thurrott[.]com/windows/windows-10x/222545/microsoft-confirms-desktop-apps-on-windows-10x
You might have read about how Microsoft has been working for years on a version of Windows that competes with Google’s Android and the closely related Chrome OS used on Chromebooks. That version of Windows is now called Windows 10x. Like the Android & Chrome operating systems, it was expected to only run on hardware that came with the OS preinstalled – in fact that’s what Microsoft announced recently. Based on a Microsoft job listing [journalists closely watch those job listings for non-published info], Thurrott believes Windows 10x could be slated for so-called mainstream desktops and laptops too.
The 1st step or goal for this new version of Windows was to modularize the code making up Windows itself – it takes more people to write and maintain different versions of Windows, so by having all versions share portions [modules] of their code, you have to pay fewer people. An old saying goes something like: “The more things there are, the more things there are to go wrong”. Windows 10 is smaller than 7 & 8, but it’s still huge – a big part of that is because it includes old code [going back all the way to Windows 95] for backwards compatibility. A 2nd aim for the new OS was to get rid of as much of that legacy code as possible, so there was less to go wrong, and fixing what did go wrong would take fewer people. A smaller OS has other advantages, such as more efficient distribution and updating, but you can’t ignore Microsoft’s trend of trimming its workforce over the last several years.
One way to get rid of a lot of that old code is to design this new Windows version to only run UWP apps written for Windows Store. The big problem with that is that store’s been a disaster – Microsoft has bungled the design and implementation of the store & UWP, while developers haven’t seen a need to learn a new way of coding their apps. The compromise Microsoft is working on would let the new version of Windows run normal Windows software [often referred to as *win32* software] by using something called containers.
A container is basically *almost* a VM [Virtual Machine]. A VM is a complete installed copy of an OS running on software that emulates -- pretends to be -- hardware. And a VM is isolated from the host OS – the OS running on the actual hardware. It’s like a PC nested or running in a PC. And that can be overkill – why duplicate something that’s already there in the host OS & hardware? And that’s where containers come in… they use parts of the host OS and hardware, but isolate their processes, including the software running in the container, from that host OS. Containers are Big with biz using the cloud but are generally used today only to run certain types of applications. Using containers with a desktop OS is new stuff – you might think of Windows 10’s Sandbox as a sort of prototype or proof of concept.
*IF* in the future Windows 10x actually made it onto your desktop PC, there are a couple few things you could expect… The extra software layers necessary to run win32 apps in containers would slow things down, though greater efficiencies elsewhere might make any difference unnoticeable. There would inevitably be some compatibility problems – it happens nowadays, so it’s fair to assume that combining the functions of all sorts of legacy code into a smaller container package, things aren’t always going to work. And on the plus side, software you installed [in theory anyway] could not screw up Windows the way it can and too often does currently. It would be more like running a UWP app from the store, where uninstalling an app *completely* removes everything that app brought with it.
Microsoft knows Android probably better than anyone outside of Google – they make more popular Android apps than just about anybody. They know pretty well what it will take to compete. They’ve also acknowledged where they can’t compete, with their store and making/selling phone hardware. If this works and isn’t abandoned like loads of Microsoft’s prior efforts [Zune, Windows Phone etc.], 10x will install & update like Android, and the apps that run on it will be isolated so that they don’t, can’t affect the OS itself. But it’s got a very lone way to go before it’s going to be accepted by the major enterprises that reliably provide Microsoft’s profits. *Maybe* look for smaller pieces of this to show up in win10, like with the Sandbox.