MAD prevented WWIII. I don't care whether the people who build them or the people who authorize their construction are corrupt, or worship a giant statue of a sexually aroused Beelzebub, the fact is that we are kept largely secure from would be Napoleons, Hitlers and Stalins by the mere fact that these weapons exist.

Who said anything about open source? Even the old direct Unix server variants all ran Bourne shell or c shell and their descendants. For chrissakes, a CLI-based server OS running a scriptable shell is decades old, predating Windows and FOSS by decades. This idea that Server 2012 is doing anything unique boggles the mind of anyone with even a basic understanding of operating system development and administration for the last half century. Maybe the Microsoft-funded diploma mills churn out admins who actually believe that Server 2012 is some revolutionary step, but for those of us who have been in the industry for oh, over seven or eight years, seeing somebody claim "we tossed out *nix and put in Server 2012 'cause it wuns with just a CLI" is liking seeing some fuckwit claim "I just invented the toothbrush!"

If you threw out *nix servers because you like the modern Windows toolset, then great! No prob. I have a network that runs a Server 2012 AD domain and a couple of Hyper-V servers, so it's not like I'm allergic to Windows. But fuck man, reading the parent's post (I dunno, maybe it's your post, I can understand why you would go AC to write such an incredible retarded post), with the underlying notion that Server 2012 is doing something revolutionary, and yeah, I start seeing red. Server 2012 is merely Microsoft, after twenty fucking years, getting the fucking hint.

Can you be specific here? What on a basic net install of Debian or CentOS does not fit your criteria? Christ, the base install of Debian doesn't even come with Samba.

Windows sysadmins amaze. For fifteen years I listened to them rattle on about how the GUI in Windows NT and its descendants was absolutely necessary, that it opened up servers to people who couldn't or wouldn't learn how to work from a CLI. So a few server distros put the head on their installs, worked like mad dogs to build GUI and web-based management systems like Webmin, and now suddenly all those Windows sysadmin flunkies are declaring Server 2012 is the bestest ever because you can run in headless with a CLI.

Listen you fucking asshole. *nix has been running CLI longer than most people posting here have been alive. It had mature toolsets and script libraries when Windows was a 16-bit cooperative multitasking layer on top of fucking MS-fucking-DOS. Generations of system administrators have lived and fucking died while Windows was forcing a clunky GUI toolset that you couldn't fucking script properly, and that you ended up having to go to REGEDIT and a bazillion GPO entries to fine tune.

Oh no, but Windows is so fucking cutting edge because in the last seven or eight years has developed a fucking shell that you can properly fucking script (even if the scripting language in question is a verbose and unbelievably slow executing piece of shit that is in almost every way the exact opposite of the elegance of *nix).

Well congrat-u-fuck-ulations Mr. "We paid a bazillion dollars to Redmond in licensing fees so we could have a scriptable CLI-based OS in our data center". I bet you even think you did an amazing thing.

Fucking Windows admins. Arrogance, stupidity and a total lack of knowledge of their own fucking operating systems incredibly dubious history as a Server OS.

Meanwhile, in the time it takes you to type out the name of a Powershell scriptlet and its arguments to import a CSV and puke it out as a SQL script, I can do write the code in awk or Perl in a bash wrapper. But hey, I must be stupid and you must the be the super fucking genius.

If you want a real thin install, pick something like Gentoo and Slackware. You can build minimal installs from the kernel up. In ye olden days when I was working on pretty minimal hardware (low RAM, slow CPUs, small drives), I used to install minimum base on top of a very small kernel (only the hardware found on the machine, plus a few generic IDE drivers just in case I had to move the HD and fire it up on another computer). It's a pain in the rear, and with even low-end hardware having huge amounts of RAM and storage space, I don't bother.

The whole point of the net install version of Debian is that it installs a very base version of Linux; and then you build on top of it. If you really need some sort of unique kernel variant, most fine tuning can be done in /boot or /proc.

I'll be blunt, if you claim to be a sysadmin who works with Linux, and you don't know how to build an optimized small footprint server, then you're talking bullshit, and whoever has hired or contracted you should give you the boot really fast.

As have I. I have several Debian based routers and KVM servers that are out pure CLI. I have no idea what the writer is taking air. And neither does the writer, methinks.

A creature once known as a netkook, but now just a moderate level crank.

I see, so you're dislike of a theory somehow should be fed into whether that theory is legitimate or not.

Every piece of evidence gathered over the last century shows the universe is expanding, and that it was once much hotter and denser. The evidence for Big Bang cosmology and inflation are overwhelming, whether that pleases you or not.

Since the universe, in every direction we look, behaves by the same physical laws, it isn't an unreasonable extrapolation at all. I'm not actually sure what you're complaining about.

Oh, I get it, you probably don't like science. All those really smart men and women, so much more accomplished than some blowhard on /.

Well, your lack of credibility and accomplishment is not science's problem.

Imagine targeted penis enlargement ads!

Reading this post made me feel dirty.

It's better than EncryptoBarn or KeyHaul.

If you start with PHP, even Brainfuck looks fun and refreshing. Jesus pal, talk about damning a language with faint praise.

Another attempt by a vendor to try to lock in software development and make cross platform development incredibly difficult by introducing a new language.

Fuck, I do tire of the sociopathic tendencies of corporations.

Indeed. And quite often even dead FOSS projects can be cannibalized. The difference between dead open source and dead closed source projects is that the bones of one sit in an open pit that anyone can pick at, and the other sits in a concrete bunker twenty miles underground.