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Windows Server 2003 Is A Small Step Forward
b17bmbr writes "According to eWeek, 'The release of Windows Server 2003 is a small step forward for the platform -- an effort that really should be considered Windows 2000 Server Second Edition. With the exception of Internet Information Services 6.0, there aren't any far-reaching or fundamental changes in the product.' And from CNet Microsoft prepares Windows Server ads, 'The ads are geared toward IT managers on tight budgets.' This is probably Microsoft's last chance to turn the tide and take mindset and market share from FOSS."
Oh no!
Things don't sound so good for those poor guys at Microsoft! I better sell my stock!
This is probably Microsoft's last chance to turn the tide and take mindset and market share from FOSS.
please. they have $30 billion in cash. i think they'll be able to buy some other chances.
used to be, people explained less common acroynms or linked to definitions. I miss that
so all that money and time upgrading our reliable nt4/2k systems is only for iis6 and a pop3 service? hmmm glad my organisation is on volume licensing!
We played dungeons and dragons for 3 hours.....then i was slain by an elf
They took Windows 98 SE, dressed it up a bit, and called it Windows ME.
It's lousy from a consumer standpoint, but enough people thought it worthwhile to buy it and make it profitable for Microsoft.
It's not the most upstanding business strategy, but it still makes them money. And any business is not in it for the ethics, but about the cold hard cash.
The Pigloo
Did anyone else find it really interesting that IIS now has text based configuration files. I only have passing expierence using IIS but one of the biggest headaches I have heard from people who use it alot is the fact that IIS is a real pain to configure among multiple machines.
Anyone here run IIS and used these new text based conf files and can comment on them?
I dont think so.
It will be:
'The ads are geared toward (IT?) managers on....
CRACK
It seems that Microsoft is learning a bit from their mistakes with Windows 2000 by not enabling everything under the moon by default or leaving the default settings to be so open and ripe for exploiting. That and additional support for NUMA, better clustering supports (or so Microsoft says) and supposedly new features in Active Directory to make life a little easier (again, something Microsoft is touting).
As with Windows XP, it seems that Microsoft will be making additional components and add-ons available throughout the life of the product, including an updated version of SharePoint Team Services (which has been renamed to something I can't remember now) and currently unnamed components.
Personally, I think Windows Server 2003 is the latest salvo Microsoft has launched to get people out of Windows NT 4.0... just like how Windows XP was the latest salvo to get people out of Windows 9x/ME. It's an incremental step up from Windows 2000, but a much bigger step up from Windows NT 4.0.
That's my $0.01.
Wouldnt it be cheaper for an IT manager on a tight budget to stick with 2000 Server rather than 2003 Server. I know I dont need it and I have a tight budget. We have most of our infrastructure already upgraded to win2k server at-least the stuff that will be migrated over. We will not be upgrading to 2003 server but rather get it as it comes preloaded on any new servers we buy.
This must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Infoworld says, Ironically, Microsoft is touting its Windows server platform as a cheaper alternative to Linux. "We really feel that we deliver some unique value in terms of dependability, manageability, and performance relative to open-source products," Oldroyd said.
I doubt anyone comfortable with alternative operating systems would have bothered enduring WinME in the first place... For all of our sakes, let's hope you're right on this one.
Another fine innovation from Microsoft.
I stopped working at Microsoft in January, after being there from June 2000. I was there during the whole "Whistler" cycle
Kernel improvements:
* Low-Fragmentation Heap: People use SmartHeap because NT heap serializes and sucks. LFH heap uses heap-per-processor on SMP.
* Desktop Limit: Remember "running out of resources" before running out of memory in Win 3.1? The 32-bit analog of that limit (higher but still there) is STILL in Windows, even in XP. This keeps you from spawning thousands of processes IF those processes use any functions from user32.dll. They did some lazy registering of U/I threads vs. kernel threads that makes the limit less painful.
* Gigabit ethernet, zero-copy networking stuff. Don't know as much about this but that it's much better.
* Unisys ES7000 32-way blows f'ing chunks on W2K. It doesn't suck as much on 2K3 (NUMA API).
* Tons of other perf tuning adjustments, mostly to make SQL Server run better. All SQL Server-TPC-winning numbers have been on 2K3 betas for the last year or more.
* Junk like that. Dumb-ass bug fixes. It really is a better kernel, but it still sucks. As someone who now loves Linux, my honest assessment of the situation is, at best, the whole Linux (in its current state, mostly usability drawbacks) vs. Microsoft (usable as hell but stagnant due to lack of competition) is a draw. But Linux has more promise because its fresher and interesting. MS wins in business because business likes staid "comfortable" not necessarily better technology.
I cannot enumerate the advantages that Windows Me had over 98. I'm sure 2003 will show the same level of advancement over 2000.
People run their business off windows.. They don't want radical shifts..
They want what runs now, just do it better.
This ( arguably an improvement or not.. ) does just this.. its an incremental upgrade..
Not that *I* care personally either way, but its how a lot of the business world works.. and they dont like suprises..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I am running Windows Media Services 9 on Windows Server 2003 RC1. It is simply awesome as a streaming media solution. First of all, if the client is a WMP 9 client.... there is no buffering! Instant start (on broadband only, naturally). Plus, you get a ton of configuration options on the WMS9 side. You can insert adverts automatically, apply all sorts of access control on the media (IP based, user/pass login, DRM, whatever you please).
.htm and .txt files to the outside world unless you go into the server configuration and edit this explicitly.... did I also mention that IIS 6 now stores its data in XML (similar to Apache directives) which can easily be exported to other servers if you're cloning or making a server farm.
The new IIS 6 comes in a super-secure default setup... allowing only
Plus it's pretty damn stable. My server has been running for about 60 days now... and it handles a decent amount of traffic.
I like the new Remote Desktop/terminal services. You can remote to the actual server console now, instead of starting a new TS session. The OS itself also seems faster than Windows 2000. I'm running it on a PII/350 w/ 256 MB ram and it screams.
It also comes with that HTTP.SYS kernel serving thingee for IIS, but I'm a strict believer that a web server doesn't belong in the kernel (this applies to Linux too).
So far my experiences have been all positive. How bout everyone else?
Come to think of it, that IS pretty funny. How the hell do they expect to out-cheap "Free"? Once again, they're fulfilling their destinies by being the IT industry's comic relief.
like say clustering up from 2 node max to 12 nodes, addressable memory support up to above 64 GB, 64 bit OS support, NIC load balancing, TRUE DEVICE ADDRESSING (ie no drive letters)for extended SAN support, and from what I hear a .8 version of a connectix vm system, plus features like BUILT IN document license management, full remote control support. The primary reason we're moving is for the extended clustering support.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
LINUX!
good thing IIS has proven itself both secure and stable. otherwise, this could really be an issue:
IIS adds a number of Unix-style playing cards to its hand in this release, including text-file-based configuration, much tighter security defaults, user-level instead of administrator-level privileges, and a kernel-mode HTTP request handler and cache.
hackers, start your engines...
"This is probably Microsoft's last chance to turn the tide and take mindset and market share from FOSS."
... Sure, 2/3 of the Web sites out there are running on Apache, but are they the bottom 2/3 of the Web? Increasingly, it's looking like the companies Where The Money Is are requesting more and more MS stuff. And that scares me.
Where I live (NYC area), it seems like if anything, MS technologies are getting a BIGGER grip on things. Virtually every new job out there, it seems-- and this includes jobs whose titles include the word "Unix"-- demands experience with ASP/IIS/VB/VC++ and other MS programming and server-side products... Perhaps it's just my imagination, but I am not so confident any more in the rankings posted on www.netcraft.net
My boss, who before taking the helm of the little dot-com I work for used to work with "big money" firms all the time (and was the CEO of a national chain or three at one point), refers to the work I do with Linux and Unix as "your silly little programs". Her attitude towards MS is that it's "The Industry Standard(TM)" (you can almost hear the "(TM)" at the end) and therefore that we will use it wherever it is The Standard, case closed, no questions asked. I am lucky that in her case, she has not extended this groupthink to the server room... yet. You can bet that within a few years, we will migrate away from our current servers (Solaris on UltraSPARCs) to Windows at this rate. The sort of pro-MS dronery one hears nowadays from businesspeople is nothing short of alarming.
It's depressing; I've been looking for a job as a Unix SA, and I swear I've actually seen one or two job postings for "Unix SAs" where it says "MCSE is a plus"... and I might have been hallucinating, but I think I even saw one that said "MCSE required"... In NYC, it seems like all of the big-money companies (financials, telcos, etc.) are all gung-ho about Windows, and it's hard to find a "virgin" Unix SA job... that is, one where you can't find words like "MCSE", "ASP/IIS", "VB" or "VC++" in the "Required" and/or "Preferred" lists.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Being a small bit of a geek, I think myself qualified to say whether a term is esoteric or not, and I must say, I've never seen FOSS in my life before. My first thought was "How is my local tourist goods shop suddenly competing with Microsoft on a global scale?".
Free Open Source Software (FOSS). Thanks, that's what I want. More adjectives. And, once more, have them all thrown into an acronym I can't recognize. That's not going to encourage cliquishness or scare away people who might otherwise be interested.
I even thought to look at E2 to see if the obscure FOSS had been noded. If it had been, a little link could have at least been provided to make this more accessible. Nope. Then again, I remember reading something in the Slash CVS which mentioned the E2 linking (with those little question marks) was broken.
You like splinters in your crotch? -Jon Caldara
I guess they were bound to do that, with the tech sector in the toilet, but really. Microsoft? Easy on the pockets?
I've never failed to raise an eyebrow with an open source pitch simply by quoting the customer what the microsoft liscensing would require for the project, and comparing it to what I would charge for the whole deal, which is usually about the same. The only way a MS shop could compete is if they installed their crappy equipment for free.
Install it cheap, make your money off the service contract, and watch your competitors go broke trying to undercut you.
Life is sweet.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Am I the only one that thought "IT depts are on tight budgets BECAUSE of Microsoft"?
Ironic....
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
You've posted a couple obscure servers with Microsoft.com hostnames - I fail to see what that proves? The big sites are all still run on Windows (including IIS6/Win2003 on Microsoft.com).
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=msn.com
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=hotmail.com
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=microsoft.com
It really shocks me how the stupid people come out of the wood work when slashdot posts a story about Microsoft. Let me clear a few things up:
1) Microsoft doesn't expect many people to upgrade from Win2k. It's a damn reliable OS only released 3 years ago. Very few people will upgrade to Win2k3.
2) Major changes in a server OS are generally not a good thing. Incremental improvements are best when you're dealing with such a huge mission critical product. That's the main reason Win2k Server didn't replace NT4 machines overnight.
3) Microsoft expects many NT4 systems to be upgraded. Lots of people were weary of upgrading to Win2k Server but now they have a second generation AD and many other improvments over NT4. NT4 to Win2k3 is a big upgrade, well worth the cost.
I'm pretty high up in the IT food chain in a medium-sized (300 PC users, half-billion USD annual revenue) company. We've been using Linux in several mission-critical roles for over five years, and I'd love to cut Microsoft loose altogether, but I just don't think I can do it yet. A few of the reasons:
- There's still no match for the Exchange/Outlook combination for integrated email, directory, shared folders and calendaring.
- A lot of needed third-party software is still Windows-only (think UPS WorldShip, ADP, etc.).
- A lot of web sites, including several we must use because of business relationships, are IE-only.
- Many of our users live and die by Excel, which means macros, which means VBA.
- Word
.doc format is still lingua franca for business, and the FOSS alternatives aren't quite there yet.
I'm sure no fan of Microsoft's licensing terms and general business practices, but I sure don't see them as being on their last legs. As much as I hate "Embrace, Extend and Eliminate", I have to admit it works, and my job is to keep the business running, not to fight political battles.The new terminal service client is nice, 24 bits support, full encryption, Group Policy applicable to Terminal Service Clients loging to the server... nice little addons.
:) Guess I am not the only one who hates XP's bloated interface.
:). of course ghosting the machine helps, but if you want to upgrade your raid and add more ram, and you change network card to a gigabit for example, blam? no thanks; as much as I like the NT environment more than Unix, there's a limit to be masochist :) Hope microsoft won't be stupid on this one (well web server edition at least).
The web server edition is also nice, cheaper than buying a full blown server just to serve web page, with full support of COM+ and Terminal server remote administration (on a funny note, win2003 server web edition has a "win 2000 skin" default... the start menu is "winXP-like" but the windows and all that I was was like win2000
Reading on their website, they make a big deal about the Group Policy editor, Didn't see it in action yet but that's one place they'd have plenty of room to maneuver; I hate active directory in current win2k server. Even with all patches applied, there's always that little thing somewhere hidden in some documentation deep somewhere that if you toggle on without being exactly sure on all the 2nd-effects of that action, you get burned. I have a hard time imagining somebody actually deploying an active-directory structure with remote offices and centralized servers with let's say 10 locations 50 servers and 5000 clients with some weird problems I've experimented recently, I can see why people are affraid of moving from NT servers and are always waiting for the second itteration of a technology before deploying it.
If activ directory is better in 2003 (which it should be) and there's less bugs, I won't mind upgrading it since I don't have a gazillion servers on site. The web edition is a nice add-on in their portfolio, again, depending on the final price it will sell for.
The only thing that would potentially make me NOT upgrade is that stupid activation crap. You're legit, you bought it, there's plenty of hacked keys or cracked version going around so if someone decides not to be legit, it's a no brainer..., if my system crashes or I have weird problems, the last thing I want is to be on the phone waiting for the right to "reactivate" my license while everybody will think "he needs tech support because he doesn't know what the problem is"
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
I took a 2 day hands on class on 2003 server. Microsoft was demonstrating all the new features 2003 comes with and one of them was that you could rename the domain or forest on the fly. but it would break a few active directory applications such as SQL 2000 and exchange 2000 when the class presenter came out from left field and nearly floored everyone when he said "since were on the exchange subject be aware that you can not run exchange 2000 on windows 2003 server". You would need a mix server environment which will then not allow some of the new features work, or wait for exchange titanium to be release at the end of the year.
One small step for security, one giant leap for MS stocks.
" Doesn't Akamai offer Windows based hosts? Microsoft should insist on their content being on Windows based servers."
They would be it would be too expensive.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
had a 2:1 split on Feb 18. still worth less since those $60 shares would be worth relatively $30 each, and MSFT closed $25.50 today.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I've been running windows 2003 as a desktop for a couple weeks, and am really liking it. It comes with virtually everything disabled by default, and all the security stuff maxed. The main reason I moved over is cause I read an article here a while ago stating that microsoft had actually tried to release an OS with as few bugs as possible, and if I remember correctly the bug count is somewhere low like 100 or less (obviously this is known bugs only, I'd bet it's way higher). After the install I found it had everything XP had, themes, directx, everything. Believe it or not, games performed better on win2k3 server than on winXP. I had both installed for a couple days, and did some other comparisons like memory usage, etc, and it turned out it uses WAY less. My 7 month old XP install used 400mb of virtual memory and 250 physical memory with no programs running, while 2k3 used 100 of each. That is a HUGE difference. It also boots alot faster as well. I haven't found any incompatibilities yet, so I'll be keeping this as my desktop. I do run a server on linux, and will definately keep it that way simply due to resources difference.
Try Win4Lin. This is what allowed me to migrate finally to Linux. Win4Lin is kind of like a "light" version of VMWare that only costs $89, and I presume there would be volume discounts available if you migrate your whole company.
Point is, Win4Lin lets you run virtually every business-critical Windows program there is. I use it to run Word, Excel, Powerpoint, VB6, VC++, Quicken, Quickbooks, PaintShopPro, Metrowerks Codewarrior (for Palm development). Multimedia apps, such as Windows Media and RealPlayer, both work under IE under Win4Lin.
Win4Lin is a great way to incrementally move away from MS. First you install Linux and Win4Lin throughout the enterprise, freeing yourself from Microsoft OS's. Then, as time goes on, you'll find that need fewer and fewer of the apps you thought you "needed" under Windows. I have Win4Lin for the applications I listed above but, to be honest, I use them very seldomly. But Win4Lin is a great idea for a company that would like to free itself from MS licensing but can't "risk" going cold-turkey.
Heck, try all your enterprise Windows apps on a single Linux machine with Win4Lin. If it doesn't work, oh well. If it does... Ready, set, deploy! :)
The new stand alone Active Directory (application mode AD, as it is called) for apps that require directory service but don't really require a full blown domain. That change alone is worth a major rev. level.
There is also the "restore from media" option that lets you build *new* DCs from the system state backup of an old DC. Previously, you couldn't do that, and bringing up a new DC meant running dcpromo and replicating all the data from the various domains. Big deal you say? An HP IT department had to sync a new DC that was also a global catalog over a WAN line. It took 3 DAYS just for the replication. Obviously this will save some serious amounts of time.
Geek used to be a four letter word. Now it's a six-figure one.
Address : www.dbcodegen.com only open port is 80 IIS6 Prize Money : $100 US winning entry - must replace the homepage with your contact so taht prize money can be paid. Ricky
$100 bucks huh? Either you are wanting people to work (hack) at slave labor prices, thus doing your dirty work on the cheap, or you only have $100 worth of faith in a product that costs alot more.
If someone just needs the $100, I could use some help this saturday spreading mulch and chainsawing several large trees here at the house. Pays cash. Bring gloves and a lunch. Beer provided afterward.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
.....like the finance dept. in MS HQ?
Wouldn't you also agree that for those looking to move from NT4, that they could also see a big ROI if they moved to OSS instead? If yes, why would you try to sell a MS solution here, without mentioning that?
What kind of moron chooses the root of the word "fossile" as the name of a movement trying to develop technology?
Get a 180 day Windows Server 2003 Evaluation Kit at this link
The following items are included in the Windows Server 2003 Evaluation Kit:
Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, RTM CD
Windows Server 2003 Resource CD
A unique Product Key (required for installation)
Links to additional Web-based documentation
The Evaluation Kit is available only in English when you order it from this Web site. Localized versions may be available in other locales. We will add international Web site links as they become available.
There is no fee for the Windows Server 2003 Evaluation Kit. As a special promotional offer, Windows Server 2003 Evaluation Kits will be shipped at no charge to customers in the United States, through July 31, 2003. (However, fees will apply if customers choose to receive their shipment via express methods.) Orders from outside the United States are subject to shipping charges and may be subject to import duties and taxes. When ordering from this site, you are considered the importer of record and must comply with all laws and regulations of the country/region in which you are receiving the shipment.
Product Activation
A Product Key is included in the Kit. Product activation can be completed online or by telephone within 14 days of installation and is required for continued use of the software. Detailed instructions and Microsoft's privacy statement are displayed during the installation of the product.
Support Options
The Windows Server 2003 trial software is provided as a convenience only. For assistance, consider the following support options:
Windows Server 2003 Support Center.
View up-to-date support information, including Microsoft Knowledge Base articles, frequently asked questions, how-to guides, and support WebCasts on the Microsoft Product Support Services site.
Windows Server Community.
Get answers to questions about Windows Server 2003 from newsgroups, explore technology centers, or find out about upcoming events and chats.
Windows Server 2003 on TechNet.
Find information about deploying, managing, and optimizing your Windows Server 2003 installation.
Training and Certification
Visit the Windows Server 2003 Training and Events page to see what classes, technical books, and interactive training software for Windows Server 2003 are available.
An MS Engineers point of view:
Win2k3 is a nice upgrade...I say this because it includes a lot of the things that people ASKED Microsoft for from Win2k.
- Resultant set of GPO available without using GPRESULT (GUI reporting MMC. cool if you've ever have the problem of tracking down GPOs)
- Rename a domain & not have to rejoin all workstaitons
- Nice new volume utilities - VSS (volume snapshots)
- IIS 6.0 - a little more secure (it's still not APACHE)
but to compare this type of OS to Linux isn't fair. You really can't EVER compare the two.
- Linux requires really learning and living Linux, and I haven't really seen any training seminars/tracks dedicated to learning LINUX (ok, now you bastard nitpicky people are going to name places where they have them, but the fact is that they're not widely available)
- Linux doesn't have a tool for a unified directory. MS doesn't have it 100% there, or even 75% for that matter, but they're trying.
- Linux as a desktop is clunky...average users won't be able to deal with it, and AVERAGE USERS make the difference when it comes to LINUX OR NOT. We can be as asmart as we want with Linux, but they have to use it to do work, and the work drives the OS.
I happen to be more than a little familiar with Linux, and it's just not there. It's fun, it's different, and I HATE the way that MS bullies users into licensing and upgrading (I have clients who run NT4.0 happily and have to upgrade b/c support for it is being cancelled in July). BUT -
before linux can be accepted as MS has been accepted, they need to stop having so many FLAVORS OF IT. Can't you band together yet??? Getit together and SLAY this goliath. Until then, stop complaining. Linux is making it more difficult ot take seriously be having so many flavors.
(and STOP before you flame that...you know that everone that loves LINUX loves their flavor of LINUX and not just LINUX.)
Anyone else care to comment? I'm interested. if you're going to flame, keep it to yourself unless you can back it up.
MSFT P/E == 28.98. That's high for a producer of a commodity product. OSes and office suites aren't rocket science anymore.
I know this has been said before, but it seems almost everyday Windows become more Unix-like (cleaner, faster, more stable, better) while Linux becomes more Windows-like (less stable, slower, more bloated and less stable [why is is that the 2.2 kernels are generally considered more stable than the 2.4 series?]). With current predictions showing PDAs are going to overtake desktops in the next few years, the Linux community has to concede the desktop market to Microsoft and move on. Servers are is where Linux/Unix strength is. It just always seems to me Linux is playing catchup to Microsoft on the desktop while MS is learnig from their mistakes and trying to move forward.
'The ads are geared toward IT managers on tight budgets.'
:)
Lets see...
Samba as a PDC/BDC : cost of hardware
Apache as a webserver : cost of hardware
Microsoft as both : cost of hardware and obscene license fees.
Take Economics 101.
Hmm, ok, I'll bite:
Not true. I've heard of plenty.
What marketing gimmicks exactly? I love Windows XP. It works perfectly for me. It has quite a bit of the software I use built in. I love the interface, and if I didn't, I could go back to the Win2000 interface, which I also love. I've used UNIX and I hate it. I will say, I'm going to give Linux a try soon though.
Name a Microsoft product that this ever happened to.
Um, I hate to break it to you, but most do. Now I realize what you are trying to say is that most don't understand the OS is actually seperate from the computer, but still, most new computers do come with Windows, so I think what you said is kind of true, no?
This is true. :-)
Um, Windows XP was a drastic change to the OS over WinMe/98/95. At least in my opinion.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
To give some context, this is a short column I wrote for this week's (4/21/2003) eWEEK news package on Windows Server 2003. It's short because of print space limitations. The whole collection of related news articles in this week's issue is at http://www.eweek.com/category2/0,3960,1034194,00.a sp.
Next week, eWEEK is publishing an eWEEK Labs review of the product. In that package, there are six pages of copy covering Windows Server 2003 overall security changes, IIS 6.0, 64-bit Windows, Active Directory changes, file and print changes, development, and storage and SAN changes.
Thanks,
Tim Dyck
eWEEK Labs West Coast Technical Director
Uh oh, don't say it's dead. It might give Windows the immortal powers of BSD.
Pretty interesting web site. I guess the basic premise is that every problem that MS fixes is listed as a "Bad Thing (tm)" on that site.
Quite an original take on the anti-MS agenda- havent seen that one done before, like on, say, Slashdot, on like, well, every day.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
In short the benefits are for the admins (no, not the idiot IT guys who manage to correctly install Win2k at least 80% of the time) The benefits are found in the scriptable administration. Task scheduling from script works correctly. The funky WMI to SNMP to Perfmon counter crap is gone providing scriptable interfaces via WMI to standard and preformatted counters. The holes in ADSI administration if IIS are fixed. Add to that a journaling filesystem with the ability to do point in time recovery over the network (what, didn't the article mention a flavor of journaled network file system?) Oh, what, you didn't even know they existed. You'd be really amazed at what a real admin can do with Win2k and not Win2k3. But most don't look, they are too busy trying to get their new open source browser to run correctly on the latest patched up version of their open source os of choice. I agree with premise of the article, but not the content.
I did (replace windows as my primary)...about the time mandrake 9.0 was release...windows crashed, and took everything with it...I spent weeks trying to recover the data (thank god for cvs or the baseline would have been screwed too). I had mandrake 8 on another machine, so I thought I'd give it a go on my primary, go 100% linux. At the beginning, I thought I'd have to re-install windows, I just didn't see how it would be possible to not have one windows machine around, but I have to tell you, I haven't looked back since...I'm more productive and a hell of a lot more stable. I don't stress nearly as much as I used to about the state of my systems and the change over was really quite painless. I'm now slowly converting the company I work for to the same way of thinking.
Nope.
5.2.3790
This is the real problem with MS these days and no amount of reform on the part of engineering is going to cure it. Win2k3 may be the best thing since sliced bread but pair it with MS legal and the MS corporate culture and it's not a partnership that I'm entirely comfortable recommending to anybody these days, even confirmed MS shops.
I'll probably renew my MCSE credentials in order to help out customers on migration and interoperability but without some forced reform like the Teamsters went through, I can't imagine how the public can trust MS with anything.
A lot of people here are complaining that Windows 2003 has few improvements, but as a software developer, I know that is not the case. For example, take a look at the latest Platform SDK or MSDN docs, you'll find that a lot of API improvements are listed as "Windows XP SP1 and Windows 2003 Server only".
For example, Windows XP/2003 adds enhancements to the Security API, making it easier and more efficient to check a user's access rights. (I'm referring to the Authz### series of functions)
There are also a whole slew of new command line enhacements that system administrators have been asking for. It is now possible to automate almost everything in windows through the CLI. This has not been possible before. For example, new CLI mode programs include 'reg' (for editing the registry), 'netsh' (for configuring networking), 'waitfor' (for synchronizing scripts across servers), 'diskpart' (for managing disks and volumes), and a whole bunch of others. Some of these are simply upgraded versions of existing tools in the Windows 2000 Resource kit, but it's nice to see them built-in, instead of an add-on.
One thing that still irks me though is that Microsoft simply refuses to make the UI defaults reasonable. Every time I install Windows, I am forced to go through about half a dozen dialog boxes to toggle every single setting in those boxes to the exact opposite of their default values. Hiding extensions is NEVER a good thing, and it has confused everyone I have ever met. Nobody likes it, and it is one of the primary causes of the ".jpg.vbs" style viruses. Why can't Microsoft simply admit that they were wrong? Why do folders still show the Win 3.1 era large icon view, when everyone I know prefers the Detailed view? Why? Why must you hurt me Billy?
A list of all CLI commands available in Windows 2003
An example of the new Security API functions in XP/2003
I'm on win2k3 now, build 3790.svr03_rtm.030324-2048.
.NET. The rest of the Microsoft "backoffice" however leaves much to be desired. ADS is a nightmare. It is an okay directory service for exchange, but for authentication and permission domains cross platform? Whatever. Windows NT has fundamental flaws. UNIX has been "dying" for decades, and when Windows NT failed to seal its "fate," in less than 5 years, they should have given up.
;p
Before you all laugh; I was using this to verify if the OS can better handle SYN floods, etc. Let me tell you, FreeBSD and Linux are many times better at handling malformed ingress attack traffic, from SYN, to UDP and ICMP floods, stuff like trinoo / tfn2k / neptune / skydance / etc. Even with syn cookies and the various types of protections shut off, FreeBSD and Linux are many, many times more robust in handling bad traffic.
I would also like to point out that CNET is going to push this crap like crazy (Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft is a major stakeholder in CNET)
I don't believe that this is a minor facelift. This OS (5.2) is appreciably faster than NT 5.1 (XP - excretion product, if anyone used XP over 2000 for any reason they have severe brain damage). 5.1 is a bad expermient. This is a major overhaul in a lot of ways. I still think IIS is not very good. Version 6, 7 whatever - Apache 2.0 is free, opensource, and despite what Zeinfeld says, I see a lot less problems with using Apache than IIS. Sorry. But anyone who claims 5.2 is a minor change from 5.0 is smoking crack. This isn't a service pack.
And the nail in the coffin for Windows 2003? No SSH, no REAL command line configurability and remote control. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to get a real implementation of RDP, called Citrix, which is rather good and ungodly expensive, buy terminal server licenses and citrix seats and CALs and all this crap for a SAMBA share creator with horrible remote manageability. Windows zealots can take the MMC and the snap ins that can be used remotely, remote manageability, administrative packs, terminal services, RDP, remote registry service and Run As and shove it. It is 50 fucking times harder to act as root on a windows box when you arent on the screen logged in.
The OS is a bastard version of VMS. Its that simple. Microsoft should port SQL and Exhcange to other platforms. They should give up on IIS and embrace apache. I am not annoyed one way or the other by SQL, Exchange or
Microsoft has to accept facts. Juniper puts FreeBSD on its godly routers and not NT based crap or Linux for very good reason. Looks are a distraction! Does this stuff WORK? Is it useful, change-able, tunable code that is well documented and self-documenting? Is it mired with ridiculous licensing? The Microsoft EULA and the GPL must have competitions on being the weirdest license ever.
So, I ask all you Windows NT people. You XPers and you Win2003ers. Yeah, you won the browser war hands down - for now. For me it is easier to play games, do my "stuff" and browse with Windows. But do any of you really really believe in this piece of garbage for Servers? I mean fucking c'mon. This god damn tangled mess with fucking DRIVE LETTERS. No real sense of root. No well documented function to do "ln -s" (It's called joining - you can get a utility to do it with reskit, but its a hard link that cannot cleanly traverse drive letters or DFS mounts). No real way to do diskless or dumb clients unless you add citrix. TCP/IP implementation is curiously more expensive than it is on Unix clones and less able to handle attacks. Its rudely expensive with its CAL model. It seeks to proprietize the interoperable (Samba, Domain, LDAP, Kerberos, even HTML is bastardized). It cannot be easily "rescued" like unixes can. Fuck a trashed Unix box is so easy to fix, particularly if you are willing to start over.
Windows server zealots piss me off because they live a lie. They think this crap is more modern and better?
Fo shizzle my nizzle zealots.
[quote]
Um, Windows XP was a drastic change to the OS over WinMe/98/95. At least in my opinion.
[/quote]
Actually, Windows XP was an upgrade from Windows 2000 which was an upgrade from Windows NT 4. So, in reality, Windows XP was not a drastic change as it was just upgraded from 2000 and never came from the 9x line.
only open port is 80 IIS6
Prize Money : $100 US winning entry - must replace the homepage with your contact so taht prize money can be paid.
Ricky
Neither the article nor any comments mention Activation.
Does Win2k3 have activation? If so, why would anyone downgrade from Win2k?
A year ago it was call .NET server... there was .NET this... .NET that... these .NETs in your mouth... lalala... well I downloaded a 45MB patch for my win2k box then a service pak for it... and I still don't have even the faintest idea WTF .NET or what Windows Server 2003 means to it... obviously not a whole lot given the description... can somebody please define .NET and just what the hell Windows Server 2003 does for it?
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
This is just another example of spineless crap moderation here on
Mao Tse Tung, Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Pinochet, Mussolini, Marshall Joseph Tito, Slobodan Milosevic, Idi Amin, Ho Chi Minh, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi, Juan Peron, Ayatollah Khomeini, Ferdinand Marcos, General Suharto, Pol Pot, Fransisco Franco, and certainly the worst of the bunch, SLASHDOT's editing/moderating [read: censoring] "community"(*) ALL AGREE on ONE THING:
(*)Note, the word community used often on Slashdot, this is referring to a proto communist commune.
So, you busy little plebian proletariats, get busy, you have some censoring to do! FUN! Do the bidding of your fat, undisciplined masters who never subject themselves to peer review!
Good job you little neo-commies. Don't want to hear the other side, shoot the fucker in the head as an ENEMY OF THE STATE [In this case anyone who seeks to improve the sad state of
I have a Gun and the Constitution [Not the urinated-on pissed-on hacked fucked up one WashingTOON thinks exists, I mean the real one, with Jefferson and Madison at my side], please, give me an excuse to use them both.
A few haikus to commemorate the sucktitude:
Crack Pipe Moderators
Crack smoke wafts though air
Dumb shit moderator!
Try to suck less, please
The Humorless Moderator
Crack smoke wafts through air
Humorless moderator!
Why do you hate me?
The Proletariat
Slashdotting Commie
Moderator fears new idea!
Censor him quickly
The reason China blocked Slashdot is that when Jiang Xemin saw at how good "The Editors" at Slashdot are at suppressing the community, he knew that if more of his party members saw this degree of suppressive efficacy, he would be deposed, for the good of the people, of course, in favor of Rob Malda as the all new supreme dictator and premier of China.
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried. - Sir Winston Churchill (Especially when your democratic peers twist democracy into a reason commit censorship, to squash dissenting or unpopular opinions, and refer to them as trolls, flaimbait overrated or offtopic when they aren't any of the said)
The reason there are two senators for each state is so that one can be the designated driver. - Jay Leno.
The Constitution poses no threat to our current form of government. (Death to those who defile the root documents of a free nation to make economic freedom Supercede Freedom! Freedom First! Free market Second!)
Occam's Razor "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily." "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate" "Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora" "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem" Translation: " "Simple explanations are preferred to complex ones" Modern fucking translation "JUST DO IT."
Reading Slashdot at anything above -1 is like trying to put a shit filter on your ass.
Get busy moderating this down, you little pack of obedient prefects of the corrupt state! You are the vanguards of purity, and dissent is not allowed!
The Empire Strikes Back.... It is a dark time for the Rebellion. Although the Death OS has been discredited, Imperial microserfs have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the mindshare. Evading the dreaded Imperial Software, a group of freedom fighters led by IBM has established a new secret base on the remote ice world of Canada. The evil lord Darth Gates, obsessed with finding young FOSS(?), has dispatched thousands of Windows OSes into the far reaches of IT... (Aplogies to Canada)
Mmm, beer and chainsaws. Great Combination! I'll be there to watch.
Bleh!
The "NT kernel series" sucks when you try to port Unix-style thread or process per client model server software to it, because of the process limit I discussed and the VMS-like heaviweight processes. The ideal # of concurrent executing threads on 2K3 is one per processor, SQL Server and Exchange are modeled on this.
:) Tell me, how would it be possible to execute say 4 threads simultaneously on a processor (without HT) ? SQLServer and Exchange are modelled on the 'thread-scheduling' model, pure and simple. SQLServer's kernel (yes it has a kernel too) even uses NT-fibers, a part of the OS which can boost threads (and other threads are suffering on this). If Win2k3 has better thread-scheduling and less process-scheduling, SQLServer and Exchange will benefit from this, but also ALL threaded applications will benefit from this (can you say: IIS? aspnet_wp.exe ?)
Kernels do not suck. Kernels, if properly written (but not properly written kernels are hardly ever used in OS-es, except the win9x 'kernels'), do what was designed up-front. They have specs. If you want to use something, you read the specs and see if what you want to use can perform what you want it to perform so the usage is succesful. If you want to use an NT kernel as a monolithic UNIX kernel, and try to schedule processes instead of threads, it won't work efficiently. NT-based OS-es do not use shared memory for their processes. That's why they use threads, because these can use shared memory. When you want to use processes on an NT-kernel and you see that the performance is poor, it's not the fault of the kernel, it's the fault of the programmer who sux big time and doesn't know a thing about what he/she is doing.
Also your remark about 'VMS-like Heavyweight processes' is of the same quality: an NT-kernel based OS works differently than UNIX. You also do not eat soup with a fork, do you? even when the fork performs brilliantly when eating potatoes!
One thread per processor is the optimum? Whoa
Windows server performance is top notch, the kernels are tuned excellently, and with each server release they get better and better. I also found your resources-remark rather amusing. You are refering to the handle-count in each process. So you think it is a good thing, a process will open (2^32)-1 objects and thus has that much handles open? I think that's a bad thing. An open handle means you have an open resource, and are keeping it open. Not a lot of resources qualify for that, most resources get opened, used and are closed right after they are used. That's good programming practise.
I'm very happy for you that you think your monolithic, hardware-specific kernel is the way of the future. I also hope that you WON'T understand that how a kernel works internally is not that important, it's how the OS it is part of runs the software YOU want to run and use. If you WILL understand this, you will regret your swap. Until then, enjoy the ride, while it lasts.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Linux is not there to slay any Goliaths.
Linux is there because many people believe it solves their computing problems, most importantly it solves the problem about who decides how to handle your own computer resources.
With MS you have to upgrade when they say you must, to what they say you must, under the conditions they dictate to you and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it if you have become completely reliant on MS based stuff for your crtitical computer work.
With Linux and other OS OSes the ones that make those decisions are the owners of the computer infrastructure. Red Hat does not support your version of RH Linux but you can't upgrade? No problem, all the code is open, you can pay somebody to fix any outstanding issues if that is what is required. Or you can move the data and programas to other Linux (and most probably any UNIX platform) when you are ready.
The variety of Linux distributions gurantees that you find the right solution to your problem and not a one size fits all approach that most probably will not please all the different types of needs out there.
Regarding Linux training, there is enough stuff around, but to be perfectly honest any good UNIX training is good enough and any particular caveats for a given distribution are easily covered by books or standard documentation.
I never learned Linux anywhere but had my first working machine up and running in no time at all. I had been working on Solaris before that, I felt at home on Linux.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Either problem alone would scare potential buyers, so it seems to be forbidden to discuss.
It would be convenient to skip the upcoming deluge of advertisements and astroturf and see trade magazines feature the F/OSS tools instead. Ads cost a fortune and MS could instead use the money to 1) hire developers to rewrite software in a secure, stable form, 2) hire lawyers for the upcoming willful negligence lawsuits.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.