Anyone think this might happen

[Shadow Skill]

Do any of you think that Microsoft might come to it's senses and deintegrate the gui from the OS, and allow IE to be uninstalled without completely annihilating certain uhhhhh critical functions like windows update? (Which does have its uses but I only manually update now...) Am I just dreaming?

[jimbo]

I highly doubt it. It doesn't meet their number on criteria, ie: "How does this sell more OS licenses for us?"

[imdeemvp]

M$ created the IE how can they kill it?......unless they wanna use firefox in its place :D

[theantix]

Uh... IE is an important part of Microsoft's Desktop Environment. They could no easier do away with it than could Gnome or KDE get rid of their embedded browser components. IE is there to stay -- why not just Firebird instead, or even better just avoid Windows altogether?

[carlwill]

I don't think Microsoft will allow users to completely remove this from the OS - as Windows advances (in their eyes) they will feel the need for IE to perform more complex updates automaticly and will require that in place.

As far as the GUI goes, they might have a command line option only for lets say Windows 2009 Advanced Server but with the options to still use GUI. I know that will never be the case on desktop versions of M$

[Shadow Skill]

Sigh I know this to be true in my heart but still, I wish the would at least deintegrate the browser and the GUI if only to stabilize the OS, which WOULD sell more copies of windows, because they could genuinly say that the system is harder to crash than ever before. I don't see how the deintegration of the browser would nessecarily break the various functions of IE, it would however allow other applications to handle at least SOME of the tasks IE currently handles. (What I really want is for Windows to adopt a *nix core..which would make the OS rock freaking solid. But I know that will never happen....sigh) IE should have the capacity to be scaled down to only a web browser and leave out the file system browser feature out (One of the reasons I don't use kDE's Konqueror is this ability which I don't really like. I need to see if I can run xffm or some other file manager in Fluxbox, Xfce is really nice as well..) since so many damned exploits run through IE [I know just having it be a browser won't do much, but it would still make me feel better.]

[carlwill]

why do you care if Windows does this - Linux does ;)

[Shadow Skill]

Because I would have near perfect hardware support.....

[jimbo]

I don't think that IE's file management abilities is really the problem... it's really more the fact that IE is so highly dependant on things like activex and other such technologies that allow local execution of scripts and applications by remote computers without explicit permission or notification to do so. That's why you see all those popups and crap on IE.

I use Konqueror as a file manager quite heavily, and I'm about as paranoid as they come. I love it's file browsing features especially stuff like fish:// and smb:// and such protocols that it supports.

[Shadow Skill]

Its felt kind of hokey to me ever since I really stopped using IE save for file browsing. I just feel that the seperation of the two is better in a more asthetic sense more than anything else. (Microsoft better not EVER use a spatial browser like nautilus though, that is nothing but clutter, I need to look up how to turn spatial off.) I want something that is kind of like a rollodex the type of thing that serves the function of the start menu on macs. (I am pretty sure I have seen a picture of something simillar for *nix possibly a Gnome app?) It would probably work best if the centre wheel was able to roll to the left and right since it would be set up in a circular or crescent shape. (Mouse gestures might come in real freaking handy with this sort of a setup particularly circular motions if the mouse wheel doesn't have horizontal movement. [Although you could still use vertical scrolling to get it to rotate in the desired direction irrespective of the browser's orientation.] )