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Unix To Beef Up Longhorn
An anonymous reader writes "VNUnet has a story about Longhorn having the ability to run unix or linux code via SFU." Microsoft's site has a lot more information about SFU itself. Regardless of ideological bent, it's an interesting piece o' technology.
This is interesting.
For a while now I have used some OSS-community applications on my Windows 2000 Office desktop by running binaries compiled under the Cygwin Linux environment on Windows.
the concept of having a Linux application which could be compiled under Windows from the same codebase (subject to dependencies and X-server requirements being met) may be very appealing to the Opensource groups who have been issuing software tor Mac OSX by this method for some time.
I also wonder if this is intended to give Windows more access to certain Scientific/Media computing markets which are dominated by *nix systems (industrial renderfarms, for instance). Either way, I can only see this as a good thing.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
And you can tell they don't want to admit it because it's named Windows Services for UNIX. UNIX Services for Windows is more correct, but they want you to believe that Windows is empowering UNIX instead of the other way around.
In fact, Microsoft's move is aimed at two things primarily: Linux and Mac OS X
Actually, SFU enables you to do things like run an NFS server on Windows. Basically it is meant to enable PHBs to replace Unix servers with cheap Dell boxes running Windows admined by MCSEs. It has nothing to do with desktop linux or OS X.
Right now Interix is based on an enhanced POSIX subsystem. It's outside of Win32 and Interix applications are only indirectly subject to the "features" of the Win32 subsystem.
Jason Zions, a solutions architect at Microsoft, said there are development versions of SFU that enable a single process to run code both from Windows and Unix libraries. Currently this feature, which would dramatically ease integration tasks, is not available in SFU.
This would almost certainly require much more closer integration of the Interix and Win32 subsystems. Oh my ears and whiskers, this can't be good.
And you can tell they don't want to admit it because it's named Windows Services for UNIX. UNIX Services for Windows is more correct, but they want you to believe that Windows is empowering UNIX instead of the other way around.
It's true, they market the thing for migrating from UNIX to Windows but I've only ever used it to migrate from Windows to UNIX.
Someone must have a pretty fancy crystal ball to tell us what is and isn't going to "sidelined" four years in the future.
No kidding. I know what Microsoft is thinking on this one, and I think that four years is probably too late. It simply comes down to offering a low cost migration path from UNIX. Note that this only affects the server though.
I don't think that it will sideline different Linux vendors, though it most certainly will continue to sideline Sun, if they are still around. Of course Sun is effectively sidelined at the moment, so....
Microsoft's hope here is that they can be the vendor that runs successful UNIX server software and also supports Windows desktops exclusively. It is also aimed at preventing customers from switching to Linux just because they want to run an Apache server.
Of course in 4 years, the computing landscape could be very different than it is now. I suspect that we will be in the middle of a huge conflict the likes of which the industry has never seen. I don't think that most analysts or most managers at MS count on it being as intense as it will.
When I left MS, the prevailing view was that OSS was a pipe dream which could not work in the real world (completely ignoring the success of Apache, BIND, Sendmail, GCC, etc). I don't think that they are conscious of how their pricing model effectively eliminates them from certain markets, such as the ISP market either.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
GNU software has been shipped with commertal software for a very long time and is still done today.
What you can't do is use open source code in a product that will be shipped binary only.
So far so good... excepting spelling, of course
If the commertal parts of SFU contain open source code then Microsoft can't ship.
I think you're confused. SFU, until the most recent version, was a commercial product that MS sold for many years, with GPL code included. They have always given access to the GPL code, and included it in a commercial product. Remember, binary-only and commercial are not the same thing.
However this begs the question why did Microsoft use GCC and not Microsoft C++?
Hmmm?
Because Microsoft C++ doesn't have any need for the GCC extensions and other factors that would complicate MS C++ while only adding minor benefits. Additionally, SFU was not originally developed by Microsoft. Using GCC makes porting Unix applications easier, since most of the applications being ported were originally developed under GCC. The idea is that you could do very little work to get an application running under Interix (now SFU), and then eventually spend the extra time writing the application as a native Windows app. The article also points out that they may be working on a way to allow Windows and Unix code to work together (which they can't do currently outside of some external communication system), which would most likely be done under MS C++, especially given the increased standards-compliance of MS C++ over the last couple of releases (though, again, they may have to add some GNU extensions).
Maybe it has something to do with the commertal product being absolut garbage.
That's just the vodka you've been drinking.
-PainKilleR-[CE]