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Microsoft

Open Source Software in a Windows Environment? 468

Posted by Cliff from the stranger-in-a-strange-land dept.
brennan73 asks: "Like many people, I work in a Windows NT/2000 shop that has absolutely resisted bringing *nixes into our environment. Everyone has their reasons - my boss has resisted because it would be more difficult and expensive to find a replacement admin if I leave, since said replacement would need to be able to administer both Windows and *nix boxes, which I can understand. But I'm still curious...has anyone out there replaced major pieces of Microsoft software with open source equivalents in a medium-to-large business environment, while still running on the Windows platform?"

"Like many people in such shops, I've just about had it with IIS's security problems. I'm also highly unimpressed with Microsoft's new licensing schemes. In other words, between security and money concerns, I can see good reasons for businesses to look for alternatives to Microsoft's standard offerings, for apps and utilities if OSes are ruled out by management.

So, I'm thinking of replacing IIS and Office with Apache and StarOffice for Windows, and I'm open to other examples on both servers and the desktop. Why did you switch? How painful was it for both you and the users? Any experiences that anyone could relate, even failed experiments, would be great."
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Open Source Software in a Windows Environment? More

Open Source Software in a Windows Environment?

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  • Check out Zope.org (Score:3, Informative)

    by Stinking Pig ( 45860 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @10:53AM (#2423821) Homepage
    Lots of people run it on Windows.

    HTH,

  • No Win32 Open Source? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by evilmonkey_666 ( 515504 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @10:54AM (#2423829)
    There is little open source software for windows, because authors of open source software do not want to support microsoft.

    Apache and Star Office are exceptions, because they want to become standards and that means being available for the most popular desktop platform.

    IMO Open source software is usually harder to use for the average microsheep. People like GUIs are are willing to pay for them. It seems that that is what the linux world is lacking at the moment.

    Functionality is not always more important that ease of use, at least that's how most users think.
    • While some developers undoubtably want to yield no quarter to Microsoft, I doubt that's the real problem.

      Have you ever looked at code that truly supports Windows platforms? Microsoft may claim that it's a common platform, but the extra work required to support different Unix platforms (Linux, BSD, Solaris, HP/UX, AIX) is trivial compared to the extra work required to support W95, W98, WinME, NT4, W2K and now WXP.

      The only reason most shops can get anything out the door is the fact that there are tools designed to hide this inconsistency. Few people program in Xlib directly, but it's accessible to those who need to do something Athena/Motif/KDE/Qt/et al don't do. But the last I heard, nobody (except maybe some games developers) gets within three or four layers of the Windows API. That makes the cost of cross-platform development extremely high, since the abstraction layers are so different.

      Of course, low level programming still interacts with the APIs directly. But I remember shocking a former boss speechless when I gave him a copy of the Linux parallel printer driver. It was about 5 pages, and everything was done once. He had written similar device drivers for Windows and basically had to write the same code four times.

      On a related note, this is why I continue to insist that Windows is a toy OS. The most fundamental requirement of an OS is to hide hardware and system details. I should not have to rewrite code so it works with Zip disks in addition to floppies, or SCSI drives in addition to IDE drives. Yet programs can't access NTFS disks unless the programmer recodes them. They can't migrate from Windows API to another unless extremely thick abstraction layers are used.

      In contrast, with the "toy" Linux I have routinely migrated work between Solaris and HP/UX systems at work to Linux boxes, and back, creating an extremely flexible development environment. The required source code changes, if any, can be localized into #ifdef blocks. With autoconf, I don't even need to worry about different Makefiles.

      If you're paid for your work, the significant extra work required to support Windows makes sense. Or if you're a major project, like Apache. But for somebody who is doing this work in their spare time, supporting Windows means that a lot of other things won't be done.
      • Yet programs can't access NTFS disks unless the programmer recodes them.

        What do you mean by that? NTFS is just a file system - Linux supports dozens of different file systems, and you don't have to rewrite applications to support each one. Same with NT/2000 - the only applications that need to be rewritten are those that are filesystem-specific, like a disk defragmenter or disk diagnostic utility.

      • FUD? (Score:4, Informative)

        by crisco ( 4669 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @12:36PM (#2424189) Homepage
        While many points you make might be true, they may be due to programmer incompetence as much as the Microsoft platform.

        I deal daily with a nontrivial program coded directly to the windows API (no MFC or anything of the sort). It runs across several flavors of Windows (98, ME, 2000) though being developed on 98 and never targetted to 2000. Additionally, it was developed without MS tools using an open source (though not Free) compiler.

        • Re:FUD? (Score:2)

          by mpe ( 36238 )
          While many points you make might be true, they may be due to programmer incompetence as much as the Microsoft platform.

          Would these "incompetants" be those who write the applications or those who wrote the OS?
      • "Obviously this guy doesn't know what he is talking about."

        Not true ,especially in regard to client apps.
        BTW. Interesting how I can run 6 year old Win32 binaries on my Win2000 box while I am unable to run 2 years old Linux binary on the latest RH.

        "That makes the cost of cross-platform development extremely high, since the abstraction layers are so different."

        What the hell are you talking about ?
        Xlib offers basic drawing operations and so does GDI. Period.
        The only difference is that Win32 comes with bunch of built-in widgets ( written using the very same GDI and NOT some "hidden" API) which are equivalent of GDK and parts of Qt.

        "They can't migrate from Windows API to another unless extremely thick abstraction layers are used."

        Yeah, can you migrate from mainframe to another OS easily ?
        Hell, what we have here is another toy OS, this time from IBM!

        "On a related note, this is why I continue to insist that Windows is a toy OS."

        Do so, if it makes you happy. Most people will simply bypass you on their way to ahead ...

      • On a related note, this is why I continue to insist that Windows is a toy OS. The most fundamental requirement of an OS is to hide hardware and system details. I should not have to rewrite code so it works with Zip disks in addition to floppies, or SCSI drives in addition to IDE drives.

        Even better move one card in a Windows machine from one PCI slot to another (or even in some cases reconfigure the PCI IRQ assignments in the BIOS). When you then start it up the thing will treat it as you've put new hardware it. Try the same thing with Linux (or just about any other OS) and nothing spectacular will happen. Also with Linux the first ethernet card is always called eth0, the second eth1 etc. Windows gives them cryptic names and I have no idea how you can distinguish between 2 cards of the same type. Similiarly a sound card is always /dev/dsp etc regardless of the actual hardware involved.
        When it comes to device naming Linux (and other unix type systems) do a good job of abstraction. When you come to Windows it's simply a bad joke. Bad enough not to believe that NT has anything in common with VAX/VMS.
        • Maybe on 9x, but certainly not on 2K.
          Regarding devices' names, Windows usually gives you the providers' name for it, like Maxtor 5t040h4 for my HD, but internally it uses names like \Device\HardDisk0, etc, very like *nix.

          http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/winob j. shtml

          Is a small utility that will shows you what Windows uses internally.

          For example, I've a \Device\Floppy0 , \Device\HarddiskVolume1, \Device\Scsi\, etc.

          Giving the devices the manufactors names is usually a good thing, because those are usually more meaningful.

      • Moderators! The parent post makes basic errors of fact that are corrected in many of the replies. Please moderate accordingly! For intsance, user-level applications do not have to be rewritten to move from FAT to NTFS or to support zip disks. Porting between versions of Windows is less effort than porting between versions of Unix.

        • > For intsance, user-level applications do not
          > have to be rewritten to move from FAT to NTFS
          > or to support zip disks. Porting between
          > versions of Windows is less effort than
          > porting between versions of Unix.

          Errr - yes they do if they want to do any security work - which isn't available on FAT.

          Or if they want to use the many API's that are "only supported in Windows NT/2000, but not on Win9x" (just look in the MSDN - there are many of them). Locking API's are completely different between Win9x and WinNT/200 for example. Why is LockFileEx unsupported in Win9x ? Why are such basic things as locking a region of a file different between Microsoft platforms ?

          Porting between Win9x/WinNT/Win2000 is a *nightmare* compared to porting between UNIX varients. Not if you're doing simple "hello world" window GUI stuff, but if you're doing anything of any complexity you run into such issues (security, file locking etc.) all the time.

          Regards,

          Jeremy Allison,
          Samba Team.

    • Re:No Win32 Open Source? (Score:5, Informative)

      by reynaert ( 264437 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @11:54AM (#2424010)

      There is little open source software for windows, because authors of open source software do not want to support microsoft.

      (I'm assuming you're speaking about GUI programs. The vast majority of command-line programs can easily be recompiled for Windows using DJGPP (for DOS) or Cygwin (for Win32). These environments exists of a POSIX emulation layer and most of the GNU development utilities (gcc, make, bash, etc.))

      The fact is that most Unix programmer's don't know how to program for Windows. I mean, if you primarily develop for Unix, you're not going to spend (waste?) time learning something ugly as the MFC.

      What about Windows programmers? Well, DOS/Windows doesn't have (and never had) an open source culture. Instead, most programmer's distribute their programs as shareware or freeware. But they would never let you see the code.

      In fact, most Windows open source software comes from Unix people who are forces to work on Windows. Just look at the open source programs available on Windows: Apache. PuTTY, an ssh client. Vim has a Windows port (which is able to integrate in Visual Studio). Cygwin which I already have mentioned above.

      • Emacs is ported to Win32 too, if I'm not mistaken...

    • Stereotypes (Score:5, Informative)

      by Carnage4Life ( 106069 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @12:18PM (#2424112) Homepage Journal
      There is little open source software for windows, because authors of open source software do not want to support microsoft.

      Thanks for stereotyping Open Source software developers. Unfortunately you are wrong. Many people who become involved in Open Source software do so because they want to share software with people and not because Micro$oft sux0rs. Simply because most of the posts on Slashdot typically mindlessly bash Microsoft and call it the Great Satan doesn't mean that people developing software that they want to benefit users of software will divorce themselves from the Windows platform.

      What makes you think that Open Source development is restricted to users of a certain platform? Open Source Developer != Linux user even though a lot of them are.

      Apache and Star Office are exceptions, because they want to become standards and that means being available for the most popular desktop platform.

      Exceptions, huh? How about
      1. OpenNap [sourceforge.net]
      2. XFree86 [redhat.com]
      3. Cygwin [redhat.com]
      4. Emacs [gnu.org]
      5. Vi [thomer.com] and Vim [vim.org]
      6. Mojo Nation [sourceforge.net]
      7. Visual Tcl [sourceforge.net]
      8. MikTEX [miktex.org]
      9. Open Perl IDE [sourceforge.net]
      10. Mozilla [mozilla.org]
      11. WinCVS [cvsgui.org]
      12. BitchX [bitchx.org]
      13. Firebird [sourceforge.net]
      14. mySQL [mysql.com]
    • While I understand your point, please don't try to group all open source authors into one big group. People write open source software for lots of different reasons.

      There are lots tools available now that make it easy for open-source (and non open-source) developers to target both Windows _and_ Linux. My favorite is wxWindows [wxwindows.org], a cross-platform C++ toolkit that lets you write one program and recompile it for Windows, Linux/GTK (and any other Unix where you can get GTK to compile), Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, and OS/2 (!). Ports for embedded devices and the Linux framebuffer are under development. wxWindows is open-source (LGPL) of course. Unlike other similar toolkits, it uses native widgets, so their scrollbars are real Windows scrollbars on Windows, and real GTK scrollbars on Linux.

      I've been working on Audacity [sourceforge.net] using wxWindows for the past two years, and I've never regretted choosing to make it multi-platform. I really wanted to support MacOS, since that's what a lot of my friends and family use, but I also wanted to support Linux because that was my favorite environment, and of course by supporting Windows I could make my program available to the greatest number of people.

      Many people have written to me and the other developers thanking us for giving them an open-source alternative on Windows. Some of them want to transition from Windows to Linux, and like that there will be a familiar audio software package available on both. Others prefer to stick with Windows because of special hardware that's not supported on Linux yet (i.e. digital sound cards) or because they're not hackers and actually don't mind using Windows.

      Remember, to the non-programmer, one of the biggest advantages of open-source is that it's more likely to be around five years from now than a commercial or a shareware program. Programmers lose interest, companies lose interest, but when a project is open-source, somebody else can pick up where the original developer(s) left off. So I think that open-source on Windows makes a lot of sense, and I'd like to see a lot more of it.
    • "There is little open source software for windows, because authors of open source software do not want to support microsoft. "

      What?

      Go check out sourceforge.net and you'll see a ton of Win32 stuff. That's not even the tip of the iceberg of what's available out there for Windows as open source. Many people have websites with their projects, many companies have websites with their stuff... Microsoft especially releases a *LOT* of open source code. Just start looking around for recent .Net examples and pet projects.

      Open Source isn't about Microsoft, or Linux, or Unix. It's about developers sharing ideas with one another.

      To make a claim that Open Source = Anti Microsoft you have to be seriously deluded.
  • I work at a pretty big company, about 7 locations all over europe and canada. We have a running windows nt 4 network and we replaced all the DNS servers with Redhat, this was pretty painless. We are currently investigating replacing our IIS servers with apache and possibly our VPN servers with PoPtOp.
    It isn't much (yet) but I am pretty fanatic about migrating more and more so, we probably will have more open source software.
    I must say replacing office with staroffice is pretty impressive. How did your users react?
  • I work for one of the major phone companies. After the recommendation to move off IIS came out, the management started a project to do just that. Phone companies tend to like and trust Unix, since that's where unix was invented. With the recent virus', worms and trojans, microsoft has really damaged their reputation with CIO and CTO's. High level executives don't like it when they look bad, especially when there are good alternatives. Most of the support, admin people I know have been negative about the new licensing. If they don't change it, Microsoft will hurt themselves.

  • Browser (Score:2)

    by ajs ( 35943 )
    The obvious example is one of the most frequently used. I usually suggest that people use Mozilla [mozilla.org] as their primary browser and mailer. It's still pre-1.0, but tends to be less buggy than IE, support standards better, provide more privacy features and overall saves a lot of headaches for user and admin alike.

    I use the Gimp under Windows, but it's a bit clunky (especially in opening and saving files), so I would not reccomend it to everyone.

  • Heh.... (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by tcc ( 140386 )
    > my boss has resisted because it would be more difficult and expensive to find a replacement admin if I leave

    Sounds like the reverse-excuse :) why would you leave if you like your job? isn't it a way of saying "I want to be on the safe side if I throw you out" hehe...

    Yeah maybe alarmist, but you can install BSD or Linux on the same hardware that runs windows, so if you'd leave you could always offer to put the system (or the parts you changed, i.e. probably Email firewall and httpd) back on a windows platform for the next person that would replace you... Normally when you give your 2 weeks (or more depending on the terms) notice, you have time to train someone for the basic stuff and fix/tweak the last things...
    • But management knows that the buses are always lurking out there, waiting to run down vital staffmembers.

      Guys who are happy as clams still change jobs sometimes. He might win the Lotto. His wife might get transferred to Paris. God might speak to him on the way to work one morning, tell him to put down the umbrella and go build an ark...

  • What we've done... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by vandan ( 151516 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @11:03AM (#2423854) Homepage
    Well...
    We just completed a StarOffice 5.2 rollout.
    This was in direct response to some very threatening letters we received from the BSAA (Business Software Association of Australia). In hindsight, it was just a scare-campaign to fool us into buying more software - and it half worked. We bought Win2000 licenses for MOST PCs. And we bought Office XP for those who absolutely needed our legacy VB code in Excel. We use Access (developer) to create and distribute our database front-ends - the developer version lets you distibute an Access 'viewer' type package without having a license for Access.

    The most interesting change for us though was StarOffice - about 85% of our staff who were using Office 97 are now using it, and we have 2 people trialling StarOffice 6-beta.
    Also, I recently bought Borland's Kylix (www.borland.com/kylix). It's Delphi for Linux (Rapid Application Development, for those who don't know). I am half-way through creating our first Kylix-based database front-end (I'm presently testing it out at home, talking to M$ $QL Server on Win2k running under VMWare!!! Ha!). We are about 6 weeks away from our first Linux box on the desktop. It'll be running Netscape 6.1 (it has a spell checker for email - what can I say?), StarOffice 6-beta, and my Kylix-based database front-end. Oh - by the way - Kylix is available for FREE download if you only create open-source projects with it (I bought the Desktop Developer anyway...).
    If all goes according to plan, I will start on the (very) long task of rebuilding our database front-ends under Kylix, but as I said - it will take time... I estimate that in 5 years (and my boss backs me up on this) we will be running a fully Linux-based office, and the only commercial app we'll be using will be Kylix.
    • It'll be running Netscape 6.1 (it has a spell checker for email - what can I say?),

      Pine has a spellchecker for email. I've been using it for almost a decade.

  • Cygwin is a *MUST* for any Win32 system.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by cowmix ( 10566 ) <mmarch.gmail@com> on Saturday October 13, 2001 @11:06AM (#2423861) Homepage
    I am forced to use W2K for my job. Having Cygwin installed gives me almost a complete *NIX environment (Openssh, Bash, Perl, Python, Postgres, Xfree, etc) that runs seamlessly in a Win32 system. It is completely awesome.
    • Absolutely. Some people maybe think Cygwin is not so good because they tried it a couple of years ago when it was slow and didn't have Xfree support. Those people should try it again. Performance is so much better and having an local X desktop is very cool indeed.

  • Working Redhat/Samba into the mix. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mauryisland ( 130029 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @11:17AM (#2423890) Homepage
    I work for a big county government, and after the Code Red/NIMDA fiascos:

    We're been quietly replacing several NT file and print servers with a Redhat 7.1/Samba solution.

    Managers are beginning to discuss replacing all the publicly available web servers with Apache (currently IIS).

    We are deploying two new web servers in November, and both will run Redhat/Apache.

    Myself and others are testing the StarOffice beta, on Linux as well as NT.

    There's beginning to be a discussion about how to move our Visual Basic applications over to something that M$ can't orphan.

    The big push for 'Active Directory' seems to have died,

    The Novell guys are talking about Novell/Linux on the same box, but I'm ignorant of the details...

    • Managers are beginning to discuss replacing all the publicly available web servers with Apache (currently IIS).

      You may want to suggest replacing internal use ones too. Unfortunately with the strong possibility that this rolled-up viruses thing continues , (Ie virus's with port 80 AND mail virus infection vectors) it only takes one goofy secretary to open the "Funny attachment" and Blammo! The bugger is now behind the firewall.

      Ugly.
  • If you are bored with the look&feel of the windows shell/desktop/taskbar you could replace it with i.e. litestep or some other shell replacement. check this nice site [pimpin.net] for a list of shells and other related stuff & news about the subject.

    Don't think it's something you would deploy company-wide, but with a good theme it sure would impress your co-workers and it's also great for *nix people that are familiar with i.e afterstep, windowmaker and the like.. Last time I checked lots of the shell replacements (if not all) are open source in some form or other..

    • Don't think it's something you would deploy company-wide, but with a good theme it sure would impress your co-workers

      It's possibly also a way to get shit rained down from your SOE guys! Of course you could just then get uppity at them and threaten to expose the porn subdirectory on the SOE dev server to management :)
  • Sadly, even Microsoft has a solution to your problem:

    They have a product called Interix [microsoft.com] (it isn't their's, they bought it from a startup). It runs under Win2k or NT4 and basically provides a *NIX environment for an NT system. All the GNU stuff is there (shells, gcc, make, etc etc) and the source to them. (source CD is sold separately for $20, or download from their ftp site). Should be noted that the only code there is the code to GNU products, not the actual Interix code.

    it isnt free. It does cost something on the order of hundreds per copy.

    [disclaimer]This post is not an endorsement of Microsoft or their products.[/disclaimer]
    • From their site:

      "Cygwin is a UNIX environment for Windows. It consists of two parts:
      • A DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as a UNIX emulation layer providing substantial UNIX API functionality.
      • A collection of tools, ported from UNIX, which provide UNIX/Linux look and feel.

      The Cygwin DLL works with all versions of Windows since Windows 95, with the exception of Windows CE."

      Interix claims to be faster than other eumulated Unix environments, but if performance is an issue then why not install a reliable BSD or Linux distro? Check it out here [cygwin.com].

      Phillip.

  • Switching from Windows to Linux at work (Score:3, Informative)

    by ciryon ( 218518 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @11:31AM (#2423933) Journal
    I have successfully switched from Windows 2000 to Mandrake Linux 8.1 at work. All I need from the Windows environment can be done with open source utils. This includes OpenOffice, gnome-spreadsheet, kmail (really good for multiple IMAP accounts, better than evolution) samba and nautilus and a bunch more I can't remember.

    And if I REALLY need to get into windows there's no need to reboot. Double click the VMWare [vmware.com] icon and load the suspended image file of Windows. No more than four seconds and I can do whatever I need to do in Windows. The only thing that's still problematic is integrating samba browsing in Nautilus in a good way. KDE is of course a good alternative, but personally I don't like that environment.


    I got some screenshots [n3.net] up at my site.

  • We have a couple of Linux boxes running now on the back end. Our firewall is running kernel 2.4.x to get the improvements netfilter brings. gShield [linuxmafia.org] is a great tool for firewall control. Don't edit the config files with Notepad or Wordpad, though.

    We have a dedicated PC at our hosting company, a RAQ4 w/Apache.

    On the desktop, we are stuck with MS. Most of the software we use for our business, (insurance) is provided as part of our contracts with the insurance companies. We don't rate and quote insurance with the software they provide, they don't do business with us. We are stuck for the moment. In the future, though, we may be able to make some changes. Many of hte companies we do business with are moving to "web" apps, or Metaframe/Terminal Server scenarios.

  • OpenSource co-existing with Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MagikSlinger ( 259969 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @11:36AM (#2423947) Homepage Journal

    I've done it. At work, we had need of a web server for our team, but the Powers That Be didn't want to make part of the Intranet available to us mere peons. I downloaded and installed Apache for Win32 on my NT 4.0 box and had it up and running in about 15 minutes (10 minutes spent reading the manual). It runs quite happily on my NT box serving my team.

    The next thing we needed was a SQL server for our bug tracking database. Our database was originally a MS-Access 97 application. The shared datastores was an Access MDB on an NT file server supporting a team located at two different sites. We discovered the hard way that Access was not designed for network operation :-)

    We couldn't get a license for Microsoft SQL server from Management, so I downloaded MySQL for Win32 and installed it on my NT box. I also downloaded the MySQLODBC driver and several MySQL tools (e.g., the Access to MySQL server migration utility). Within a day, we had created and deployed our bug database as SQL server based MS Access application. Yes, MS Access app connected to a MySQL backend. No problem.

    So at work, the NT machine I do my development on runs Apache and MySQL supporting up to 8 users without a problem.

    On a bigger scale, the big corporation I work for is a MS shop. For the project we're working on, we insisted on and got UNIX servers (IBM machines running AIX). FastConnect from IBM was screwing up constantly, so we bugged the IT department enough until they installed SAMBA -- we dragged them kicking and screaming into it, I might add. No problems. NT and Win9x workstations connect to and use an IBM AIX as our fileserver.

    This happens all the time, guys. Most Win32 ports of Open Source apps have very nice installation packages. Both Apache and MySQL come with automated installs which, frankly, are some of the slickest installers I've ever used. Apache and MySQL require a minimum level of competence to set-up and maintain.

    Oh, and how did Management react when they found out about my Apache/MySQL server? Very, very positively. I was commended for my initiative and resourcefulness. The Dept VP said he loved the choices because it cost nothing to the department.

    • We couldn't get a license for Microsoft SQL server from Management...

      Not to take anything away from your use of MySQL, but Microsoft does have a free (as in beer) alternative to SQL Server: the Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE). It's free for Visual Studio users and I believe some versions of Office. It's essentially an untuned/mistuned version of SQL Server stripped of the admin tools. The license is actually amazingly useful. I think you can even redistribute it, use it for commercial production use, etc. It should take away anyone's excuses for treating Microsoft Access as if it were an actual database.

      • Not to take anything away from your use of MySQL, but Microsoft does have a free (as in beer) alternative to SQL Server: the Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE). It's free for Visual Studio users and I believe some versions of Office. It's essentially an untuned/mistuned version of SQL Server stripped of the admin tools. The license is actually amazingly useful. I think you can even redistribute it, use it for commercial production use, etc.


        Someone mod this guy up a point!! Thank you for the heads up -- I have never heard of the MSDE, but we don't use Visual Studio and we're still on Office 97 (don't get me started on why...) I'll poke around for it--it could be useful in the future. I still like MySQL and frankly, it's just kind of cool to be running it. :-)



        It should take away anyone's excuses for treating Microsoft Access as if it were an actual database.


        LOL!! Only other MS Access developers out there can appreciate this one. :-)



        Friends don't let friends deploy Access


      • You are limited to 5 connections I believe. Re- read the license lest you get inot trouble.

  • Use Vim instead of Notepad (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kazzaerexys ( 210042 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @11:36AM (#2423950)
    I haven't implemented this on any sort of scale, but for my own sanity at work, I have pulled the Win32 version of Vim (Vi, Improved) from www.vim.org [vm.org].

    As a regular user, you can add a Windows `Send To...' option to your menus which make it available as an editor. Also, when you open the File Types menu, if you choose the Advanced options for a TXT text document and change the program used by the `open' action to gvim, you can make it the default text editor.

    If you are really lucky and have registry access, you can make it into the default source-code viewer for IE.

    Not having to look at Notepad has made me a much happier (albeit still reluctant :) Windows user.

    CJW

    • Since the parent post didn't go into details about how to make your editor of choice the source code viewer for IE, I thought I would explain. It's easier than you think, and doesn't require registry hacking.

      (The following instructions work for Windows 2000; if you're using 98, please adjust slightly. :)

      1. Go to Tools/Folder Options in My Computer or Windows Explorer. Click the "File Types" tab.
      2. Scroll down until you find HTML, PHP, or the file type you are currently viewing in your browser.
      3. Click the Advanced button.
      4. Edit the "Edit" type, or create a new type called "Edit."
      5. Browse until you find the application you want. (I use EditPlus [editplus.com], which does source code highlighting for PHP/JSP/Perl.) Make sure the "Use DDE" box is unchecked.
      6. Click OK until you are out of all of the dialog boxes.
      7. Make sure the Edit button is showing in IE's toolbar. If it's not, make it show up by right-clicking on an empty area of your toolbar and clicking "Customize."
      8. Open a new browser window and go to a URL that ends in .html or whatever file type you just edited.
      9. The "Edit" button should show up, and you should be able to edit the page in your preferred editor. (Note: for Slashdot, you have to edit/create a file type in Windows for .pl.)

      The real advantage of this is that you can set different types of files to open in different editors. For instance, I set HTML to open in Dreamweaver, but I set PHP to open in EditPlus.

      HTH,
      Erica
    • VI is nice to have around. Thanks for the VIM tip. I've been using VIW from Watcom.
  • That's an excellent question: People who like (or have to use) Windows can find open-source replacements for most of the closed source apps they run. In fact, that's a nice way to fade a Windows house to a Linux/Open-Source house: Changing the operating system and consequently all the applications is way too drastic for most houses. Cross-platform open-source software are both cost-effective AND non-MS (which means you have a choice).
    One of the downsides is that for some of the applications, you really have to adapt the Unix Way Of Thought & Work (and realise that not everything reads it's config from the registry). That's not really a downside, but it's one of the reasons people are afraid to jump to Linux in the first place! Another downside is that GUI open-source software have a way of looking,well, unfinished, as opposed to the exoterically polished MS software.

    Now, let's see... IIS to Apache shouldn't be too painful, unless you have an site based on MS technology (or plan to use .NET stuff later).

    MS Office to StarOffice... Well, I don't like StarOffice and I love MS Office but I guess this is a matter of taste. Get rid of Outlook though if you don't use Exchange Server (question: does an open-source Exchange Server-compatible alternative exist?) . If it's pre-2002 version (which at least blocks any executable attachments), it's going to cost you a lot.

    Personally, I also use GCC and the command line tools on my Windows XP /Office XP box (a 'hasn't crashed,ever' combination)... You might want to try out GIMP for Win if you're into that kind of stuff, or Mozilla as a replacement of IE (can't think of a reason to do that, though).

    • One of the downsides is that for some of the applications, you really have to adapt the Unix Way Of Thought & Work (and realise that not everything reads it's config from the registry).

      And this is bad because? The unix way of handling configuration (especially if most of the configuration is in one system file, rather than per user files) is considerably more "admin friendly" than the stick everything in one basket approach of the Windows registry.
  • We recently did a big roll out in a Govt dept (Can't tell you which one tho. NDA!) using 2000 boxen, running MySQL. It was a freaking joy to behold.

    MySQL runs like the clappers, and *assuming you don't need row level locking and a few nifty things like that* slipped right in where MS-SQL once reigned.

    The MySQL odbc drivers all worked charmingly and allowed the VB-drones to make their crufty little db apps as seemlessly as if it was Ms-sql.

    Apache works pretty sweet too if you need a *real* PHP host. I've been told the ASP on it works moderately ok if you really must. (Which you may if management heard that Gartner recomendation).

    Of course none of it reeealy compares with the using linux as the be-all-end-all windows service pack! But that goes with out saying really.

  • Almost complete ...... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by buchanmilne ( 258619 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @12:05PM (#2424064) Homepage
    We are a small company in South Africa, and we run vritually everything on Open Source software. on the server side we have:

    3 Linux Mandrake boxes:
    1)Samba PDC and main fileserver (also NFS), openldap server,
    2)Postfix/UW-IMAP/amavis virus scanning mail server, apache web and webmail, Star Schedule Calendar server.
    3)Samba/CUPS printserver, intranet server
    The only proprietary software here is the Star Schedule server, which we are looking at replacing.

    1 Windows 2000 Server/MSSQL 7 server/IIS
    This box is for the ERP/Project Management software we use (don't blame me, management didn't even consult IT).
    On the desktops we run mostly Windows 2000 or Windows NT with Star Office, GIMP, and Netscape. We will be deploying Mozilla and OpenOffice to replace Netscape and StarOffice.

    Openldap provides a convenient shared address book, and allows use to use linux on the desktops as conveniently as Windows boxes joined to the domain. Password authentication on linux is done with pam_smb, account info by ldap -> one account and one password. Star Schedule povides calendaring, although it is not that robust. We migth migrate to phpgroupware .....

    There are a few people who have MS Office (since they claim they can't send (Star|Open)Office to other companies ... we will see about that soon ...
    Other proprietary software we use is Pro/Engineer and Wave (from Ricardo). Pro/E does not run on linux (yet), but Wave does.
    • There are a few people who have MS Office (since they claim they can't send (Star|Open)Office to other companies


      Get them to send HTML files - it's more of a open standard than word doc ever will be, with editors and viewers just about ubiquitous. And it handles 99% of business documentation needs.

  • Perl from activestate... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Uzull ( 16705 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @12:11PM (#2424086) Homepage
    That's what we are using to automate our windows environments ! windows has no embedded scripting language as for example OS/2 with REXX. We use it for nearly everything - automated installs, login scripts, database management, system administration, etc. It makes life a lot easier and extensible, and the support (newsgroups, internet) is excellent. If you try to do this with a microsoft method, you would have to learn several different programming and scripting languages, pay for compilers (VB), click a lot around, and would require much more personel, and have a crap support !
    • That's what we are using to automate our windows environments ! windows has no embedded scripting language as for example OS/2 with REXX. We use it for nearly everything - automated installs, login scripts, database management, system administration, etc

      The really daft bit is that you get better login support with the Netware client than the SMB client. Even the default Microsoft one, you get an even better network client from Novell. But there are no third party SMB clients, best you can manage is to replace LMSCRIPT.EXE with something else.

  • This is more common than you think... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ravenseye ( 146453 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @12:22PM (#2424125)
    I think a lot of folks are doing stuff like this. We did it a little at a time. MOST of our users haven't noticed anything different except that things tend to run a little better. The firewalls/proxy servers went to a Linux box three years ago. Web based access to corporate mail moved to an open source Linux solution last year. Hardly anyone realizes that the last three years of corporate transactional data (we're a financial institution) now resides on a sub $1,000 Samba box. Can't even remember when I moved that....certainly over two years ago.

    This year, we bought some insurance agencies to add to our holdings. BEFORE we bought them they were MS everything....from the mice up. Seems that most of the insurance business likes Redmond a lot. AFTER we bought them, they have Win2K on the desk, Samba as a server, and Linux based firewalls /proxies. Outlook is history..replaced by Pegasus Mail (I know.....not open source or Linux friendly but works great) which will soon host a Python scripting engine for all the stuff that VB does in Outlook.

    The stuff runs great. The people don't know the difference...they just say that they're glad they all have a new "computer system". A few suits have trouble because they only know "names" like Exchange or Outlook. They also expect to see a calendar in their e-mail software....although they can't explain why it belongs there. I always have handy, an expense report on what the stuff cost us and a quote from CDW on what it WOULD have cost us using NT Server/Proxy/Exchange, etc. I also remind them that their way would probably cost us more IT staff too.

    None of this was hard to do. None of this was technically difficult. None of this hurt our business.

    All of this worked. All of this helped our people. All of this saved us money. All of this was the right thing to do.

    Pick a project....think it out...do some research and get it done. You'll be happy you did and your company will be better for it. I did it in a very conservative financial institution that HATES to take risk. And now I work for a better company because of that decision.
    • A few suits have trouble because they only know "names" like Exchange or Outlook.

      But do they attach the same importance of names to telephone systems, heating, air conditioning, water pipes, electrical cable, etc...
      Half the problem here is people who know a little thinking they are experts, when in most other situations they'd leave it to people who know what they are doing.

      They also expect to see a calendar in their e-mail software....although they can't explain why it belongs there.

      Most likely it's "The way Microsoft does it so it must be the right way".

    • "... Samba as a server, and Linux based firewalls/proxies"

      When there are discussions about open source, there doesn't seem to be enough recognition that this is a sure way to use open source, even if it is necessary to run Windows on the desktop.

  • Traditionally UNIX utils on Win32 (Score:5, Informative)

    by LetterJ ( 3524 ) <j@wynia.org> on Saturday October 13, 2001 @12:54PM (#2424245) Homepage
    Here are just a few of the tools that are considered traditionally in UNIX/Linux/BSD territory that are available for Win32. In all actuality, there's enough out there to get as much of Linux running on Win32 as Win32 running under WINE.
    XFree86: http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/xfree/ [redhat.com]
    KDE: http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
    GTK/PHP/Libglade: http://gtk.php.net/download.php [php.net]

    Apache: http://www.apache.org [apache.org]
    PHP: http://www.php.net [php.net]
    PHPTriad: http://www.phpgeek.com [phpgeek.com]
    Perl: http://www.activestate.com [activestate.com]
    Ruby: http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/ruby/downloads/ ruby-install.html [pragmaticprogrammer.com]
    Python: http://www.python.org/download/download_windows.ht ml [python.org]
    TCL/TK: http://www.pconline.com/%7Eerc/tclwin.htm [pconline.com]

    MySQL: http://www.mysql.com [mysql.com]
    MySQL ODBC: http://www.mysql.com/downloads/api-myodbc.html [mysql.com]
    PostgreSQL: Included in cygwin (only works on NT)

    ATT's U/WIN* Unix for Windows: http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/uwin/ [att.com]
    Cygwin: http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/ [cygnus.com]
    DJGPP: http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/ [delorie.com]
    Native UNIX command-line binaries: http://www.wzw.tu-muenchen.de/~syring/win32/UnxUti ls.html [tu-muenchen.de]

    vi: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~tmgil/vi.html [cs.vu.nl]
    Emacs: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/voelker/ntemacs .html [washington.edu]
    OpenOffice: http://www.openoffice.org [openoffice.org]

    Mozilla: http://www.mozilla.org [mozilla.org]
    GIMP: http://user.sgic.fi/~tml/gimp/win32/ [user.sgic.fi]

    List of GNU software for Windows: http://www.gnusoftware.com/ [gnusoftware.com]
    And so on . . .

    There's a list over at DMOZ.org of a lot of this.
  • Using SSL IMAP got us away from exchange. I still
    don't have a calendaring solution (which hurts
    really!). Outlook will do IMAP, but with a fairly
    large (microsoft admits) bug in the implementation
    where a thread collision occurs between the
    automatic polling of the server for updates and
    the manual send-recieve button.. it's a lockup.

    Anyway, my smtp/imap server has 400 days uptime
    on it now.

    A very good way to assuage the fears that you
    are irreplacable (you probably are!) is to make
    your own RPMS. get source rpms for the stuff
    you use, modify the conf files included, rebuild.
    I keep a repoisotory of them which are basically
    my modifications against RH62 (older servers) or
    rh71 (newer ones). This makes disaster recovery
    also very easy (which you should have anyway! the
    admin leaving the company is also a disaster!).
    • I think the best scheduling software is Steltor [steltor.com]'s CorporateTime. It's cross-platform, robust, scalable, and cheap. You can set up an eval server for free and start playing with it.

  • Servers, yes. Workstations, no... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by D'Arque Bishop ( 84624 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @01:02PM (#2424270) Homepage
    I'm the admin (re: IT department of one) of two fastener manufacturing companies with around thirty workstations. When I first started there, we had one SCO UNIX server between the two companies (they're in the same building and intertwined to the point that they're really two divisions of the same company), with workstations connecting to the server via serial cables. These days, we have a full CAT 5 network, with Windows 9X/ME workstations connecting to five Linux servers. Each company has its own app & PDC server (running Samba and a Linux version of the database software we were using before) and mail server (running Postfix and qpopper). They also share a fax server which runs HylaFAX. On the server side, everyone's happy for the most part.

    HOWEVER, almost every attempt I've made to move to Linux or open-source software on the workstation front has been met with absolute failure. The only real open-source program we use on a regular basis on the workstation side is PuTTY, really. Every time I tried moving a user to Linux as their OS, for example, or switching them from MS Office to Star/Open Office, they end up complaining loudly that it's too different, and their boss ends up making me switch them back to what they normally use. They're extremely resistant to change; they may be willing to try something brand new, but not switch to something that's different and replacing what they've used before.

    So, that's where it stands at my company... we've done the switch to open-source, but only as much as I can switch without the users noticing the real difference. Otherwise, I can't get them to try something different. This is the main problem we face in getting the OSS alternatives in, IMHO... not the MS monopoly enforced by their strongarm tactics, but end-users too unwilling to use something else.

    Just my $.02...

  • full scael change over (Score:3, Informative)

    by forgetmenot ( 467513 ) <atsjewell.gmail@com> on Saturday October 13, 2001 @01:09PM (#2424287) Homepage
    This is a very timely discussion!

    My company is in a pretty tight situation. Changing over to Microsoft's subscription based licensing scam is expected to increase our costs by well over $200,000 per year in an industry with already razor thin margins. The verdict: No bloody way.

    So we are very much looking for alternatives. Thankfully the management (so far) does not seem to be very biased nor can they afford to be with one of our major competitors already making a switch to a *nix based system.

    However, we have been having real difficulty finding adequate commercial quality open source replacements. My recommendation was to take a "modular" approach: don't look for the one solution to fix everything and don't try to replace all at once.

    The easiest to switch over will be the Web Servers: Heavy usage but it's over TCP/IP rather than hands on. Switching to a BSD box running Apache with our "existing" JRun enterprise server slapped on top should do the trick. Goodbye IIS!

    Workstations is where it will get ugly. We want to keep our NT boxes for now and concentrate on finding software to replace Office/Outlook that will run on both NT AND an alternative open source OS to ease migration down the road when M$ finally pulls the plug on NT. Backwards compatibility with M$ document formats is also a must for both internal and external reason. So far - not much luck. Open Office is really nice, but its a replacement for MS Exchange that's gonna suck. Tried StarOffice and simply was not impressed. I should also point out that the vast majority of the employees are NOT in IT so Windows look&feel is also required to mitigate resistance. :(
    One of my recommendations has been centralize everybodies personal folders on a central filesystem running Linux/BSD and using Samba to integrate it seemlessly with the rest of the NT based LAN. Coupled with tighter restrictions on who can install software on any given desktop should help to pull us away from NT.

    BUT... It's the database backend that is going to be really hard to replace. Currently we use SQL Server but years of bad programming habits resulted in software that is tightly coupled to the existing system. It's gonna be hard to break that link but we're working on it. SQL Server was chosen because of its costs (free, believe it or not) but now its gonna be one of the biggest contributors to the increasing costs because of the new stupid client access licences. Does anyone know of a database system fairly compatible? Needs to handle stored procedures of course hopefully similar to Transact SQL. Heavy usage, transaction support, tight security, and all that are also requirements. Oracle was suggested by management thinks its far too expensive. And of course - it must be stable. Knock MS all you want but SQL Server has worked for us well so far.
    • Depending on the number of apps, a very realistic solution, in some cases, is to roll out a few large NT/2000 servers, using Citrix Metaframe, and using the metaframe client in linux. This allows you to permit launching of various NT-only apps from the linux desktop.

      SQL server works fine, until you have to scale it.
    • MSSQL is derived from Sybase. The TSQL procedural language comes from Sybase. I don't know how much MS has changed it since forking the code. Sybase is probably your easiest migration path.

  • Linux backend integration (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Unless your boss is a complete moron, the only place that an open source rollout is easy is in the backend.

    Anything the users can touch taste or feel needs to remain Windows/Office/Outlook - but behind the scenes is different.

    I worked in a few environments where the smtp transport to the exchange server was Linux/Sendmail based. And file/print servers based on Linux/Samba. And with the Gartner Group adverisies (remember, Gartner Group is why it took most Windows 95 didn't get rolled out in most corporate environments until late 96, when 95b was available) it should be a no brainer to get off of ASP/IIS/MSSQL to PHP/Apache/MySQL

    Basically, here's the reasons:

    1. Security
    2. Low Cost of Ownership
    3. Security
    4. Free
    5. Security

    Just like Mr. Scott said in STIII : "The more they overtake the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the drain"

  • Database stuff. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by trilucid ( 515316 )

    Back at an old employer (name removed to protect the privacy of their management ;-] ), we were using MS SQL Server 7 Enterprise for nearly all database tasks around the shop. We eventually got to the point where we wanted several different physical servers to take care of various needs.

    Instead of purchasing additional (expensive) licenses from MS, we decided to give mySQL a try. We used it for things like log processing and analysis, telcom system call modelling, and other fun stuff. It worked *beautifully*, and they're still using it fairly heavily today (according to an old-coworker who's still there now).

    I think a great place to start is with information handling and processing, stuff that databases and scripting languages (i.e. Perl, PHP) are designed to do. There's a lot of MS shops out there starting to experiment with using these solutions in lieu of MS-based alternatives (such as ASP or customer C++/VB apps and MS databases). My advice is to start there and move forward :-). Eventually, after these systems are proven, you may find it easier to start putting a few *nix boxes on the network for other server tasks...

  • important to know (Score:2, Interesting)

    by gnurd ( 455798 )
    1. freebsd and samba, the windows admin's best friend. never restart your fileserver again.

    2. never ever tell your boss. keep a dinky win box around so it looks like you use windows. use it to get into your unix boxes.

  • It is MUCH easier to find qualified UNIX support than it is M$ support. Half the MCSE's out there crammed the night before and haven't a clue what they are actually doing. Software support is MUCH better for UNIX as well. I've never had Sun tell me that the solution to my server problem was to re-install my OS either. While WIN2K is a step in the right direction, I still gotta believe in the long run UNIX hardware, software and support is cheaper and more available.

  • Turn that FUD around! Squid, CVS, Samba, Bugzilla (Score:5, Interesting)

    by alienmole ( 15522 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @02:13PM (#2424504)
    Microsoft uses FUD all the time, but they're not the only ones who can do that.

    When IT people at one of my clients, a company with about 200 employees, were saying that they had heard bad things about Microsoft's Proxy Server 2.0, I reinforced that and explained to them how bad Windows is in general when it comes to Internet-related stuff, and why Unix-based systems are better. I suggested that they could use a Linux box with Squid as their proxy server, and that since it would be a dedicated-function box, it wouldn't have large maintenance overhead. I explained that Squid is used by large service providers and can handle big loads.

    They went for it, and have been running Squid on Red Hat for some time now. Pressing my advantage, I suggested that they could switch their use of SourceSafe (version control) to CVS and getting much snappier operation across the Internet when developers are working from home. I demonstrated this to them, and they were convinced. They now run CVS for version control, too, using the WinCVS client.

    The same company tried out Jitterbug for bug tracking. This wasn't as successful. There's now some talk of trying out Bugzilla. But I no longer have to evangelize this stuff, they're sold. They've received the threatening license letters from Microsoft, and have even gotten to the point of considering replacing Microsoft Exchange with an IMAP server. The only thing holding them back is good centralized calendar software. Anyone know anything good? It doesn't have to be free.

    Another area where this company has moved in a more open direction is switching from Microsoft's ASP for web apps, to Java-based JSP. By now being thoroughly sold on the benefits of Free Software and Open Source (since they have developers and even admins who have been frustrated by Microsoft's lack of openness), they picked the Resin [caucho.com] application server. Their intranet and extranet applications are now capable of running on either Linux or NT.

    When their Windows-oriented vendor came to them with a $18,000 proposal for a Checkpoint Firewall-1 firewall, the IT manager said no thanks, we're thinking of setting up a firewall on one of our Linux boxes. This vendor was one of those who had been complaining of problems with Microsoft Proxy Server, and guess what, they're now showing interest in Linux also.

    This company may even switch their file server. There's been some talk of this, due to Microsoft's per-seat license costs for accessing a Windows file server. It probably won't happen soon, but I have the feeling that it'll happen in the end.

    Switching the desktops, though, is not considered a serious option, although it's been discussed more than once.

    The important thing is to get a foot in the door. Figure out a reason to install an Open Source package - even if it's Apache on NT. Once people start having some familiarity and comfort with the idea of free/open source software, the possibilities become obvious, and it sells itself.

  • I think that porting open source project to closed source OS like
    Windows is bad idea. Let me explain why.

    In current world, success of operating system is defined not only by
    its technical merits, but also in big part by selection on software
    running on it. It is clear that user will not be using system, no
    matter how good it is if it does not have application software he
    needs. In this way, each time you port Unix product to Windows you
    extend Windows software selection on Windows.

    One may ask, so what? Extending windows selection does not hurt Lunux
    users - it's different users, different market. Unfortunately it is
    not true. Each company producing popular software title decides which
    platform to support. The more widespread (some call it "standard")
    Windows become - it is less interesting for the company to spend
    resources porting it to Linux.

    So if you have your popular open source software title running on
    Linux or BSD, think twice before porting it to windows.

  • anecdotal experience (Score:4, Interesting)

    by imipak ( 254310 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @03:44PM (#2424756) Journal
    I've been using Perl and Apache on NT4 since 98 with a grand total of no security problems (or indeed any other problems) at all. As soon as I was fired from Bain & Co [bain.com], partly for using Perl and Apache, they switched back to the approved corporate standard of ASP/IIS, with predictable results - frequent downtime, ASP crashes killing the server, flakey database connectivity etc etc.

    Since then I've used a ton of Open Source and Free software on NT. I've played around with Sendmail, BIND (as a cacheing only local nameserver), MySQL, Ruby, Python, XFree86 (with windowmaker, which confused the hell out of my local Linux zealot friend ;) even tcl... I use emacs and the cygwin bash + other apps ports (ssh, GPG, all the time. It all absolutely rocks, and best of all it's got me familiar enough with the basics of developing on and using a *nix system that I've been able to swap onto Linux, Solaris and openBSD with a minimal speedbump, allowing me to concentrate on learning the interesting bits of Unixland (system stuff, IP tables, NAT, IDS and a ton of security software that still isn't available on NT. Although (shhh!) nmap now compiles out of the box... netcat runs,too...)

    In short, if you're on windows but interested in checking out Freedom, these ports make a nice comfy way to get familiar with the other universe. Most of it is also far superior (more secure, more stable, more flexible and powerful) than the point-and-click Microsoft provided tools.

    The one thing I need now is the strength to have another bash at getting Mutt or Pine working. I love mozilla and use mail & news for everything now, but I'd still like the cheap geek thrills of a non-gui scriptable CLI mail client. Then I can get cron mailing me home-rolled tripwire-like security checks daily...

  • Cutler was the creator of an operating system called VMS for DEC. It was proprietary, written in part in Fortran and assembly. It had some pretty nice features. But it was also horrendously insecure despite having lots of "security features" and being certified, and it was very non-orthogonal, in the way it named disks or devices, in its system calls, and in its command language. Sounds familiar? NT and 2000 really do follow in that tradition. (In my opinion, some people just shouldn't design operating systems.)

    Many people would run various UNIX emulators on top of VMS, mostly shells and command line tools that gave the system some semblance of rational design. And with NT, people are doing it all again: Cygwin, the UNIX emulator from Bell Labs, and a few commercial ones. Ultimately, it's futile: you can't completely hide the underlying problems. But if you just use NT or VMS systems casually, it helps.

    • Another irony is that Cutler's operating system have frequently been uninstalled to run free stuff. People bought the PDP11 to install v6, v7, and 2.8/2.9BSD. The VAX was the primary platform for BSD UNIX for many years, and more VAXen were probably running BSD than VMS. And today, everybody buys PCs with various versions of Windows preloaded and installs--Linux or BSD.

  • Good development environment (Score:3, Informative)

    by PhrackCreak ( 136718 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @05:43PM (#2425109)

    Though I'm a server jockey, and working on mostly server apps that are deployed on linux, I am currently being forced to use W2K at my office for development, which are then ported to linux for deployment. Screwy engineering process, but one I've learned to cope with because other developers have felt our pain, and made life better for everyone by porting the best of the open source tools.

    I use Cygwin [redhat.com] for most of my CLI tools. It provides a bash prompt and an incredibly useful set of tools such as grep, find, diff, ssh, tar, gzip, autoconf, automake, make, gcc and others. Beyond that, many other useful tools have been ported or are easy to port because of the services provided by cygwin. I have had problems getting cvs to work correctly. I have also had problems getting emacs to look correct in the console window.

    I also use emacs [gnu.org] for all of my text editing and devlopment needs. Not only does it give you a powerful development environment [gnu.org] in conjunction with visual c++, it can also be hooked [f2s.com] into cygwin. I tried VisEmacs and didn't like it (YMMV) as much as simply setting the proper environment variables and churning out programs with emacs 'compile' set to run nmake.

  • Start small (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DeathBunny ( 24311 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @08:23PM (#2425385)
    When I used to do NT admin work, I found Perl to be pretty handy. Unix admins have been using Perl and other scripting languages to automate repetative tasks for years. NT admins by and large don't seem to be very familier with the concept, but it is doable.

    GNU Cfengine is another great sysadmin tool that's also has an NT version. If you administer a lot of systems (Unix or NT) this a fantastic tool to have. Your fellow NT admins will be completely befuddled trying to figure you how you installed that latest IIS patch to 50 machines before lunch!

    Firewalls are another good place to start introducing some free software. I frigging LOVE OpenBSD with IPF (or the new PF) packet filter as a firewall.

    Start will small changes like these. They won't require any user training or major changes for your end user. They also won't require much buy in from management. And they'll make it easier to put more free software into place later. When the inevitable objections to a larger, more visible free software related project comes up, you can confidently inform the objector that the company has been using free software for years!

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