Let’s talk about cloud operating systems. This article explores the options and potential of moving entirely “To The Cloud” for developers who normally demand significant offline power from their applications (IDEs, compilers, debuggers, etc). We’ll focus on .NET / Visual Studio developers, but I’m sure you can adapt this to your technology of choice.
I’ve been fascinated with what Google is doing with Chrome OS. I think finding a way to fully “live in the cloud” has a lot of promise. However, in practice Chrome OS is entirely unappealing to me. It’s just a single browser window, maximized. Yuck. I don’t mind doing most things in the browser, but I’d like multiple non-maximized browser windows and a desktop to organize things like shortcuts. That’s OK though because Chromebooks aren’t the only option. We have decent operating systems right now that can function largely in the same way if we set them up with discipline.
What we’re going to do is take a pristine Windows 7 instance and deck it out for the cloud. Even with all the choices these days, Windows 7 is still my favorite OS. I do have a Mac, several iOS devices, and I could always install Linux. Nevertheless, it’s Windows 7 for me so that’s where we’ll start.
Creating a Fresh Windows 7 Instance - Gently
I want to start from the very beginning. I don’t want old apps I’ve already installed encouraging me to “cheat” and work outside of the cloud more than necessary. At the same time I need to be able to fire up Visual Studio and do some work with an unreliable or nonexistent Internet connection So I’m keeping my current “full” Windows system intact. We’ll install a secondary instance of Windows using the awesome Boot to VHD feature in Windows 7 Ultimate. If you haven’t heard of it, I did a video walk-through here:
Boot to VHD Screencast:
Scott Hanselman’s write up is very helpful too.
Less Virtual, More Machine - Windows 7 and the magic of Boot to VHD:
This process takes about 15 minutes. Once you’ve got everything setup, I recommend you activate and then snapshot that VHD file (from your main OS) so you can always get back to “clean”. If you’re really living the cloud lifestyle, than paving your system is much easier than before. I always keep a secondary partition around for data files anyway so that can be shared across OSes.
Now that you’ve got a truly fresh Windows 7 copy, it’s time to install just a few apps needed to set you free (and a few you’d rather not live without).
Installing “The Cloud”
While your fresh copy of Windows 7 does have IE 8 installed, that browser is entirely not up to the task of being where you spend 90% of your time. I strongly encourage you to give the latest Chrome beta a shot as your main browser. The “application shortcuts” feature of Chrome makes it much more immersive than anything IE 9 or FireFox 4 are doing (yes, I know they have pinned sites, that’s not even close).
Chrome Beta
Read more: Michael C Kennedy Blog Part 1, Part 2
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