The future of OS

[HideoKojima]

Do you think that in the future every software will work on any OS? Like any software will be running in a specific sandbox that does not dependant on the OS itself, so when you download a software there will be one universal file type only, and one could run it in on PC, Mac, Linux...etc this way we won't be talking about compatibility anymore and one could use safer OS like Linux and still can run any games or apps without the use of VM. Thoughts?

 

[Deleted User]

That's literally imposible unless everyone switches to the same OS, and good luck doing that

 

[Gamemaster1379]

Closest you will ever get are transpilers that compile binaries per specific OS. We have that today for some things on mobile (I think Flutter and ReactNative are frameworks that do this), but otherwise no, it'll never happen. Quite frankly, it's hard to even target and compile software that works across all variants of a single OS -- so long as we have differing CPU architecture types (e.g., Mac M1's custom architecture vs Intel based x86)

 

[HideoKojima]

Closest you will ever get are transpilers that compile binaries per specific OS. We have that today for some things on mobile (I think Flutter and ReactNative are frameworks that do this), but otherwise no, it'll never happen. Quite frankly, it's hard to even target and compile software that works across all variants of a single OS -- so long as we have differing CPU architecture types (e.g., Mac M1's custom architecture vs Intel based x86)

I see thanks for the insight

 

[FAST6191]

There will always be something that wants to go down to bare metal for some reason or another.

At the same time the amount of stuff that was once a custom application and is now a website or browser driven program... I can see a point where it becomes rare to go outside it.

 

[Deleted member 397813]

unless microsoft pulls an apple and cuts down on its place as the gaming os, i highly doubt it.

 

[Coto]

OS is just a middleware layer to whatever the end user wants (or the developer wants to develop). Thus, the degree of focus will depend on too many different variables to be considered of relevance to both sides.

 

[IC]

It would definitely be much easier if Microsoft finally tried to drop their outdated technologies in Windows and made their system POSIX-compliant, even when dealing with programs in source code form it is often hard to have a program that is compatible with Windows and the other operating systems because of the differences in programming for those different systems. The other operating systems could also try to make some changes to be compatible with more universal standards. At that point it would be much easier to have programs that could be compiled for the different operating systems without much changes to the code, and someone could implement some kind of universal binary format that would contain executable code for all the different systems, but that kind of format would be inefficient and it would still be up to the developers of the software to decide which operating systems they really want to support.

What will most likely happen in reality: more and more programs will be made into web apps, and those will run on all operating systems because everyone has a modern web browser. Windows-only video games? Everyone knows that web-based game streaming services are the future!

 

[CompSciOrBust]

Thanks to the Turing-Church theorem it is possible but I doubt it is going to happen. I do think we will eventually get to the point where most apps will run on most OSs. I think for all but the most computationally intensive apps we will see a transition to most apps being web apps. Having your app as a web app means you only have to manage one code base and it's accessible to almost everyone which is good for business. Of course companies like Apple and Microsoft will always want exclusive features so they will likely forgo web apps for certain things.

 

[Luke94]

Perhaps Metaverse in XXII century?

 

[vdwjeremy]

On the other hand, most game developpers are working over game engines now.
Porting is becoming easier.