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There's a middle ground: build a new OS and provide backwards compatibility using virtualization (closer to Solaris Zones). It could work like the Coherence feature in Parallels VM for the Mac, but be embedded in the OS. If you double-click an app that requires WinXP, it launches it within a Zone containing an XP compatible environment and displays the GUI natively on your desktop.

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build a new OS and provide backwards compatibility using virtualization (closer to Solaris Zones)

opensolaris - they can't even give it away

honestly, who has dropped linux or freebsd for opensolaris?

this is a cautionary tale for MS - no one will care about your new os

OpenSolaris is failing for reasons other than technology. They do not actually want it to be open source, they just want to snow people who don't know better that it is open source. If it was open source, why not make it gplv2 and make it compatible with Linux? OpenSolaris needs hardware drivers, Linux would beneifit from ZFS. In the end Sun would gain a LOT more than they would give up. But instead it is gplv3, there is nothing to share with other projects, and they don't receive many patches. So it is DOA.

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