Last week, details emerged of Microsoft’s plans to develop a single, unified, ‘adaptive shell’ for Windows 10. Known as the ‘Composable Shell’, or CSHELL, the company’s efforts were said to be focused on establishing a universal Windows 10 version with a standardized framework to scale and adapt the OS to any type of device, display size or user experience, including smartphones, PCs, tablets, consoles, large touchscreens, and more.
Today, Petri reported that Microsoft is working on a new shell for Windows known as ‘Cloud Shell’. According to internal documentation referred to in that report, Cloud Shell is described as a “lightweight version of Windows designed for the modern computing world.” It also hints at plans to introduce the Cloud Shell sometime in 2017 – but little else is known about the new shell besides that.
To this day, Windows 10 on the desktop is still a hodgepodge of both Metro and Win32 applications; Explorer, for instance, is still a Win32 application. I would assume that all this chatter relates to unifying the shell into a single, adaptable Metro application.
It does sound a bit like chrome os…
There are plenty of cloud oses, so it is about Time Microsoft makes something of his own.
At this moment I am installing Porteus-kiosk on 3 old laptops to engage my students. But maybe I’ll use http://porteus-kiosk.org/cloud.html just to see how it works.
Isn’t this a branding/product of Windows IOT? Just the shell interface, no GUI.
Basically a micro version of windows intended for cloud/container usage. Especially following on from their new docker love-in. It would seem a sensible area for them to move into. Think along the lines of RedHat Atomic.
This is an area linux have them clearly beaten. A lightweight (power)shell only os would be a real boon for their cloud ambitions.
Sure, explorer is a Windows app using Win32 API, but it is not a 32bit process. Why does it matter which API it uses? Finder was Carbon for years, which forced 32bit, but Win API went 16bit -> 32bit -> 64bit as each architecture changed. The API is solid nowadays because it has such a long tested history. Now that UWP is more established, it makes sense to move I guess, but Win32 is not holding anyone back really.