Oooh. Rant mode = on

64-bit support is coming, and not a minute too soon. And support for the NX bit, on processors that support it.

I would like to see at last a proper implementation of privelege control levels. It would make the whole thing so much safer. Most other OSes have implemented it properly since the mid 1960s, but Windows dares not to because it will cause a huge number of older programs to break, if they are no longer allowed to run in the Administrator context. They will never get rid of their security issues, unless they do this.

Publishing the source code would be good, but not likely. I like being able to inspect the source of Linux.

Finer-grained modularity. Windows has always been 'all or nothing' -- if I want (for example) FTP services, I don't want to have to install a web server and LDAP rubbish too. It is risky and there is no technical justification for it.

Proper IPv6 support.

Proper firewall.

Get rid of the pretend microkernel.

Built-in C compiler.

A means of control over the scheduler, like 'nice' on UNIX etc.

I would like an end to this .NET rubbish; the continual retraining (DDE > OLE > OLE2 > COM > COM+ > DCOM > .NET architechtures, with the Int21h > Win > Win32s > Win32 >>> APIs, and all the dreadful class libraries -- MFC anybody??) put me off programming for Windows some years back.

Built-in support for testing automation.

A proper "industrial strength" text editor (something as powerful as emacs or vi)

Decent and lightweight scripting languages such as Perl or Python.

A proper shell in which one can do scripts fully functionally equivalent to the GUI.

Get rid of that fscking registry.

There is a theory that all good OSes eventually end up reinventing UNIX :-)

Those would be the things that brought me back to putting Windows on my CV for development contracts.

Nice to have:

A bigger selection of installable file systems.

A TP monitor and a built-in relational database would be cool.

Java support (I'm evil, I know :-) )

Better connectivity tools -- 3270 terminal program, an ssh client and server, a non-broken Telnet server, rcp support, X11 server and so on. At present I need to install Cygwin on all our servers to make them usable.

Most of all, "play nice" with other vendors, instead of deliberately putting obstacles in peoples' way all the time.

I don't ask much, do I :-)