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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."
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?
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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
I was thinking the same thing. Does anyone know if the Windows NFS client works well enough that "straightforward" file access from Windows to Linux will be available? This could be a boon to even more Linux server installations.
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.
I really can't remember any glitches using it for 2+ years against Solaris 2.6 boxes.
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.
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
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.
Ah, yes. The Welsh-centric fork of Cygwin.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
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
ah but i use linux because it is simple. hard to learn, simple to use. i quite find windows simple to learn, hard to use, and i fancy the elegance of plain text everything that i get with my linux server.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
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
I've already heard it as STFU...
Anyway, it's still better than the Critical Update Notification Tool.
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."
By way of some background:
/net sort of mapping within the Interix/POSIX subsystem, which is nice but fairly slow (though I note that this was particularly apparent to me because I was working remotely over DSL; I suspect there was a fair amount of roundtripping).
/net and it might not handle symlinks nicely. I remember benchmarking a version of the software prior to it being integrated in SFU, and it was about 3x faster than Samba in a LAN setting. [Kind of a an informal metrics: I was compiling a large project with network-based sources.]
The NFS client as of 3.0 is an improvement over the prior version in that it transparently conveys perms and ownership (according to whatever mapping has been established). It has support for a
In general, however, I think that NFS client access by way of the Win32 subsystem (i.e., not in the Interix POSIX subsystem) is pretty fast, though you might lose some of the perms transparency and there is no
It will be interesting to see if the performance within the POSIX has improved with the new version (3.5).
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.
My experience of SFU was that it was much more reliable than Hummingbird's implementation of NFS client.
Almost anything is more reliable than Hummingbird's NFS.
Viewing the file in hex and yelling it out across the room to somebody else who types it back in is more reliable than Hummingbird's NFS.