Torvalds: Windows 7 could make "angels sing again"

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 26 Jan 2009 at 10:45

Linus Torvalds has warned that Windows 7 is set to ride a wave of popularity, simply because it is not Vista.

In an interview with ComputerWorld, Linux founder Torvalds admitted he could see Windows 7 making "angels sing again".

"Windows 7 being better than Vista is saying a lot. Microsoft may have a huge PR advantage as people will compare it to Vista and think it is good ... like they did with Windows 95 compared to Windows 3.1. Maybe Microsoft did this on purpose."

Torvalds also suggested that Microsoft had gotten its act together on release dates after the painful gestation of Vista, but that further work needed to be done.

"I think Microsoft realised the Vista development cycle is way too long and it would be insane to do that again," he says.

"Microsoft might aim for a two-year development cycle and I think that is too long. It should decouple the operating system from the applications and release sooner."

"In the Linux space once a year is reasonable, but then you have the incremental releases. It's hard for a commercial company like Microsoft that wants people to pay for releases, to do a yearly upgrade. Apple has done faster upgrades, but it has charged less for the releases. This is not a problem for open source as it's free software, but this is one of the things Microsoft has to balance."