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100% agreed. The commercial alternative - MKS Toolkit - integrates seamlessly with Windows, and is both more complete and faster than Cygin. Yes, it costs money, and no, it is not open source - but if you need to do Unix-like stuff on Windows, it actually makes life tolerable.

But Unix-like stuff itself is not tolerable, which is why it has to be reimplemented with GNU, Linux, Cygwin and other free software.

For instance, how does the vi editor in MKS stack up to Vim? If the following link gives a more or less complete manual, it's freaking pitiful:

http://www.mkssoftware.com/docs/man1/vi.1.asp

Why would I pay money for that stuff if I would end up compiling GNU coreutils, bash, and other packages?

100% agreed. The commercial alternative - MKS Toolkit - integrates seamlessly with Windows, and is both more complete and faster than Cygin. Yes, it costs money, and no, it is not open source - but if you need to do Unix-like stuff on Windows, it actually makes life tolerable.

But Unix-like stuff itself is not tolerable, which is why it has to be reimplemented with GNU, Linux, Cygwin and other free software.

For instance, how does the vi editor in MKS stack up to Vim? If the following link gives a more or less complete manual, it's freaking pitiful:

http://www.mkssoftware.com/docs/man1/vi.1.asp

Why would I pay money for that stuff if I would end up compiling GNU coreutils, bash, and other packages?

100% agreed. The commercial alternative - MKS Toolkit - integrates seamlessly with Windows, and is both more complete and faster than Cygin. Yes, it costs money, and no, it is not open source - but if you need to do Unix-like stuff on Windows, it actually makes life tolerable.

on how exactly they were going to remove radioactivity with a shell, and if so, which one ?

Who's talking about kernels here. We are talking about the whole package. Yes kernel is obviously important, but so is almost everything else. Yes, I know you can run Cygwin or a product a company I work for develops (MKS Toolkit - http://www.mkssoftware.com/products/tk/commands.asp?product=tkdev, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKS_Toolkit). These are valiant efforts to bring some of the flavor of UNIX to Windows, and our product enables you to port your UNIX POSIX API based software to Windows, you get X-Server etc, but still you are in the end working on Windows and you still have to buy Windows license etc.

Honestly, these things are completely unnecessary now, because desktop is not where it's at. Your comment and thinking is still stuck in the 90s desktop mentality (kind of like entire Microsoft). I'm talking about the Web 2.0 startup world, where Microsoft is literally dead (in the sense that no new Web startup is afraid of Microsoft or is worried Microsoft is going to destroy them).

You would be a complete idiot to go buy lots of Windows server licenses to deploy your solution, you'd be an idiot to buy Visual Studio or any Microsoft tool. You will use open free tools that are often superior anyway to anything Microsoft has to offer (UNIX and supporting toolchain is the best IDE ever created). Of course Microsoft's goal is to keep you ignorant. The less you know, the more likely you will keep buying their crap. But you won't see Google or Facebook or any new Web startup deploying on their tools or OSes.

I'm 40 now, I learned my way around UNIX 25 years ago and kept at it. I bet you 20 years from now I'll still be leveraging my investment while Microsofties will be learning whatever it is Microsoft is shoving down their throats (which has everything to do with what they think is best for them and nothing to do what's good for you as a customer or person building something of value). But sure, go ahead live in Microsoft world and keep re-inventing the world poorly.

Microsoft did try this before when they first brought out Windows NT. They provided a very minimal shell environment along with some unix emulation commands (make, ls, df, du, vi) as well as being able to get OpenGL drivers ported over. The idea was to provide these commands to get the applications ported over, and then to silently withdraw the suppport once the applications were ported.

There are still emulation libraries by Cygwin and MKS

Shell scripts are Microsofts weakness. Microsoft held off from including Monad into Vista for security fears. This was in a previous Slashdot discussion

Check again, getuid() and geteuid() are not the same, so:

if (getuid() == 0 || geteuid() != 0)

means something like if the real user id executing the process is 0 (root), or if the effective user id of the process is not 0 (root), then execute the following code.

See here and here.

I'm not quite sure what the difference is between the real and the effective user id, perhaps someone can enlighten us.

Check again, getuid() and geteuid() are not the same, so:

if (getuid() == 0 || geteuid() != 0)

means something like if the real user id executing the process is 0 (root), or if the effective user id of the process is not 0 (root), then execute the following code.

See here and here.

I'm not quite sure what the difference is between the real and the effective user id, perhaps someone can enlighten us.

a2p, and of course winzip ;)

I imagine it all very AWKward (pun intended) on windows though.

how about mortice kern systems toolkit? these guys have been around forever doing unix on windows.

an uncle of mine used to swear by mks toolkit and another program who's name i can't remember but i remember the box cover was a picture of a shell and the name was something like concentric... can anyone toss me a bone and recall who that was?

Windows Explorer: http://www.mkssoftware.com/images/ScreenShots/scrn -vsftp-02.gif

It's not free but there is also MKS http://mkssoftware.com/

Interix, developed by Softway Systems, of which a group of the original employees/execs came from MKS (Mortice Kern Systems).

RETURN VALUES

The function strcmp() returns a positive integer if string s1 is lexically greater than string s2; zero if the two strings are identical; and a negative integer if string s1 is lexically less than string s2.

I recently downloaded the newest version of Cygwin (albeit on Win2k) and I was quite impressed with how far along it has come. Many many programs ported to it (virtually anything you could want). The only issues are really Windows issues that are more or less intractable.
I have also had good luck in the past with the MKS toolkit. See here.

WARNING: I'm in a punchy mood tonight, and the following rant is long and boring. It's so rare that I see someone admitting to loving Windows on this site, so I'm going to just let the rants fly. Continue at own risk.

Before I say anything, let me say that I agree with your posts completely. I'm neither an MS bigot nor a UNIX/Linux bigot... although I'm leaning towards the former, because the Linux monkeys are starting (as a whole) to become more annoying than the MS ones. :-) I've only been into UNIX for a few years and absolutely adore it, but have been moving back towards MS because Win2k impresses the hell out of me. (My proof? I pad full price for both Win2k Pro and Server out of my own pocket, and am proud to say that.) (Windows XP, OTOH, I'm not too excited about. Mainly because of WPA -- I build my own boxes, and having to call MS to reactive the license that I already paid for every time that I rebuild my box is insane. But I digress...)

I've learned a valuable lesson: despite that the Linux zealots say otherwise, you shouldn't be ashamed for loving the GUI and ease-of-use of Windows. UNIX is a great development environment, but I grew up using Microsoft products, since MS-DOS, and I'm not going to pretend that GNOME and Linux offer greater productivity just because some rabid script kiddie thinks otherwise. For me, Windows is a better development environment than Linux, and it's also a better general-use OS too -- I can surf the WWW with the best browser available, I can play any game I want, and install any PC hardware/software and be guaranteed of compatability. And anyone who tells you that Windows is unstable hasn't used NT -- probably can't afford it, writing free software and all. ;-) And hey, guess what -- I have a UNIX command line on my NT box. The best of both worlds.

Okay, now to respond to your post. First off, you are spot-on about IIS on clean NT installs. It isn't even an option on NT4 Workstation, and on Win2k, while it is possible to install it as a networking option, it isn't mentioned during the install. (Consequently, many people aren't aware that it's possible. A friend of mine who works in our operatins dept, who is extremely knowledgable and has been running Win2k since the beta, had no idea until a few months ago.)

There is one scenario that is troublesome, though... I've been told that if you upgrade a Win98 box running PWS, IIS is installed auto-magically. Upgraders may not sound like huge market segment, but read on...

My ex-girlfriend is at a major university, a school that is such an MS lapdog that it isn't even funny. To make a long story short[er], Win2k Pro is available to any student to wants it. And when Win2k was first released, many of these morons thought, "Hey, 2000 is bigger than 98, it must be better!" and upgraded their 98 boxes without knowing that Win2k is a real NOS... consequently, this uni now has thousands of Win2k boxes being "administrated" by these clueless people, even more clueless than the average IIS admins (see rant below). And since many of these people I mention are CS or IT majors (frightening, eh? the industry will implode in a few years), they had PWS running.

That, sir, is a nightmare. :-)

If you're still reading, here's my IIS admin rant. I've been trying to move my websites from Solaris to Win2k for over a year. I've tried four webhosts in that time, and have found all to be extremely lacking. My theory is that, because NT is [superficially] easier to admin than UNIX, a greated percentage of NT admins are clueless fucktards who shouldn't be allowed within 25 miles of a networked computer. :-) I could tell you all sorts of wonderful stories about these folks, but I'll simply mention one: FrontServe. Check out this page on FrontServe's website. If he's advertising Windows webhosting, why the fuck are there pictures of Sun boxes behind the Frontpage logo? :-D LOL... that should give you an idea of the kind of professional service I got.

One more rant, and then you're off the hook. (Sorry, as I said, it's so rare that I get a sympathetic ear re: MS...) I mentioned a lot of these people at uni thinking,

if (2000 > 98)
// must be better!
install(os);

Wow, what a rant. If you wish to reply, email the_messenger@evilemail.com, so you don't kill your karma the way I have with offtopic, pro-MS posts. :-)

Whyever not? NT is Posix compliant, and I believe with layerered products meets UNIX95 compliance too.

Gee, you'd think stability would be a requirement of UNIX status

Never used IRIX, have you? *ducks*

No, seriously, stability has never been one of Unix' strengths. It's pretty easy to accidentally fork() bomb most of them even now, which can even lock the system administrator out. It's happened to me (a poorly coded Pro*C daemon which couldn't contact Oracle and went crazy, spawning child processes every time it attempted to connect again). An OS like VMS would simply contain such a process within quotas and leave the system fully usable.

Getting back on topic, Apple's regular customers (i.e. Photoshop/DTP at one end, families and students at the other) don't really care about "official" Unix status. The only people who might are the US Government (who have FIPS, which includes POSIX, as a minimal specification).

And don't drink so much coffee

Kid, I've barely gotten started....