Microsoft to 'Support and Usurp' Unix 102
qedramania writes "Computerworld has a report on the latest Windows server release and their Unix strategy." From the article: "R2 is built on the Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 and is geared towards specific workloads such as storage management, branch office server management, as well as identity and access management. It also provides a subsystem which supports Posix applications."
The Borg Queen ... er ... King? (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess Slashdot's picture of Gates as a Borg [slashdot.org] is applicable more now than ever
Re:The Borg Queen ... er ... King? (Score:3, Funny)
You mean he is assimilated in the Unix-hive, don't you?
Re:The Borg Queen ... er ... King? (Score:5, Interesting)
One reason they might be doing this is to counter free software. Currently, projects like Samba have been making good progress toward connecting Unix and Windows computers. Samba is free software. By Microsoft closing the connectivity gap themselves, they can close it with closed-source, proprietary software. This means that they can control connectivity. If they so choose, they would then be able to break it off completely at any time.
So, this might just be a grab for power.
Re:The Borg Queen ... er ... King? (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of the reason for enterprises to choose Linux so far has been "It works in nearly any point in our network, so we can always just install Linux servers". Since purchase price is not a big issue for business users, the only downside to Windows would be client access licenses. If they got rid of those and bumped up the initial purchase price of Windows server systems, Linux would be hurt very, very badly.
the hassle is a big issue (Score:3, Interesting)
Then there is the matter of storing and keeping track of those silly hologram cards that supposedly prove that you have valid licenses. It costs staff time to deal with that. If you screw up, and maybe even if you don't, the BSA shows up with a bunch of US Marshals (or non-US equivalent).
Re:The Borg Queen ... er ... King? (Score:3, Insightful)
The utility servers are without exception Linux because they can be made compatible with any or all of my other systems with very little work and with no capital cost. Currently, Windows isn't even on the radar wh
Re:The Borg Queen ... er ... King? (Score:3, Interesting)
However they are not stupid, they must make sure people can migrate to windows nicely with the less trouble as possible and AFTER lock them in proprietary technologies.
They want to kill Open source ? Sure but I don't think this release in their new killing machine, just a part of their global strategy. In fact, the posix subsystem has been around for a while and is beter know as Interix or Windows Service for Unix. Th
Re:The Borg Queen ... er ... King? (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the biggest thing that's been going on in enterprise computing is the widescale dumping of UNIX/RISC in favor of Linux on cheap x86 boxes. Microsoft has almost entirely missed out on this movement. If they can make Windows into a half-decent *nix, there's certain a big growth opportunity for them.
And while the usual crowd is suspicous of MS's motives, I'm sure there's some developers out there excited about Microsoft embracing* a non-proprietary "industry standard" API. It's a big step for them. No longer would you need special Windows ports of software like Apache and Postgres --- in theory, you could just "make install".
* word used with caution
Re:The Borg Queen ... er ... King? (Score:4, Insightful)
So typical of Microsoft - it's 2006, and to compete with Linux they start offering Telnet clients rather than something actually useful and secure like ssh. I can picture the sales calls and interviews right now, "well, they insisted they wanted Linux compatibility, it's not our fault that Linux telnet is so insecure, if only you had done your implementations the Windows way."
Re:The Borg Queen ... er ... King? (Score:1)
Yeah, this is probably a lot like "POSIX compliance" for Windows NT. It was there to meet bullet points on requirements documents, rather than to actually provide the functionality.
If Windows had really implemented POSIX, then why is there Services For UNIX, Cygwin, and the MKS suite?
In the past decade+ that I've been exposed to Windows, never have I once had the impression Microsoft was really interested in interoperability or compatibility, beyond some token marketing-oriented effort.
Re:The Borg Queen ... er ... King? (Score:2)
Actually, I wasn't thinking Borg. My first thought was, "All your bases are belong to us."
But is basically an acknowledgement that *nix is providing things they aren't and that there are benefits to it.
Trying to get the foot in the door... (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't a really huge move actually--it is just more of the same "bundling" stuff that Microsoft has done with its OSes forever (applets in Win 3.0 is where it started and now we have Media Player, IE, firewall, etc). Microsoft has finally seen how successful projects like Cygwin have eaten into its SFU market space, and relatively speaking SFU has been
Re:The Borg Queen ... er ... King? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you cant beat them... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: If you cant beat them... (Score:3, Funny)
Yep, it looks like Microsoft is about to invent UNIX.
Re: If you cant beat them... (Score:2)
That would be the greatest innovation in computing since the 1970's!
Re: If you cant beat them... (Score:2)
Re: If you cant beat them... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If you cant beat them... (Score:2)
Then beat them. It's much easier to slip a knife in the back of somebody you're standing shoulder to shoulder with after all. I expect Mr. Gates will be telling us soon that "He who steals my purse, steals trash."
not that good (Score:2)
There are a lot of similarities ofcourse however often they are result of standardisation, or the result of new technoligies, if you think about a SAN environments then folder based limits makes sence. I see more and more SAN's connected to MS networks.
Oh, great... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oh, great... (Score:1)
Re:Oh, great... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh, great... (Score:1, Insightful)
Just to drive the point home;
Where is fork() ? [microsoft.com]
Oh, and is fork() POSIX ? Yes, it is [opengroup.org]. CreateProcess doesn't really change that.
Re:Oh, great... (Score:3, Informative)
Where is fork()?
What point? Win32 does not have a fork, as that MSDN page describes. Win32 itself is not POSIX. SFU *is* POSIX. SFU *does* have fork(). Try 'man fork'.
Re:Oh, great... (Score:2)
Right there under SFU:
Re:Oh, great... (Score:2)
Right there under SFU:
Yeah, it's there. Have you tried to port anything to it though? Getting a Unix app of more than a couple thousand lines of code to build and run under SFU is definitely non-trivial. I had fun playing with it for a while, but it was much easier to just add something else for the Sun server to do instead.
By the time you have added several libraries and tried to make everything work together, you have yourself one serious mess. As frustrating as the OS X BSD
Re:Oh, great... (Score:1)
Re:Oh, great... (Score:2)
Re:Oh, great...{more names} (Score:2)
POSIX# ?
POSIX.NET ?
MoSftIX ?
ME-NIX / YOU-NIX (from Win-ME)
which leads of course to the British slang
Re:Oh, great...{more names} (Score:2)
TEH WINAR (Score:1)
Re:Oh, great... (Score:2)
Re:Oh, great... (Score:1)
Yawn. (Score:4, Insightful)
And does anyone who uses a real UNIX actually care?
Re:Yawn. (Score:1)
Re:Yawn. (Score:2)
-1, Pedantic
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Anyone else see the contradiction? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Anyone else see the contradiction? (Score:5, Interesting)
anyone may, if you have sufficient information on how the NT kernel works or are prepared to reverse-engineer it (like the ReactOS guys are doing), write their own subsystem. there are THREE types THAT I KNOW OF: OS/2, Win32 and POSIX. okay, maybe there are four now - win64.
having a POSIX subsystem sit on top of the NT kernel, which is a microkernel based on the Mach microkernel, is NOT the same as having fast and direct access to the NT kernel functions.
and the reason why the samba guys have such difficulty getting information is because there either ISN'T any (it's all in the code) or there's too much!
the only reason why the CIFS documentation effort was initiated by microsoft is because the original people who worked on it (having embraced-and-sensibly-extended the IBM Lanman SMB spec and also the X-Open SMB spec), having retired with their stock options up to millions, left no clues as to how this HORRIBLY complex code worked.
it was therefore ESSENTIAL that they get it documented.
the first time they released cifsbrow.txt, in 1997, because i'd just spent five months network-reverse-engineering the network neighbourhood and WINS server code, i spent a WEEK throwing email messages at them, explaining various inconsistencies, helping them improve the documentation they'd created. it takes TWO YEARS to correctly implement the network neighbourhood. it's a FULL peer-to-peer registration and management system, very robust, very complex, _extremely_ good, and people have xxxx-all idea of quite how useful it is ("oh, it's netbios - switch that xxxx off")
after the first CIFS conference, andrew, jeremy and i hung around for an extra day: i got to meet the guy responsible for the network neighbourhood, and spent a good couple of hours drumming into him the things that had been forgotten since the email flurry - there's nothing like meeting someone face-to-face to explain stuff, as you well know.
so.
i'd say that the reason proper documentation doesn't "exist" is partially deliberate, and partially it's your average development/management incompetence.
l.
Re:Anyone else see the contradiction? (Score:2)
I've implemented successful workgroups & domains since switching to Samba for all the heavy lifting and been much happier than on Windows.
Thanks for the work.
CIFS is OK if you're close to your neighbor (Score:2)
You left out "incredibly chatty" and "hopelessly lag-sensitive", two attributes that make CIFS-based operations over an extended WAN environment painful at best. Ask anyone who's tried to drag'n'drop a few thousand files onto a network share located on the opposite coast from behind a half-ISDN connection. For added fun, try working with a Visua
Re:CIFS is OK if you're close to your neighbor (Score:2)
At some point, it's hard to beat the bandwidth of dropping a CD (or DVD or tape) in the mail, even though the latency sucks.
Visual SourceSafe? I'd rather give myself paper cuts over my body and then roll around in a briny vineagar solution, perhaps with a bunch of cayenne pepper sauce th
Re:CIFS is OK if you're close to your neighbor (Score:2)
Admittedly it's better from the CMD line, so that's not entirely the protocol's fault. But it is slow -- probably a ton of error-checking and authentication overhead.
Re:CIFS is OK if you're close to your neighbor (Score:2)
Can't speak for BITNET (never used that one), but UUCP was also horribly lag-sensitive, given that it had a one-frame window (which is to say, no window at all). Some folks may remember the venerable Telebit Trailblazer modem's UUCP spoofing feature (it faked the ACKs locally to cut do
Re:CIFS is OK if you're close to your neighbor (Score:2)
So, how are you going getting that screw out with your hammer ?
Re:Anyone else see the contradiction? (Score:1)
Come on with the links... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Come on with the links... (Score:2)
Thanks.
How much was for UNIX and now runs on MS? (Score:4, Interesting)
Open Source is a double edged sword -- it gives you a fantastic advantage, but at the same time, your competitors are free to use your software, your IP, your efforts. One hopes that the benefits outweigh the advantages to your competition.
The real strengths of Open Source are leveraging development and testing all over the world (lower product costs, time to market, code reuse, etc.), much lower marketing and sales costs (Internet distribution), and better quality (many eyes make all bugs shallow).
Re: How much was for UNIX and now runs on MS? (Score:2)
If not f
Re:How much was for UNIX and now runs on MS? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How much was for UNIX and now runs on MS? (Score:2)
In fact, Apache on Windows does use threads, and not processes. From http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/platform/windows . html [apache.org]:
Re:How much was for UNIX and now runs on MS? (Score:2)
threading vs. forking (Score:2)
Second of all, UNIX was dragged kicking and screaming into supporting threads. Lots of UNIX-like systems are still very bad about thread support. Thread creation is often slower than process creation. It was MUCH slower on Linux 2.4.
Third, threads share memory. This can be a curse. It is fundamentally less reliable. If the server has a bug, it will crash if running in threaded mode. A forking ser
Re:How much was for UNIX and now runs on MS? (Score:2)
Re:How much was for UNIX and now runs on MS? (Score:2)
Recycled news (Score:2)
This is news? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:This is news? (Score:1)
The Unix features will also be built into certain versions of Vista later this year.
Re:This is news? (Score:2)
*Real* native POSIX support IS news.
Re:This is news? (Score:1)
Microsoft Xenix (Score:3, Informative)
Re:MicroSCOft Xenix (Score:1)
Xenix [wikipedia.org] became SCO OpenServer.
NT has always had POSIX support (Score:5, Interesting)
are they saying that they are doing it right now, or just pretending what is old is new?
Re:NT has always had POSIX support (Score:2)
Microsoft has been doing things for unix for a whi (Score:1)
I find it funny that now they are trying to go back to unix stuff.
Windows Server 2003 and the GNU Project (Score:5, Interesting)
For a full history of NT, Interix and SFU, see Should that not be GNU/Microsoft SFU? [oreillynet.com]
Re:Windows Server 2003 and the GNU Project (Score:2)
What's your source for compiled with GCC? I'd have thought they'd use their own compilers through the
Re:Windows Server 2003 and the GNU Project (Score:1)
Oh, ahahaha. *You* wrote that. Or, rather, you plagarised it from Stallman's GNU/Linux essay and search/replaced it to be GNU/SFU. Are there any real facts in there at all?
Umm... they use their own compiler and libs?? (Score:2)
The OpenBSD people pride themselves on being correct. I would expect that they would have written tight, neat, standards complient C. The BSD libraries are not ripped off from GNU. So, MS should have no problem compiling and linking a non-GPL version of the BSD code. Beside just using GCC would not emcumber you if you link against your own libs and headers, would it? How do you think the BSD people do it and avoid the GPL whi
I don't see the point (Score:2)
Microsoft lost the golden age of UNIX. It implemented a half compatible system and lied to people telling them it was compatible. So most people kept UNIX.
Now, UNIX is dying anyway. Linux and BSD (mostly because of GNU tools) are each day less POSIX compilant, and the programs are using their extensions (that are quite usefull). Even more important, proprietary UNIX are almost dead aready, why does MS thinks that it will be sucessfull introducing a new proprietary UNIX now? Why does it think that people wi
Re:I don't see the point (Score:2)
They're not "introducing a new, proprietry UNIX", they're offering a migration path from existing unix systems to Windows.
Before or after they "F*CKING KILL GOOGLE?" (Score:2)
Backfire? (Score:2)
I see that happening more in a server farm than desktops, but it's a start.
Libraries????? (Score:1)
There's POSIX, and there's useful Unix... (Score:2)
Windows has a POSIX-compliant subsystem, and has had it for years, but it doesn't do symbolic links, not completely. How many non-trivial Unix applications don't use symbolic links, eith
ODBC drivers for DBs running on Unix already usurp (Score:2)
I just can't wait to see what MS does next to "support and usurp" Unix.
Why would you cruft up Unix like that? (Score:2)
Only about a decade late... (Score:2)
Re: a tu vieja le cabe! (Score:3, Funny)
Something about CAB files and dying on Saturday, I think.