I would like to discuss something I've thought about for some time.
Do try to keep an open mind as you read it, with portions/combinations of virutal machine, rdp, citrix, odin, compiler, pathremapper etc.
Imagine that we have an OS but yet no current major applications for it.
If we could get one application that run "remotely" or in a virtual environment on another os, that would in the initial release send over bitmaps of the applicaiton window.
On the client side (on our OS) we would have an application that draw the application window on our desktop.
The client handle clipboard, send mouse and keyboard input to the server that start and run the application.
Nothing fancy, this is basiclly VNC today, but without a fully visible desktop.
The next release of the server would send over the resources (dialogs, bitmaps/images etc.)
The next release of the local client use local look and feel for those resources when applicable.
The server should then in small steps take over and act as sandbox to the application on the server.
Send drawing commands through the server instead of capturing images of the window. The server need to return that the drawing operation as "completed successfully" right away to not stall execution, while transferring the information to the client, thus use some asyncronious mechanism.
The client should take over drawing as much as possible.
The server determine portions of the execution that doesn't rely on external libraries (dll:s and system calls) as those should be possible to hand over to the client to store as executable code.
The server determine portions of the execution that rely on system calls and hand those over to the client to call versions available on our OS, compile locally and store as executable code.
I guess that the trickier parts emerge at this point, as the server handle external libraries that depend on each other and recreate/interpret (a 64-bit like odin) send it over to compile locally to our client OS and save as library.
Depending on the server OS, hard coded system paths and delimiters ( / instead of our \ ) may need special attention or subsystem support to not cause headache.
This is also the point when simple applications should be able to run on their on, locally on our until now "client" OS, without server and thus no longar as "client". The more libraries that can be translated the more applications will run, but the hateful exact version numbering problem that seem to be in fashion instead of "improve what you got" may be difficult to overcome.
Someone may have to buy portions of tech from IBM or ... to be able to accelerate hardware graphics.
