What does a new operating system look like in 2023?

Question

It feels like every platform shift we see a new operating system for that environment. Desktop, Web, Mobile, ... In the case of web the operating system is essentially the browser. Mobile was a massive undertaking with the hardware shift but it doesn't feel like we've seen anything similar for the Cloud. I'm just wondering after seeing a number of new browsers show up. Is this a second shot at an operating system that's truly open? If a new OS was to be built today what would it look like? Would we build everything from the ground up for a cloud based environment?

AnimalMuppet · Accepted Answer

You're using "operating system" in an extended, non-technical way.
The web is just a bunch of computers out there. They run perfectly normal operating systems. Browsers aren't that. But the point of an OS is to make the computer's resources available, and the browser did do that - it made available to users what the web servers provided.
The cloud is also just a bunch of computers out there. Those computers have normal operating systems. But that isn't what you mean. What makes those resources/services available to users? The "OS" is the interface that AWS or Azure or whoever provides.

controversial97 · Answer

One of my daydreams is for some entity to decide to spend a few billion dollars and five years making a new operating system that runs useful windows software about as well as windows 10 and uses existing windows drivers. I would not mind if running high end games was not a priority.
End users would benefit if Microsoft had more incentive to stop making their core product worse.
Huge software projects are high risk, even if you try hard to learn the lessons from failed big software projects. I think this would be a better investment than Softbank spending $300 millon on a 45% share of a dog walking website.