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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
Can you say, "embrace and extend?"
What a fantastic set of tools for people who are migrating thier windows boxes to a Linux/Unix envirornment. Glad they finally saw the light of day and are working to join us.
It's really "unix services" for "Windows". They can't even get the name right - what else did they screw up at the forge of Mordor?
--
make install -not war
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They include gcc, but most of the other utilities are from OpenBSD or other non-GPL sources (there are about 40 different licenses included). ActiveState perl is also included, though you can get that free anyhow.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The idea is obviously to encourage migration from Unix to Windows, but it can just as easily be used to encourage migration in the other direction.
It is to be hoped that such opportunities are taken up by people wishing to get the out of MS lock in in a gradual manner.
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
A shallow compatibility layer. I like it better than Cygwin, but that is just me.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
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.
SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
So now the answer is "free". I'm not saying I like Windows servers over Unix-style boxen - but this was a good business choice for MS.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
I guess it depends on what you use it for. But as I have to do development work in Windows, I thought I'd try it out. Searching through the million line source tree our company has took about 10 times as long with 'grep' that came with "Services for UNIX" as it did with 'grep' that came with a now ancient version of MKS. Both of these were slower that current GNU grep on a Linux box, but the difference between GNU and MKS grep is not dramatic.
The lesson stays, however. If you expect to basically start with all the power of your Linux box, you'll be sorely dissappointed, just as someone expected the ease of use of Windows coming to Linux will be sorely dissappointed.
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. --
Microsoft based this product upon OpenBSD: http://www.deadly.org/article.php3?sid=20030927090 008
Wow, what a great acronym, and I'm quite surprised that they seem to be actually using it externall!
Anyone who disagrees with microsoft can just SFU! I mean, install SFU from microsoft.com.
(Just in case somebody missed it, SFU = Shut the F**k Up.)
We are really starting to see the results of constant economic pressure in Microsoft. Once a monopoly has real competition - it is forced to either *gasp* innovate or lower prices! I think in the coming years, All computer users will benefit from Linux - even if they never use it. Windows users will see lower prices and a somewhat friendlier Beast, and Mac users are already getting a ton of great open source product integreted into OS X.
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
This great news for those windows users out there. It will be surely provide much needed apps for this upstart operating system. Now, whenever someone says, "Windows? But what can I do with it?" you can point out that they can run their favorite unix apps.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Overall, services for unix is good. It provides many of the common unix utilities, and it integrates them into the shell [even just cmd] very well. Much better, and 'cleaner' than cygwin. Cygwin has *many* more tools though, and they work 'well enough'.
In my experience, using the two together [having SFU's directory in the path before cygwin's] gives you the best of both releases.
This was speculated on in an article at Groklaw, that this was the intent (aside from financing the anti-Linux FUD campaign) in M$ paying SCO for a license.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
Why does Microsoft want to support Unix/Linux applications on Windows? It does not seem to make sense. Every deployment of a portable application on Windows creates an opportunity for moving to Linux at a later stage (vis. OpenOffice).
Presumably the "Unix" services will include extensions that make the migration a one-way affair. Presumably also Microsoft have some killer Unix/Linux applications in mind that they want/need to be able run on Windows. Apache? Hmmm...
Presumably also the goal is to turn Windows into something closer to what corporate IT centers actually want.
It reminds me a lot of IBM's drive to include Unix-like features in OS/370. An obvious thing, to make one's OS POSIX-compliant. But all POSIX compliancy drives seem to lead to Linux.
So... the very first thing I thought when I first heard about this, and the thing I still think today is that this is the first step in the direction of a Microsoft-branded Linux distribution.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
going between Windows and Linux boxes. I speak from first hand experience. An FTP transfer of the same (very large) file goes 10 times as fast on my gigabit network. I can't speak for NFS, but SMB is certainly not the be-all-end-all for serving files.
Impossible.
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
..as he mentions that "very few of our customers are going to have a pure Unix or pure Windows environment".
Previously, I used to think that at least half of the MS customers or so would have a pure Unix environment. Thanks for enlightening me, Dennis!
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
how does the environment compare to Cygwin?
One is licensed under GPL, and the other isn't....
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
POSIX environment... C compiler... you know, it should be possible to get my depenguinator to work here.
I'm not sure about being able to write the filesystem image to disk, Windows might not allow that.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Ah, yes. The Welsh-centric fork of Cygwin.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
Interix used OpenBSD as is evidenced at deadly.org
So like 95% of it is just OpenBSD, mostly pulled from theh 3.0 release tree.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
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
They need to start offering "Windows Services for Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000", because this is where a lot of their customers hopped off the upgrade bus.
C'mon, raise your hands, how many of you are still administering a pair of Windows NT 4.0 domain controllers because Active Directory was overkill for your single-site 100 employee company? I know I am.
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First it was OpenNT from a comapny called Softway Systems which provided a fully POSIX-compliant subsystem replacement for NT.
Later, Softway renamed it to Interix, and shortly after that Softway was bought out by Microsoft. At that time, the guts of Interix were used to make the 'Services for Unix'.
it is ported to Windows. (BTW... Got this from some other post on Slashdot a long time ago)
Sola Scriptura Sola Fide Sola Gratia Sola Christus
"The real driver behind this [pricing] change is this interoperability issue," Oldroyd says. "We want Windows to be the best platform for interoperability."
Since when? Does this mean Windows Whatever'sNext will be able to read Mac and ext2 floppy disks? Does this mean their APIs and protocals will be more open to allow for better communication and cooperation with other platforms?
Or does this mean "We don't want Windows apps kicked out of Unix dominated businesses, and thus begin a general migration away from Microsoft software?"
Or is this a very clever move to get Unix houses to set up one Windows box with this on it in order to be able to interface with the outside world better, and thus give them some targets for the marketing department?
Monopolies aren't interested in interoperability - they're usually out to destroy it. Look this gift horse in the mouth very carefully - Microsoft is not trustworthy and anything they say or do is suspect. This could wind up being just a nice candy piece tossed to the Unix world, but I am forced to wonder what Microsoft is getting from it, and in what situations a $99 fee would stop someone where free is a go-ahead price. Not any big shops, that's for sure. Remember, with any Microsoft move the first rule is to ask what they are expecting to get out of it.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
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...
Say a windows shop decides to introduce a *n(i|u)x fileserver. With samba they gotta make sure that any new windows version can talk to samba. Sure new windows versions don't appear every year but still often enough for it to be a concern. Especially with License 6.0 where you pay for the upgrade of windows anyway.
Now if the new windows can just talk for free to the nfs on the unix machine. Hmm, no longer an obstacle to upgrading. Then again no obstacle to using a unix machine either.
Mmmm, I think this may be a case were MS may neither lose nor win.
As for making it free. Did some NFS for windows maker piss of Bill Gates? If this is a good nfs and not one of ms'es standard embrace and break jobs then they are all out of business.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
They are a shady company that isn't above immoral behavior to get ahead.
That is why this seemly good gesture is being scrutinized.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
As you can see.
1) WSFU is faster (IO/API/...)
2) WSFU is better integrated with win32 architecture (OLE/ODBC/...)
3) WSFU make a lot of things easier than cygwin with windows
BUT, i wouldnt trade cygwin for it, note that i have both installed here. I just isolated what i needed from WSFU and was better than cygwin and added them last in my path. I dont have any preferences, but cygwin is waaay more complete, and you have the +/- the same versions of the application that runs on linux. Same config files work fine, same behaviours (which isnt the case with WSFU), etc.
For me, WSFU is just a little + to cygwin.
-- search the web
I've already heard it as STFU...
Anyway, it's still better than the Critical Update Notification Tool.
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.
I've got an MSDN subscription at my company, so I was installing and using SFU for awhile. Other posters have noticed that SFU's version of grep is slow, though, so I did a bit of research and I've taken to installing the Win32 ports of the GNU utilities also. There's a SourceForge project called UnixUtils that ships a bunch of them in either a zip file (unzip to %systemroot%\system32\) or as a binary installer. They work natively within cmd.exe, so there's no need to use a separate shell as SFU does.
It is missing a few things, but between grabbing SFU for its commands like ls and cp, and the unixutils package, you get the best of both worlds.
got standards? --- http://www.w3.org/
Does it have vi? Screw you, Emacs users. Light, powerful, efficient and easy to use, vi is clearly the editor that intelligent programmers use. Written in a much more powerful programming language than the obviously dying Emacs, vi is the editor of editors. I mean, c'mon, imagine Emacs running under CYGWIN on a Win box! That's like running three kludges at one time!
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
some people would be clamoring for an OSS alternative to Notepad
Both Vim and GNU Emacs have been ported to Microsoft Windows.
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 ----
BillG: Great! It looks like we have another winner on our hands. People sure do want that Unix stuff. Oh, wait...
SFU PM: erm...
BillG: You're fired.
I've used both, SFU more extensively than Cygwin, though. SFU's NFS stuff is flaky. That's just the bottom line. I would much rather export shares to Windows clients with Samba than NFS. (I suppose it doesn't help that I'm not a big fan of NFS, either, but that's just full disclosure. It's the only thing I've seen that can reliably lock up a *nix machine. Now, of course, there are circumstances where you want this, but usually not.) Also, if you want all the features of their command line, you'll have to switch your Windows machine into a case-sensitive mode. It made me nervous to change something so fundamental to Windows. Maybe they'll fix that in this upcoming version; I dunno. On the other hand, using Cygwin is nice, but it's like a big tease. Most of it works like you want. It's just that if you're used to using Linux and ALL of it's tools, you're going to hit the wall pretty quick. (I just ran into this a couple weeks ago, and I've already forgotten what it was I was wanting.)
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
I have 3 windoze boxes on my network atm. My daughter has one, my wife the other - both their primary work/play stations, and I have a juiced up P4 as my game box (that is all it does - the only thing running on it is 'systray', and whatever game I happen to be playing, most likely WWIIonline)
I have 3 other machines that are all Linux machines (Redhat - soon to be Debian file server, Debian workstation, and a Slackware network analysis machine).
I've played with Cygwin, Hummingbird etc. over the years - and found the emulation of the unix environment Kludgey, and not transparent enough for my tastes.
Basically I wanted a bash compliant shell that was transparent enough to run the standard set of unix CLI tools (ls, ps, grep, df etc...) - but also allow me to kick off native windows and dos applications without switching modes of operation (i.e. type in the path and have it run the application). I did not need to be able to compile binaries - my main purpose for this tool would be to write utility scripts for system administration on the boxes. I wouldn't need remote access (although I might implement that as a seperate capability with freely available tools if needed - outside the scope of my project).
Then a thought hit me - why not implement this in python? I already have python loaded on most of my windows machines - why not make it universal? Python would serve as the abstraction layer I needed - and provide a built-in scripting capability to boot. All of the unix tools will be implemented in python either as built-ins or as seperate '.py' scripts.
Additional functionality - such as 'crontabs' would need to be implemented, as well (haven't worked out the details of that yet).
Ideally, you would drop python and this package on the windows box -- and presto! Instant CLI... And the nice thing about it is that it would be using native windows APIs - so would be faster than some of the emulators that attempt to be a complete source compliant emulation environment.
I haven't seen any drawbacks, yet. The cron functionality might be a bit of an issue - but it doesn't look insurmountable.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
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.
Not exactly. It is to migrate Unix users to Windows. (i.e. proprietary hardware to x86) It is to prevent them from migrating from Unix to Linux. They have finally resigned themselves to the fact that *nix is valuable: "This is really about the interoperability," said Dennis Oldroyd, the marketing director for Microsoft's Windows Server Group. "Very few of our customers are going to have a pure Unix or pure Windows environment...
Did you ever think 5 years ago that Microsoft would ever admit that their users would have anything but a pure Windows environment? And you missed my veiled reference when I said they will embrace it. They will embrace it - then extend it. That is their M.O.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
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.
As an example, you can change all registry entries pointing to a user's home directory by running
A Usenix technical conference paper describes the tools and a number of applications.#include "/dev/tty"
Microsoft is reminding me of a heroin dealer more and more.
.Nyet. I can guarantee that it will not be that 3 years from now. (Or it will not be compatible.) They have to have something to keep you buying the latest version. Developers get led by the nose just like anyone else in the Windows world.
"The first one is free."
I suggest that anyone who is planning on moving apps to Microsoft check on how much all those additional licenses will cost you. Microsoft is the master of the hidden cost. "Client Access Licenses" for every service you want to use eventually adds up to a big chunk of change.
And then there is the shifting nature of development in the Windows world. Every year or two it is a different set of prefered developer technologies that you are expected to use. This year it is
Anyone who ports applications over to Windows either has a fool for a client or is a fool himself.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."