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Windows Services For Unix Now Free Of Charge
pole writes "Version 3.5 of Services for Unix will be free. Previously, it was $99. This article at Information Week has the details. It contains an NFS client and server in addition to POSIX libraries and utilities including pthreads. Aside from the NFS utilities, how does the environment compare to Cygwin?" An anonymous reader adds links to coverage at News.com and at geek.com, writing "The reviews for these tools have been highly favorable. It looks like the next volley has been fired in the struggle between Windows and Linux."
Let's make this simple for simple people like me. Does this mean in a week I can go to Microsoft's website, download a .exe file, run it, and be able to mount NFS partitions off my linux file server? I could ditch samba? Yes no?
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Something like this happen could mean that Microsoft is starting to have a slight change of heart about the presence of Linux/UNIX. Having this available for free could be great boon to people who have to run Linux alongside M$ - this ranks right up there with Samba, IMO.
Especially interesting is the addition of the pthread library to the Posix API package.
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Anyone know?
I'm not gonna use it unless I get the source. Period.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
http://www.microsoft.com/india/indiadev/projects/s ervices-for-unix.asp
Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Microsoft pursure licensing or incorporation of the Mortice Kern Software (MKS Toolkit) a while back (like their SFU 1.x release). MKS has had a nice set of tools for using Unix(like) commands in MS Windows. MKS is still is a pretty good product too IMHO.
Microsoft was giving tons of them away on their Windows 2003 Server promotional tour and as has been note elsewhere this is really just an OpenBSD distro with a few more LDAP-ish tools thrown in.
I think the message from Microsoft with all of this seems to be that Unix stuff is worthless and just a hassle to tie together with their products. Reality: Microsoft products are a huge liability. Ask anyone who has had their files randomly mailed due one of the thousands of email viruses. The security breaches that Microsoft products bring to the table far more than offset any of their claimed savings in techie hours. Typical BigCo at this points wants to be safeguarding what productivity they have, not tossing it away by opening up more holes than can be patched twice monthly over broadband. Bleh. Even if they gave away MicrosoftServer 2003, I still wouldn't bite. Put the Exchange stack on Linux, and then we'll talk.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
I for one would rather get kicked in the bean bag then be forced to use Cygwin. But thats just me. I'll see how this compares to UWIN when its out for download.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
All anti MS rhetoric aside, this is a smart move for them to make. By making support for POSIX api's freely available, it allows someone to port a unix type app over with a re-compile and perhaps some changes to the make file.
People like to roast MS for not adhering to standards, among other things. This partly answers that.
Of course, this does not make MS a "Good Corporate Citizen" any more then donating money to a homeless shelter makes a tobbaco company a "Good Corporate Citizen". But it does show that once in a while, even bad people can do good things, even if the motives are questionable.
And I have no doubt that Microsofts motives will be questioned here.
END COMMUNICATION
I hear quite a bit of complaining on Slashdot about Microsoft and their software/business practices. The complaints may have some merit, but I think a no-cost tool that helps integrate Windows and *nix is great.
Diversity is the only way to survive. If Linux (or any OS) dominates to the extent Microsoft has we all lose. I think Microsoft is starting to see that. They may be simply acting like they want interoperability, but if it makes my job (mixed *nix/windows admin) easier without costing my employer more than I am all for it.
BTW I have a copy of v3.0 that I got for the cost of shipping. Those who must admin Windows systems but enjoy the tools availble on *nix should definately check it out.
the_crowbar
Have you read the Moderator Guidelines
If this comes with a good X server for Windows, it might make it easy to set up a Linux Terminal Server in a Windows desktop shop. That might be a good way for people to get their feet wet.
Or does this thing only work on Win2k or XP Server editions?
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Providing a way to run Unix apps on Windows isn't exactly a threatening proposition. In fact, the open source community has done the same thing -- Cygwin has been around for years.
If anything, putting Unix API's on Windows provides one more way to write cross-platform applications. Remember, the Unix API's are open standards, so if you write your software to run on them, you've got something that now runs on Linux, Mac OS, and Windows. I personally have used Cygwin (SFU would work too) to avoid writing Windows native software. Just load Cygwin, bring over the standard build, tune, and ship.
Microsoft SFU also provides NFS and NIS implementations on Windows, which I have found useful for introducing Linux and Unix into previously Windows-only environments.
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If you look a the letter on 6/24 from Novell to SCO (partly quoted below) they disputes SCO legal rights to enter into a new agreement with Microsoft.
As voiced yesterday a lawsuit by Novell against SCO is almost certain. They are currently trying to Audit SCO's records in an effort to bring their ducks in row, and presto. Once the suit over Copyright et al is filed SCO effort to get more money will be impossible. On an aside head over to Groklaw and read about SCO's effort o hire a sales manager for their non-existant IP in Linux.
Quote
It has come to our attention that SCO may have violated these provisions. In particular, SCO reported in a recent securities filing that SCO has established a program to review existing licenses, and enter into new licenses, relating to UNIX and that this effort "resulted in the execution of two license agreements" during the quarter ended April 30, 2003. The securities filing states:
The first of these licenses was with a long-time licensee of the UNIX source code which is a major participant in the UNIX industry and was a "clean-up" license to cover items that were outside the scope of the initial license. The second license was to Microsoft Corporation ("Microsoft"), and covers Microsoft's UNIX compatibility products, subject to certain specified limitations. These license agreements will be typical of those we expect to enter into with developers, manufacturers, and distributors of operating systems in that they are non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free, paid up licenses to utilize the UNIX source code, including the right to sublicense that code.
Help fight continental drift.
Would be fun to check out the NFS client - it's a much cleaner protocol than SMB.
Anyway, back to the product... the picture on its box cleary tries to illustrate Unix as confusing and obfuscated. It looks like they've written some nonsensical script in ksh, which starts like this:
It's like they want us to say, "...yeah, I'm glad that we're moving away from this confusing UNIX stuff. Windows is so much easier."So now I can run awk and csh in Windows? Couldn't I already do that with cygwin?
I'm surprised that MS is giving this away. I imagine they are still paying a decent price to mks to license this code since WSFU is really a subset of the MKS Toolkit for windows.
Actually, in spite of comments below, I consider this an acquiescence on Microsoft's part that their customers really do want many of the features present in Unix-like systems that are not found in Windows systems. Naturally, Microsoft would never admit this, but I find it difficult to interpret any other way.
My biggest complaint about Microsoft products has always been the inherent insecurity of blindly executing code (whether it be macros in a spreadsheet, or an actual executable in an email message). But this product addresses a lot of my 2nd biggest complaint about them: lack of scriptability (i.e., hands-off operation).
The sad thing is, most Windows users have absolutely no concept of how useful this is -- until they are forced to use a Unix-like system. Then, when they see how powerful it can be, and go back to their Windows systems, they claim "Oh, Windows doesn't need that: all the apps just do the right thing when I drag&drop."
So sad....
RHCE; are you certified? Karma: ambiguous.
No, we are seeing monopolist 101 here. ... Anyone? ...
Professor: Students, what do we do when competition gets tough. Anyone?
Student at front: Buy the company?
Professor: Close! Your thinking in the right direction, but what if you can't buy the company out?
Same student at front: Oh, I know!! You spend your R&D budget on producing a competing product, and give it away for free.
Professor: Very good! And what does this do?
Silence:
Professor: See, we can afford to sell anything at a loss for much longer than any little company. So, this drives your market share up, while at the same time it puts your competitors out of business.
Afterwards you can hike the price to pretty much anything you want.
Class:Ohhhhh!!
MS only understands one thing: You throw enough money at a problem, and it goes away.
w2^7me out.
I tested it out the other day when it came out, and the first thing I noticed through the installation was that it required you to either have a local /etc/passwd or /etc/group file *already* created, or you had to specify an NIS server to use. I just aborted the installation because I didnt have time to craft a passwd and group file by hand or copy one off some other machine and have it possibly be rejected by the installation script. I also noticed that specifying an empty file or one that did not exist the installation would complain and not go any further.
I dont know about anyone else, but I'll stick with Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com) for now or until they get their act together and write a cleaner install script.
I dont know if anyone else noticed .,but the banner ad on this article is the same annoucement and link back to microsoft for download...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Why are people all excited about this, say things like "gee, Microsoft is finally feeling the heat from Linux"? This is nothing more than a Linux-to-Windows migration tool!
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
And GNU. From their licensing page:
Which leads to kind of odd little things like the ability to download the contents of the GPL from Microsoft's servers (ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/developr/Interix/interix
One of my complaints about Windows for years is that it has no equivalent for many of the tools we take for granted under various flavors of Unix. It isn't that the don't exist, but you can safely assume that any Windows box you walk up to won't have compilers, make, etc. That makes distributing source targetted at Windows as well as Unices difficult. Having this available for a free download means that we can write code that is targetted at something Joe User can download and install.
Several people complained about Cygwin, but yours was the first to articulate a problem - lack of integration with the Windows environment.
.bashrc in the normal way.
... \Desktop and so on.
... I suppose if I wanted to do this I'd use Visual Studio.
For me, this was not an issue. I installed the complete system, started X11 and some Xterms, and live happily as if I were on a Linux system. The file structures, home directories, and password files were created properly and automatically by the installation. bash profiles went into
It is true that from windows you have to know to navigate to c:\cygwin\home to find the home directories, and from cygwin you have to know the arcane Windows pathnames like c:\Documents and Settings\
There are also Windowing system wars. I am happy enough using the Windows Window managaer (with the Power Toys setup to give me follow focus). From Cygwin I use some X11 apps (like xv, xterm) and also some Win32 apps (gsview, Word, etc.). I never try to compile Win32 apps from source
Anyway, I'm not entirely sure what I'd like Cygwin to do differently. But that's because I'm a *nix user grudgingly forced into the Windows world, not a Windows user. So all the stuff that people whose mother tongue is Windows find familiar, I find strange.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/9/0/69096 da8-c88c-40b5-a4f1-5fd0847f9435/SFU35BETA_EN.exe
Microsoft was very smart... They're offering it for free which is a positive move for everyone assuming the EULA is sane.
However, they're also making it incompatible with 9x and XP Home meaning that all of the geek hobbyists on here who have a mix of *nix and windows machines and wanted to use it from home might need to upgrade their windows os to use them.
Microsoft's Site on 3.5 beta
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I have UNIX Services 3.0 and I personally love it. I was NT-only until 4 years ago when I started adopting UNIX/Linux, and now I routinely use vi instead of notepad, just out of habit. Things like pwd are small utilities, but really useful when I need it.
I use the NFS feature to mount my W2K box to NFS mounts. That part is simple.
I also mount from Linux to NT. If you give the NT share anonymous, read-only access, then it's simple. If you want more refined security, then it gets more complicated.
You need to do mapping between NT usernames and UNIX user names via a User Name Mapping proxy. I'm sure it works well, but it's kind of hard to understand how to use, and after 30 minutes, I gave up and made the shares from NT anonymous read-only access.
I'm sure if I spent maybe 2 hours on this I could get everything to work, but since this is my home network and I don't have a whole lot of user accounts, I figured I didn't need it.
We've been using SFU 3.0 and its predecessor for 5 years now to provide our Database Engine and Tools on Windows Boxes as well as our usual Solaris, AIX, Linux, Unixware and SGI. I woudl like to think that by now I am one of the more experienced Interix developers kicking round. I have to say, It's really very good and keeps getting better. MS are moving to being Unix by stealth, SFU is a unix on the NT Microkernal and it doesnt suffer from Win32 issues. Fork works, You can delete a file thats in use (yes inodes work !!), create a new one with the same name and open that in a different process. I've seen Interix 2.0 evolve info SFU 3.0 and 3.5 and I've had MS fix bugs in the allocator part of MMAP within days and release a private patch. Somehow I think there is a little group of diehard Unix lovers in MS working to turn everything on its head the same way Apple got OSX. Anyway waffle over - Try it as a build environment it's geat. What I want to see is Wine on SFU - then All windows apps work over X - whoopee.
Like many large companies, the left hand of Microsoft often has no idea what the right hand is doing. Microsoft are even actively funding GPL code - see http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/ - the Xen virtual machine monitor.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
The irony is that there would be a demand for this. Imagine if you have a windows box that you'd like to share a directory on with more than 5 people. Workstation versions of windows are crippled, and server versions make you pay per connection. Samba would let you share it with everyone, without setting up a dedicated server.
Obviously I'd just set up a linux box - but if you made a freeware program which you could download which would allow you to share a folder with an indefinite number of users, you'd get a lot of downloads.
Actually, I installed cygwin on a windows xp pro box, I would love to use Samba, then I could do domain authentication, while the box is not in the domain. Same way I setup solaris boxes, samba shares that use the windows domain for access, but nothing else.
So, yes, Samba for windows (or cygwin) would solve my problem. Samba is more than just SMB/CIFS, it emulates a domain controller or forwards authentication to a domain controller. Something windows does not do, unless its a member of the domain.
It would let you overcome the technical issues with connecting more than 5 people to Workstation, but not the licensing issues: you would still be in violation of the EULA.
You are correct though in that it would be a popular download - there are some people (I've heard) who don't pay much attention to the conditions of the EULA.
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
There's a total flip side to that. In cygwin you can actually call (cygwin's) posix and win32 functions from the same program. Which would be useful if
1) You want to run any linux proggy with a GUI frontend on Windows (is an X server running on top of the new SFU posix subsystem even possible?)
2) You'd like to port your win32 program to posix (or vice-versa) in a piecemeal fashion.
IMHO NT's whole concept of different execution subsystems (win32 vs. OS/2 vs. posix) is painfully broken.
Maybe they do listen sometimes
Yes this does mean that with this you can connect using file:// to get you files with this addon.
This doesn't mean that I am giving up the LInux workstation I am typing this on. My Linux workstation is still the best email virus control I've found and I just plain like it. This does mean I can get my files off of the Winders file server without using Samba of FTP! YEA!