Alien Girlybrain

Microsoft has taken some flack for Windows Vista. There’s no question it’s not quite as bad as folks are making it out to be, but it’s not as wonderful as their marketing hype makes it out to be. And now Bill Gates says they’ll try to have Windows 7 out in the next year or two. Given their track record I’d multiply that by three to be safe. I have some advice for Redmond, and it may well be flawed in ways I can’t conceive, but here it is anyway.

One word: Linux.

Yes, I know...Linux sucks. Well, guess what? It sucks a LOT less today than Vista does. The underpinnings are there, and they’re rock solid. So here’s what Microsoft does. They take the OS and develop a Windows GUI for it. They pour a billion dollars or so into WINE development and research (while providing WINE’s coders with full access to existing Windows APIs) and they bring WINE’s performance and compatibility to dizzying heights. And then they sell it. Call it Windows, sell it as Windows and do what Apple’s done with Darwin. Keep the proprietary stuff proprietary and the OSS stuff OSS. You’d wind up with a rock-solid OS, and your users could run their old software until their apps received an update to the new system. Eventually WINE would no longer be needed.

This all sounds a lot like Apple, MacOS X and Classic, doesn’t it?

Anyway, there we go. I’m sure there are a thousand valid reasons why this couldn’t/wouldn’t work and naturally it will never happen. I understand that. I can dream though, can’t I?