Yup, the OS(es) are now bloated. If we do the cloud right and abstract away the OS (into some deep dark space below) then popping out the OS and replacing it with something better (that does not morph into another bloated something) would be a cloud (IaaS) provider issue. Obviously, the PaaS could be that “abstraction” layer. But then, whose PaaS could that be?
Realistically, with all the stuff out there that “hooks” into all the OSes out there does make such a vision challenging from a migration standpoint. After all the “hooks” are the interfaces that makes it challenging, similar, to pulling out a gasoline combustion engine and replacing it with something that does something with a non-gasoline source of fuel to enable movement. Also, the OS providers are like the gasoline providers too.
Long time ago; ok a short time ago; there was what was called a Universal Turing Machine (UTM). It took something simple and produced something simple. It enabled one to use it to create another UTM that did something else and produced something else. As we evolved, we started layering these UTM and splat now we have VMs. Maybe, that magical future OS could indeed be modelled on a UTM. I think I need to flush that thought out anyhow.
Interestingly, there are so many billions and billions of lines of code (ahh, one day will we talk about the billions and billions of objects too?) that invariably will have to be migrated (ok, one means of migration is to throw all that away). That could be challenging since the enterprise has to keep its lights on and all their business logic is buried in that code. Think COBOL. Either way, all the people that know COBOL are rapidly fading away.
Interestingly, our schools teach people how to write some interesting code (usually, something like Java, Python etc). They rarely focus on how to read code. Today, IT spends maybe 80% on maintenance (think read) and 20% on development (think write) while our future readers (of code) are probably 0% while our writers (of code) are probably 100%. Obviously, after my 30 years in IT I think I can read and write code somewhat quite well. So, I think I will just not fade away, for awhile.