What if the next windows kernel was based on Linux/POSIX and it had VMs to run legacy windows programs?
I'd probably just give up computing entirely and go live in a cave, that's what.
It's a theory and nothing more but I hope very much Windows 11 will be named W-11 and be just a really accessible Linux that looks and acts like Windows but will have the Linux kernel underneath the fluff. Maybe CMD.EXE could even be re-worked into a shell for compatibility with BATs, and Microsoft could work with Wine to make a perfect version that could work with any Windows binary. Far-fetched and barely plausible but a boy can dream.
Why would MSFT throw away decades of development that have gone into the NT kernel? NT is an advanced and, to my eye, very elegant kernel. Win32 is much less so, but NT isn't Win32.
Because sunk costs and it may make sense to offload their kernel development efforts to focus on what makes them money.
Windows makes them plenty of money, billions of it.
That's a big "if". Microsoft will keep pushing their proprietary platforms.