Windows 10X is the Next NT (Premium)

For years, Microsoft has been trying, unsuccessfully, to find a way to modernize Windows and the apps that run on it. Previous attempts---like Windows RT, Windows 10 S/S Mode, and Windows 10 on ARM have failed, and for the same basic reason: Customers rejected something that looked identical to “real” Windows but couldn’t run all of the classic desktop applications that they rely on and require. And that’s where Windows 10X succeeds: It provides a more modern platform while retaining compatibility with the past.

Sound familiar? It should, because that’s exactly what Microsoft accomplished with Windows NT in the mid-1990s. It created a more modern platform that, in its case, looked and worked exactly like Windows, while also offering compatibility the apps---and drivers and peripherals---that its customers expected to use. Yes, Windows NT was a bit rough at first. But once it fully met its customers' needs, NT became Windows, starting with Windows XP, in 2001.

Windows 10X differs from early NT versions in some key ways, of course. Most notably, it’s not a completely new platform but is instead based off the same foundation as are today’s Windows 10 versions. But thanks to some important architectural innovations that rely on ongoing modularization efforts, Windows 10X is nonetheless more modern and sophisticated. And if successful, it will absolutely replace the thing that we think of as Windows today. Just as NT did almost 20 years ago.

We’ve known for some time that Windows 10X would run legacy Win32 desktop applications in software containers, isolating them from the rest of the system (and vice versa). This technology would provide the compatibility that customers expect while allowing the base platform to be more secure, more reliable, and more power-efficient, and answer the core complaint about previous attempts at modernizing Windows.

What we didn’t know, however, was that this container technology isn’t just for Win32 apps. Instead, the entire Windows 10X OS is “containerized,” for lack of a better term. Its use of containers is systemic, and this change is a key reason that this platform is more modern than the current Windows 10 variants. It is literally the reason that I feel that Windows 10X is the next NT.

(Previously, I would have said that Windows 10X had the chance to evolve into the mainstream Windows version where traditional Windows 10 versions would move forward as workstation-class systems aimed at power users, gamers, and the like. But now I feel that 10X has the chance to simply become Windows. Like NT before it.)

Windows 10X will support three types of containers: Win32 containers, which we knew about previously, MSIX containers, and Native containers.

The Win32 container is new to 10X and is used for all types of Win32 apps, including both 32-bit and 64-bit apps. These include “pure” Win32 apps, Windows Forms apps, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) apps, Electron...