The Windows desktop is dying: Microsoft plans to move your desktop to the cloud

Funny how things move full-circle.

Mosaic/Netscape was targeted and destroyed by Microsoft in the 1990s because they dared to threaten the Windows Desktop. Netscape reckoned that it was just as good to have the Desktop on the Internet Browser instead of requiring a Windows Computer.

(If you're a bit younger you might not know that Netscape became Mozilla who produce the Firefox browser.)

If you'd like a preview of this, visit your local library or some place that has a number of public computers which are frequently used by people with unknown identities, homeless, criminals, etc.

My public library, several years ago, implemented a 100% virtual scheme for the public computers. You log in and a freshly wiped and provisioned Windows virtual machine starts up. There is almost nothing in the box on the desk, except you can hook up some USB (with drastic restrictions). Otherwise, it's pretty much graphics and input traffic being exchanged over the network. A modern VT220. When you log out or time out, the VM vanishes and resets itself to pristine state.

By contrast, my community college had all sorts of places with academic computers available, and they were bare metal, although they had the same sort of clean-slate wipe when they were rebooted. It was sort of amazing in 2018 how many students still used these machines, even though there was a majority who toted around notebooks. A lot of students only brought a smartphone into class with them, and their eBooks and notes were all on the smartphone.

So I perceive a diminishing demand for public and academic computer labs, especially as the pandemic times have convinced so many people to stay home and not congregate in public, and the smartphone is a fully-functioning computer system. So let Microsoft do their worst. I already own one Chromebook and I love it. My next notebook purchase may also be a Chromebook. I'm thinking Framework or Pixelbook.

The meaning of "desktop" has become moot. I suppose when I had an X-terminal and everything was "remote" it was fine. Before then I'd had diskless Suns and again, it was an NFS locally cached view into what was remote. So.. if we're returning to some sense that based on our priors (google cloud, onenote, dropbox) we believe a local cache is fine for faster access to something which is remote, what Microsoft is doing is entirely logical and consistent with the past, and our current experiences.

My main problem is with cache coherency over shared assets. I do think that there is the eternal lock/flock/lockf problem here, along with file timestamps. Microsoft don't have to care about that because they intend almost all interactions to be mediated through them, via APIs which can impose some cohesive behaviours. But, as a general model "all my files are in the cloud" gets really interesting when people have to work disconnected on shared product and then re-attach after e.g. a transatlantic flight offline, to try and re-sync things.

If somebody offered "FreeBSD desktop in the cloud" or "OSX in the cloud" or "Linux in the cloud" as well wrapped up, I'd consider it on it's merits.

Chromebooks are, after all "Google (which is in the cloud) in the cloud" aren't they?

I wonder how this translates in "but I paid $129 for a perpetual licence to word" -yes you did, but alas now you can't use it on this cloud-desktop quite as well as you'd like because.. well we didn't design it to work with your licenced copy of perpetual local-file word.

> The Windows desktop is dying: Microsoft plans to move your desktop to the cloud

And with their security everybody will have access to it. It will surely save distribution costs.

The "best" part is that today, finding a file in Sharepoint is an exercise in pain.

Four popups to close before I could read the article. Embarrassing.

They can move it to the cloud as I move to Linux...