There are numerous choices in operating system to run on your computer. Most use Windows. Others use Linux. Others (like myself) use a Mac. However, one thing is abundantly clear: our computing lives are moving online.

Speaking for myself, it is my web browser (Firefox) which is always open. It is the first program I start when I boot up. I use Gmail for my email. I use Google Apps for managing my time (Calendar in conjunction with Remember the Milk). My entire business is online.

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I must admit when I read this headline, I was thinking "About Frickin’ Time!". Windows is a bloated mess (as Vista proved) and I have been of the opinion for awhile now that Microsoft needs to get back to basics and stop trying to simply build more crap onto an already huge pile.

But, let’s not get too excited quite yet. Microsoft’s new OS is called Singularity and it is a prototype only for academics and researchers. Right now the new OS is geared toward testing software reliability and doing research in programming.

If you want the corporate-speak version, direct from Redmond:

Singularity is a research project focused on the construction of dependable systems through innovation in the areas of systems, languages, and tools. We are building a research operating system prototype (called Singularity), extending programming languages, and developing new techniques and tools for specifying and verifying program behavior.

This is not the next version of Windows. As one commenter put it on the Singularity website:

This is NOT the "next windows kernel". This is an experimental managed kernel that has little or nothing to do with Windows whatsoever. Its ideas may bring about fruition in Windows two or three major versions from now, but without either dual booting or a total hypervisor approach to Windows there is no possible way this could possibly host existing Windows apps, ever.

That said, Singularity is dang cool and makes me glad that Microsoft has an OS concept that they can show off to the computer science world.

That’s a shame. It had me all tingly inside - just for a minute.

Source: PC World.