard in the future. First of all, we have a low-powered netbook; this netbook comes preloaded with a very small operating system; this operating system loads the drivers for the hardware, such as networking and graphics and starts Mozilla Prism. Inside Prism will appear the login screen for Eye OS. You’d never know the difference by just looking at the computer.

Once connected to EyeOS, all the magic happens on the server side: checking email, viewing a movie or adding an appointment, all the processes take place on the server. The only requirement of this model is a decent internet connection; we already have some great wireless options at the moment: 3G, wireless 802.11n and soon WiMax.

End-users demand portability. Portability of document formats, data, music, pictures, their computer. You could have, and this is what is amazing, the power of a server machine in something as small as a MacBook Air. Why wouldn’t you want that extra power in your photo editing program?

Thin client computing is not new by far; first available in the late 1980’s, it was confined to corporate environments because of the lack of long range, high-speed connectivity. It had and still has some important benefits. For example, there are 3 computers in your household; when you’re working at your computer you can’t normally use the other two computers’ resources – but the server client architecture let’s you dynamically adjust performance; if you’re the only one connected you’ll get the power of 3 computers!

It will become increasingly hard to justify a product like Windows, as more and more advanced applications are coded and are available for free on EyeOS.

Like always with these kind of predictions, I could be right, or terribly wrong; while the benefits of this architecture are undeniable, nobody except John C. Dvorak, can be totally sure about this. But I do hope this will happen. Your comments are always welcomed and I really look forward to hearing what you think about cloud computing; how do you think it will improve your computing experience and your predictions.