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Are Widespread 'Microsoft-alike' Replacements Feasible?

Posted by Cliff on from the duplicating-the-entire-line-for-'compatibility' dept.

Dr.Dubious DDQ asks: "With all the recent Microsoft(r) news, I see a lot of the usual complaining about Microsoft's unfair 'embrace and extend' practices. I do my own fair share of this, but I'd much rather actually *do* something about it.At the risk of prompting cries of 'No! That will only make them stronger!', I find myself asking: How possible is it to 'transparently' replace Microsoft-brand services with other (preferably, but not necessarily, Open Source) services (rather than flatly demanding migration away from all things MS)? Or put the other way around, what tweaks would have to be made to existing, standard services to make them 'bug-for-bug compatible' with MS versions, particularly OUTSIDE of the context of SMB/Samba, which is an already-obvious example?" While there are definite reasons why such an effort may be worthwhile, it is also possible that Microsoft could attempt to make legal attacks at such projects...even though they are designed with software interoperability in mind. Precedents in support of this idea do exist, such as: ReactOS and even standard Open Source openings like Gnumeric. "I've got two goals in mind here:
  1. Ability to placate MS-platform applications that demand MS-brand services to connect to while ALSO allowing non-MS clients as close to 'full' functionality as possible with the same services
  2. Naturally, ability to replace an MS-branded package would personally appeal to me as well for both technical and - yes, I'll admit it - philosophical reasons.
Ways of meeting either (or both) goal would be useful to me and, I suspect, a lot of other sysadmins.

For example:
  • Is it possible (and feasible) to get OpenLDAP+Kerberos5 to fool Windows systems into believing they're talking to a "real" ActiveDirectory(r) server (without necessarily also having the entire Samba stack)?
  • Can client programs that demand MS-SQL server generally use MySQL in MS SQL Compatibility mode instead, if MySQL is set to respond on the MS-SQL port (either directly or via ODBC?)
  • How hard would it be to make a 'mod_dav_sharepoint type of module that spoofs Microsoft's special Sharepoint WebDAV behavior (which evidently also uses a 'special' non-standard SQL-like search mechanism - am I going to be kicked out of the club for thinking this looks, at least on the surface, like it might be a useful feature if usable by non-MS clients and implementable by non-MS servers)?
  • Similarly, how feasible would it be to get non-MS DAV clients to be able to use Microsoft Sharepoint (or the hypothetical MS-alike drop-in replacement?)
  • How good are the 'drop-in replacements' for MS Exchange?
  • Are there issues with MS's implementation of IPP (are there any problems dropping Microsoft Printer Sharing entirely and using CUPS instead? It SEEMS that MS Windows 2000+ should support IPP directly, without resorting to Samba middleware - is this true?)
  • Possibly risking heaps of derision for suggesting such an unlikely-sounding thing, but how about using mod_dav/Apache (as what Microsoft USED to refer to as 'Web Folders') as a replacement for SMB file sharing? Aside from possible performance issues, is this feasible, or are there too many incompatibilities in MS's DAV support for it to work?
  • Are there any registry hacks or other tweaks that can be applied to Microsoft Windows-based systems to make them behave in more standards-compliant ways?
  • ...etc?...
Are there other replacements people have investigated?"

37 comments

  1. obvious? by ShecoDu · · Score: 1

    linux with gnome or kde, mozilla, open office etc...

    most of the windows apps are already in *nix

    unless you want games, that is

    1. Re:obvious? by volteface · · Score: 2, Informative

      As long as you know the proper protocol (LDAP for example), making replacement client and/or server apps is only a matter of writing the implementation code. If it's a server, you have to make sure it duplicates functionality exactly, and that's where you could run into problems. It's basically like writing a new IRC client or web browser. I don't know if MS makes all its protocols public though, and, again, that's where you could run into trouble getting started.

      I'm not sure about the legality of it though. That is something that would need to be researched before any serious undertaking is made.

    2. Re:obvious? by Planesdragon · · Score: 3, Interesting

      unless you want games, that is

      Or the ability to run that custom app you use for that one situation...

      Or floating tables, or word count, or SECTIONS.

      OOo is good, but it's a LONG ways away from "feature for feature" compatability with MS office, much less "bug for bug." (Thankfully, it's got a few cool features of its own which make up for the problem.)

    3. Re:obvious? by pbhj · · Score: 1

      I don't really know MSWord that well as my last employer used WordPerfect ...

      Are floating tables like a table inside a frame? Sections, what the fubar are those? But wrt word-count, what's wrong with the one under File>Properties:Statistics ?

      What do you use floating tables and sections for, how do they convey information that can't be conveyed by OOo? Remember this is a word processor.

      This all sounds a bit zealous, but I'm just curious - I often recommend OOo and it would be good to say "oh but it can't do ... if that matters to you".

    4. Re:obvious? by Planesdragon · · Score: 2, Informative

      Are floating tables like a table inside a frame?

      Yes. And when I tell a table to "float" in MS Word and then open it in OOo, the table is wrapped in a text box ("frame"), which works rather well. But it's nowhere near as easy to get a table in OOo inside a text box.

      Sections, what the fubar are those?

      Many of the functions of sections--denoting page number styles and columns throughout a document--are done rather well and in some cases better with OOo's "page style" feature. However, there's no way to have a different "columns" setting at different areas of a page--something that I have done in about half a dozen instances over the past year.

      But wrt word-count, what's wrong with the one under File>Properties:Statistics ?

      The fact that it's three or four clicks to get, and it's automatically a count of the WHOLE document. Measuring what one has written by word count is not an unusual task--and by tripling the requirements to get a word count, OOo has made the task dramatically harder than it is in MS Office.

      What do you use floating tables and sections for, how do they convey information that can't be conveyed by OOo? Remember this is a word processor.

      I'm currently formatting the Prometheus Reference Document (http://www.thefga.com/), and the basic layout for readability reasons is going to be two-columns per page. However, a number of tables are far wider than the column space, and this means that the tables need to "float" so that they are not in the way of the columns.

      All of these are more annoyances than problems, and OOo has other features that do outweigh the problems--but the shortcomings do exist, and macros cannot fix all of them. OOo simply is not bug-for-bug or feature-for-feature a match for MS Word, and it'd doubtful that it ever will be.

    5. Re:obvious? by Pembers · · Score: 1

      [Word count needs] three or four clicks to get, and it's automatically a count of the WHOLE document

      I don't know if you've noticed, but the multi-tabbed dialogues in OOo remember which tab they displayed last. So if you don't switch between tabs, the next time you want a word count, you only need to do File, Properties.

      I agree it's annoying that you can't get a word count for just part of the document. I often want to do this, so that I can tell how much I've written in the last day or week or however long. I usually resort to copying the relevant text into a new document and getting the word count of that!

      An alternative is a StarBasic macro that counts the words in the current selection. Your remarks prompted me to try to find one, and a quick bit of Googling turned up this page. I've tried it out, and it seems to work. I still need to work out how to bind it to a key, but I only need to do that once.

      --

      Just another wannabe fantasy novelist...

    6. Re:obvious? by Planesdragon · · Score: 1

      I'm more than aware that Macros exist, and that most of what I want to do can be done with OOo--it's just more work.

    7. Re:obvious? by andreyw · · Score: 1

      You know, you want sections? Floating tables?

      How about TeX? Its the standard in book publishing, papers, professional journals. And its not hard either. Once you try LaTeX you will never go back to something as weak as a WYSIWYG word processor. Seriously, just try it - even if to prove me wrong.

      \section{Uhuh, section name}

    8. Re:obvious? by Planesdragon · · Score: 1

      How about TeX? Its the standard in book publishing, papers, professional journals. And its not hard either. Once you try LaTeX you will never go back to something as weak as a WYSIWYG word processor. Seriously, just try it - even if to prove me wrong.

      Show me a TeX editor that does word count, spelling check, can fix my common typoes as I write, save as PDF and DOC, track my additions/deletions and count the new words, insert automatic references to headings and tables within the document, and has easy style application, and I'll try it. (Oh, and it has to run in Windows, although CYGWIN or other interpreter is acceptable.)

      A word processor and a layout program are two differnet beasts with two very different tasks--but, well, Word and OOo can be used to lay out books, so a layout program might be good enough to write in.

      Oh, yeah--and should be either WYSIWYG or a very close approximation thereof. WYSIWYM is no good for quick authoring of documents if the presentation of "meaning" has no intiutive (i.e., doens't require one to stop and think) correlation to WYG.

  2. Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Why do you guys ask questions like this on a Friday afternoon? My brain has already left for the weekend, and I'm sure a lot of the other readers have too.

    At least you didn't ask it on a Monday morning though...

  3. I hope so! by bscott · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm in the early stages of a project to switch from Windows to Linux - not just at home but at my wife's workplace (she works directly with the company president in a SOHO environment, just a few people). My wife has fallen in love with Linux if only due to the greater amount of customizations, skins and other "pretty!" things she can do by comparison with Win98/2k, so she's been using it for months, and I have other computers around with various Linux distros installed for experimentation purposes (though I still have Win2k on my main system until my current development work is over).

    I eventually want to be able to make a customized Knoppix-like CD with all my apps, coupled with the ability to securely access my files at home (we have DSL). But more than that - I want to be able to forget all the masses of stuff I've had to learn about Windows over the years, but I'm sort of the go-to guy for computer help amongst my social circle (I don't hang out with geeks...) so ideally I want to be able to offer a Windows alternative to nontechnical types - a Linspire-like setup that looks and works almost exactly like WinXP. "My computer is screwed up, can you come over and fix it?" "Take this CD instead, you'll have no more problems..."

    Mozilla is a great browser and I've switched a few people over to it, but you do still have to put up with more than a few 'issues' - websites that look and work fine in IE but don't appear correctly in Mozilla, or misconfigured servers which don't send the MIME-type of .avi files allowing Mozilla to display them as garbage text (whereas IE figures out it's a video file regardless), and so on.

    Maybe I can learn enough about Mozilla to reconfigure it to work around such things (I understand why it's more important to the Mozilla people to be standards-compliant, but the kinds of people I'm hoping to help here Just Want It To Work...) and maybe I can learn enough about Linux to work around a number of similar issues, but at the least I know that *I'm* gonna be happier once I'm able to ditch Windows. I just hope I can switch everyone else too!

    --
    Perfectly Normal Industries
  4. What?? by np_bernstein · · Score: 1

    How can you ask people not to reccomend samba because it's obvious, and then ask for solutions for problems where the obvious solution is ....SAMBA? Active directtory replacement? Samba. Sharing? Samba. Come on.

    As for asking if you can replace Microsoft SQL Server with MySQL using ODBC, how about looking up ODBC... http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/O/ODBC.html

    do some research dude.

    --
    RandomAndInteresting.comdefending the world from stupidity since 1979
    1. Re:What?? by Dr.Dubious+DDQ · · Score: 1

      I didn't ask people "not to recommend SAMBA" - the point is, SAMBA is an already obvious example of one such replacement. It does not cover every Microsoft service, however. I just didn't think it'd be helpful for anyone to see 500+ posts that say "Dude, do some research, SAMBA already does this". What I'm asking is, how feasible is it to do something similar for the rest of MS's services?

      The MS-SQL example wasn't just a question of whether or not it's possible to use ODBC. Yes, I know what ODBC is. And, yes, I've already found UnixODBC. What I want to know is, for example, if I have a commercial package that claims to require MS-SQL server, and I try pointing it at a MySQL server in "MS-SQL Compatibility" mode, how likely is it to work? I EXPECT that the answer is probably "only if it's using ODBC to connect", but in that case, has anyone tried it, and if so, does it turn out that it occasionally still doesn't work due to special quirks or capabilities provided by MS-SQL's ODBC driver that MySQL doesn't replicate?

      If I, for some reason, don't WANT an entire Windows authentication framework but just want a directory server that MS Outlook will think is "ActiveDirectory", can it be done with the right schema in OpenLDAP, or is there special missing functionality?

      SharePoint's WebDAV server implementation is yet another issue, as is Microsoft's quirks in their WebDAV client driver.

      I suggested this as a discussion question, not a "hey, I'm trying to do a single specific task, can somebody do a google search for me and give me detailed step-by-step instructions?" which seems to show up in the "Ask Slashdot" section from time to time lately. The subjects of making Microsoft clients somehow work with non-MS servers, and making MS servers interoperate with non-MS clients just happens to interest me, and I thought it might interest other people here too, so I asked...

      --
      Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
    2. Re:What?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It wouldn't work because MySQL isn't a full SQL92 compatable database. You would risk having bizzare database errors that you wouldn't really be able to debug because it would be hidden behind the MS database layer.

      Now if the app *only* used tables as if they were flat, then there's a *chance* that it would work.

      What you really want is an MS SQL2K compatability mode for SYBASE. MS pretty much copied SYBASE back in the 80s, but there are some minor, but significant differences. SYBASE runs damn fast on unix machines, and i believe it's what most of Wall Street runs.

    3. Re:What?? by GoofyBoy · · Score: 1

      >and I try pointing it at a MySQL server in "MS-SQL Compatibility" mode, how likely is it to work? I EXPECT that the answer is probably "only if it's using ODBC to connect", but in that case, has anyone tried it, and if so, does it turn out that it occasionally still doesn't work due to special quirks or capabilities provided by MS-SQL's ODBC driver that MySQL doesn't replicate?

      You are asking something application specific, and it sounds like the compaitbilty mode isn't good enough.

      From http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/migra ting-from-microsoft.html
      "MySQL AB is constantly adding new features to MySQL, but there are always some features that SQL Server or Access will offer that are currently unavailable in MySQL. If you are using MySQL 4.0 you may find that a lack of prepared statements, stored procedures, subselects, and views affect the ease with which you can migrate an application to MySQL. This will of course depend on how extensively you have used such features in your application. In MySQL 4.1 we see the introduction of prepared statements and subselects. In MySQL 5.0 stored procedures and views have been introduced, although the stored procedure syntax will undoubtedly vary in some degree from Microsoft's T-SQL language."

      And it goes on with other dramatic differences in the 5.0 release.

      If you had a really, really simple program it could work, but in the end you have an unsupported system and no access to the code.

      --
      The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
  5. Hmmm by Anonymous+Crowhead · · Score: 1

    I'm 'finding' it "difficult" to read your
    "question." Could you *please* (preferably by
    rewriting) FIX (rather than the formatting) your
    question (as opposed the reply-posting to my post.)

    1. Re:Hmmm by Dr.Dubious+DDQ · · Score: 1

      Yeah, yeah, I've got a bad case of parentheses poisoning...

      I tried to go back to clarify what I was wondering about and ended up inserting a bunch of extra material. Here it is in shorter form:

      "Hey, has anyone found out anything interesting while researching or actually trying to insert a non-Microsoft server in places where the clients expect or demand Microsoft-brand servers, or getting non Microsoft-branded clients to work with Microsoft-branded servers where the server was, as usual, designed only for Microsoft branded clients?"

      The rest of it is examples of situations that I can think of and have tried to find out about. The comment encouraging non-SAMBA examples specifically was because Samba is an obvious one, and there IS plenty of information about using it to replace MS-branded services out there, so it didn't seem worthwhile leaving the discussion open to ending up focussed on why Samba is so cool (or sucky, depending on your opinion).

      Just a general question for discussion. Not ALL "Ask Slashdot" submissions have to be answerable with "Just use google, and here are the step-by-step instructions", after all.

      --
      Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
    2. Re:Hmmm by Anonymous+Crowhead · · Score: 1

      Now I feel guilty, sorry man. My experience in this topic is pretty much only using Samba. I think that any inroads you can make in your work environment using OS tools is a big plus. I'm just happy keeping file sharing, backup, web and email out of the hands of Microsoft.

    3. Re:Hmmm by Dr.Dubious+DDQ · · Score: 1

      s'okay - if the posts in the "GPS and Portability" Ask Slashdot are any indication, I think people have been conditioned to assume that Ask Slashdot is a tech-support hotline - and both my question here and the asker in the GPS thread are LOUSILY worded if they had been intended as tech support type questions...

      One reason that IPP (Internet Printing Protocol, which appears to be "HTTP for submitting print jobs") and WebDAV came to my mind was that I was wondering about getting file and printer sharing removed entirely from the Microsoft realm. I'm under the impression that NetBIOS isn't particularly efficient, is very "chatty" (or am I confusing it with NetBEUI?), seems to more-or-less belong to Microsoft, and as far as I know, there is no equivalent to SSL support in NetBIOS short of making everyone run over IPSec. IPP and WebDAV (at least via mod_dav, which is the only one I've so far personally tried) works great on my Linux boxen. I'm curious whether, in others' experience, MS's support for IPP and WebDAV are sufficiently standard (or can be MADE so) as to allow file sharing and printing to be entirely migrated to those and eliminate netbios entirely without causing undue grief for the current MS Windows users on the network...

      Then people would have no reason to worry if/when Microsoft's NetBios "submarine patents" come out...

      --
      Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
    4. Re:Hmmm by Anonymous+Crowhead · · Score: 1

      without causing undue grief for the current MS Windows users on the network...

      That is the problem to which there is no currently no answer. Slashdot may be a soapbox for OSS and linux fanatics, but the plain fact is that windows owns the corporate and home desktop and that is not going to change anytime soon. No amount of smartypants posts is going to change that. When you ask hard questions, you get few answers. When you ask why do you still use windows you get 3200 posts.

      I use linux 99% of the time at both work and home, but I see no solution on the horizon that is going to change the fact that if you are not a developer/coder/hobbiest that develops/codes/hobbies in a unix environment, windows is the OS of choice. The CEO and office mananger don't want options. They want familiarity. The CEO and office manager don't stress about viruses or getting hacked. They leave that to IT. The kids - they want games. The non-technical adults - they don't know shit from shinola. That's it, the world we live in.

    5. Re:Hmmm by Dr.Dubious+DDQ · · Score: 1

      All true, of course. The only real solution I can see to either uselessly demanding everyone dump all-things-Microsoft (which, I have to admit, would give me pleasure, but just plain isn't going to happen in the real world like that)...or to carefully and quietly migrate away, piece by piece, until it's all been replaced and nobody's noticed (except perhaps they may wonder why they've been getting fewer viruses and crashes lately).

      Here's an example that I'm actively plotting to try - I want to get a "Windows Terminal Server" machine installed at a small office, to "standardize" the configuration, hopefully make keeping things patched and scanned a bit easier, and so on - all perfectly legitimate goals even in a "pure Windows" environment. Then, I plan to set up a couple of Linux boxen running rdesktop that can be used to log into the Windows Terminal server...shouldn't cause any problems for the users at all, but that makes for a few less Windows boxes running around the office.

      If it works well, I can start adding additional features to the Linux side of the terminals. If I can manage to address legitimate end-user needs with those features, the Windows Terminal sessions will start getting less use.

      If I can manage to keep that progress up, and Microsoft continues to be more interested in controlling their users than in addressing the user's actual needs and wants, eventually we'll have migrated away from Microsoft entirely, without me ever having to FORCE anyone - in fact in that case the end-users would probably be feeling more like it was THEIR idea, since the process was driven by what they wanted to accomplish.

      Of course, if Microsoft ever manages to wake up and take down the metaphorical "Berlin Wall" they've built into their systems to stop their users from escaping, and they start playing better with others, the process will reach equilibrium while there is still Microsoft stuff in use, but if this actually happened, I would have a lot less reason to try to convince people to move away from the platform (are you listening, Microsoft????)

      --
      Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
    6. Re:Hmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it can help, win4lin of Nettraverse let you to install Win9x on Linux for example. I use it for those programs that do not work yet under Wine or CodeWeaver (or I had not yet the time to test it). It let me to use my old Win9x licences, while migrating to Linux desktop (for now 50%, and only half with Win4Lin). You can install it on a server and use it (the server version of course) throug a X terminal session (even redirected by ssh).

      It also exist VMWare, that let you install W2k or XP in a virtual machine.

      John

  6. It's a moving target. by Feztaa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Immitating microsoft is mostly pointless because it's a moving target; you'll always be playing catch up, and as soon as you've perfectly copied them, they'll release a new version that breaks everything and then you've got more copying to do. It's really wasted effort and I hate to see good programming talent used for such futile efforts.

    Just make the existing stuff better, don't worry about immitating microsoft, be innovative in your own right, and slowly migrate all your stuff away from windows.

    1. Re:It's a moving target. by Dr.Dubious+DDQ · · Score: 1

      Actually, I agree for the most part. Everywhere that I have COMPLETE control of the network environment -e.g. my own home - Microsoft have been long since entirely-migrated-from.

      It seems a majority of people don't have this option, realistically, at their jobs, or perhaps at their schools. Wholesale ripping-out-and-replacing Microsoft-brand clients and servers isn't normally feasible, so the choice is either just sit and put up with it, or - my preference - find ways to replace the Microsoft-brand stuff bit by bit, without causing disruptions that are going to tick people off and make them hostile to further changes...

      You're right about the moving-target problem, but if one can catch up just long enough to keep things working smoothly during migration away from the encumbered Microsoft-brand client and/or server, it may be worth it.

      --
      Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
    2. Re:It's a moving target. by cerberusss · · Score: 1
      Immitating microsoft is mostly pointless because it's a moving target

      Jeremy White seems to disagree. And if it wasn't for Wine and Codeweavers, I would still be damning OOo for every freaking glitch in their not-so-flawless MS Office in/export filters.

      When you live in the corporate world, you can't "slowly migrate away from windows", as you put it. You just have to blend in with the Windows-using lot. And hope they don't spot you, too -- because I have had a number of clueless sysadmins telling me that "Linux breaks the network" when I was the only one who just keeps on working when the zillionth worm hits.

      --
      8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
  7. Database choice by Saanvik · · Score: 3, Informative

    While MySQL is an okay database, it's not a drop-in replacement for MS*SQL.

    If you want to go for a closer one, try PostgreSQL. It's much more feature rich and stable than MySQL.

    Of course, the best bet is Oracle which runs great on Linux.

    1. Re:Database choice by Dr.Dubious+DDQ · · Score: 1

      In regards to the database, I wasn't wondering specifically in the context of developing my own applications, necessarily, where I can choose whatever database backed I want, though. Oracle is obviously(?) not, literally, a drop-in replacement for MS-SQL either, since it uses a different interface entirely as far as I can tell (although many MS-SQL-using software systems have the ability to choose to use Oracle INSTEAD, but it has to be specifically configured differently for it). Good point though - where Oracle is an option as a backend, it certainly ought to drop in onto a non-MS platform and the MS-based client shouldn't even know the difference, other than potentially improved performance.

      Do you know which features or functionality are commonly required by MS-SQL-using software that MySQL doesn't offer or which MySQL's implementation isn't compatible with (and might they be accepted as feature requests by MySQL AB as additions to "MS-SQL Compatibility Mode" for 4.1 or 5.0?)

      Have you found that a software package which officially calls for MS-SQL through ODBC will usually run fine with PostgreSQL via ITS ODBC driver instead?

      --
      Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
    2. Re:Database choice by Stinking+Pig · · Score: 1

      I'll second the vote for PostgreSQL over MySQL, great database. However, working with Oracle always reminds me of that time when I was a kid and shut the car door on my foot. Oracle, whether on Solaris or Linux, is an unpleasant beast to work with. I assume things are better if one has gone through the full training course and become a certified professional fulltime Oracle DBA... but I wouldn't recommend Oracle to the IT shop where someone gets handed a CD and told "make this work".

      One other thing to consider is the optimization of SQL. MS-SQL is very forgiving of nested iterative loops which will send other databases into the mosh pit. I've seen the same query on the same data on the same hardware combination take 5 minutes on MS-SQL2K/W2K, 90 minutes on Oracle 9/RHEL3, and over 18 hours on PostgreSQL 7.3.4/RHEL3. I ended up killing the transaction on PG, obviously. Dates are handled quite differently between the three platforms as well. The app will need to be rewritten to handle a new database backend, that's all there is to it. On the good side, the application I was testing was just as fast on a tuned PostgreSQL install as it was on an un-tuned MS-SQL2K install. Oracle lagged terribly, probably because I didn't know how to tune it.

      --
      "Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll
    3. Re:Database choice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have you found that a software package which officially calls for MS-SQL through ODBC will usually run fine with PostgreSQL via ITS ODBC driver instead?

      This is a good suggestion! I will try it

      Maybe in asking developper to more user JAVA or the C++ libraries of Trolltech - QT has a Database independent compnent www.trolltech.com - it will be easier to switch from one database to another AND to have a one source-multiplatform program.

      John

  8. BeOS tried and got squashed by Gary+Destruction · · Score: 3, Insightful

    BeOS was an awesome OS, but Microsoft wasn't so eager to welcome it. BeOS is the victim of what other OS's suffer from and that's OEM licensing. Microsoft classifies it as a "trade secret". But in reality, it says that if you want Windows pre-installed, you can't provide the option to boot to a non-Microsoft partition. Scott Hacker wrote an article that details this licensing and it's impact on BeOS. He who controls the boot loader

    The problem with immitating Microsoft is it can result in a Microsoft-oriented world without Microsoft. Look at Mozilla's XPI installer. It's not much safer than ActiveX because the amount of power it has. And no one wants to sign XPI packages. Even if they did, signatures could be spoofed. The more you try to immitate Microsoft, the more likely you are to make the same mistakes they've made.

    1. Re:BeOS tried and got squashed by yuri+benjamin · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The interesting thing about the bootloader article you linked, is that Gassée, the guy from BeOS, was virtually ignored by David Boies when Gassée tried to get the bootloader issue addressed in the antitrust trial where Boies represented the DoJ. Boies is now the samelawyer working against the free world representing Microsoft's proxy, SCO. Interesting.

      --
      You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
    2. Re:BeOS tried and got squashed by Gary+Destruction · · Score: 1

      Boies wasn't all that up to par on computers, either. That made the trial rather lopsided considering the legal help Microsoft had on top of being a software company.

      As far as Boies representing SCO, I'm wondering if it had to do with President Bush opposing the anti-trust trial. I think it would be interesting to see what the President's view on open source is (assuming he has one). It's possible that Boies changed sides when the Presidency changed parties.

  9. Microsoft Services for Linux by man_ls · · Score: 1

    Maybe MS could make an interesting addition to their market...by selling Active Directory connectors for Linux.

    1. Re:Microsoft Services for Linux by Wicked187 · · Score: 1

      Already done. It is called Microsoft Services for Unix, and it works for Linux...

      --
      Politics, Life, and More on my Aspiring for the Future
  10. For MS Office users switch to Crossover by rovitotv · · Score: 1

    I have been using Crossover Office from http://codeweavers.com/ for all MS-Office work. My personal word processing is done in Latex but if a stupid person gives me an MS Document I am ready with Crossover. When ever I make a presentation I do use Powerpoint. Easy to install and well worth the money.

  11. MacOSX/XServe by iamacat · · Score: 1

    make a serious effort to be compatible/interoperable with windows, while not being "suck for suck" compatible. On the server side, you can share files and printers, and with some tweaks XServe can actually be a Windows domain server. On the client side, Microsoft office and many other commercial apps run better then their Windows counterparts.

    Yes you will spend some money, but far less than what ulcer medication and counceling sessions you will need after dealing with various unwanted lifeforms that invade your windows boxes.