Are Widespread 'Microsoft-alike' Replacements Feasible?

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?"

Comments

I hope so!

[bscott]

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!

Re:obvious?

[Planesdragon]

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.)

Re:BeOS tried and got squashed

[yuri benjamin]

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.