Although the containers emerged from the country of Linux, Microsoft adopted them wholeheartedly. Starting with Windows Server 2016, the company began to offer two types of Docker-compatible containers: Windows Server containers and Hyper-V containers. And six years after that fateful day when Microsoft announced that it loved Linux, developers now regularly connect applications in Docker containers to any Linux distribution supported by the Windows Linux subsystem or the Azure cloud.
But… containers on the desk? It would be a dramatic change in the way Windows handles desktop applications, allowing Windows applications to install as quickly and effortlessly as mobile applications. In fact, that seems to be the plan for the original Windows 10X, slated to arrive with a new wacky Surface device this fall.
Announced in October 2019, Windows 10X was developed for Microsoft’s Surface Neo, a picture book-like device that opens to reveal two screens side by side the size of a tablet. Neo’s little brother, the Surface Duo, runs a modified Android operating system instead of Windows 10X (and includes phone functionality, though Microsoft wisely refuses to call it a phone). Interestingly, on Microsoft’s 365th Developer Day last month, the company announced that its dual-screen SDK for Xamarin.Forms could be used to develop apps compatible with both devices.
So where do the containers come in? Well, first of all, these are not Docker containers. Instead, Microsoft seems to be using containers to demonstrate that it has learned from past attempts to drag developers into a new world that breaks sharply from the past (Universal Windows Platform, anyone?). Rather than forcing developers to create new applications from scratch for Windows 10X, they can wrap these applications in containers that include a backward-compatible file system and registry that allow Win32 applications to run with few modifications. . More ambitious developers can write about the new 10X APIs so that apps can span both screens and access other native functionality.
