No, I’m not talking about killing Vista. Microsoft is already burying that living dead operating system as fast it can. I’m talking about killing Windows itself. That’s the conclusion I’ve drawn from David Worthington’s story about Microsoft’s plans for Midori, a next generation operating system.

According to Worthington, who managed to get his hands on Microsoft’s internal documents, “Midori is an offshoot of Microsoft Research’s Singularity [a limited open-source] operating system, the tools and libraries of which are completely managed code. Midori is designed to run directly on native hardware (x86, x64 and ARM), be hosted on the Windows Hyper-V hypervisor, or even be hosted by a Windows process.”

Microsoft’s objective for Midori, writes Worthington, is no less than replacing Windows. “Microsoft is carefully mapping out migration strategies to move customers from Windows to Midori, its planned legacy-free operating environment, virtualization, and a composite application model that permits applications to be hosted by both OSes, are key to the strategy.”

It’s about time!

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