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Microsoft to Stop Releasing Services for Unix

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the end-of-the-road dept.

lilrowdy18 writes "According to a recent article, Microsoft will stop releasing any new versions of Services for Unix. SFU 3.5 will continue to be supported until 2011 and will have extended support until 2014. From what the article hints at, Microsoft wants Unix interoperability integrated into the OS. Microsoft says that this integration couldn't be done with past architectures."

24 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. Microsoft's answer to UNIX by It+doesn't+come+easy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Embrace and extend! UNIX is doomed! Mwahahahahaha!

    --
    The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
    1. Re:Microsoft's answer to UNIX by dubious9 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Just goes to show ya, the old koan is finally coming true.

      Given enough time and money, eventually Microsoft will re-invent Unix

      --
      Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
  2. BSD isn't dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Microsoft are moving to it as well as Apple!

  3. Integrated by n9uxu8 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Imagine...what a novel concept...the ability to interact with a Unix system...they should patent that!

    Dave

    1. Re:Integrated by It+doesn't+come+easy · · Score: 5, Funny

      No no no...not interact...Microsoft plans to integrate UNIX into Window's code base. In the next five years, they will swap more and more Windows code for UNIX code. Eventually, there will be more UNIX code than legacy Windows code. At which point Microsoft will 1) claim ownership of UNIX, 2) begin to release Windows only UNIX code so you have to run Windows to get the "full experience of UNIX", and 3) hire analysts to compare the TCO of Windows vs. other UNIX systems.

      It's about time UNIX benefitted from Microsoft's years of marketing experience...

      --
      The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
    2. Re:Integrated by Tony+Hoyle · · Score: 4, Informative

      If 'ls -l' is doing a lookup for each line then your nscd is not running or broken.

      All user information (and host) on Unix is cached - and the cache is *not* a linear lookup.

      Username/PAM lookup is *not* linear. If I call getpwnam for example it goes to pam -> active directory -> username lookup. There's no searching involved.

    3. Re:Integrated by HairyCanary · · Score: 5, Informative

      I have a gaggle of Solaris boxes that authenticate to LDAP (which AD is) and I do not see any appreciable delay due to the username lookups. And yes, our LDAP directory has thousands upon thousands of users.

    4. Re:Integrated by Dolda2000 · · Score: 5, Informative
      I don't know what Unix system you use, but on my GNU/Linux system (which uses the same APIs), based on GNU libc, the get*ent APIs are implemented using nameswitch modules, which can do lookups in LDAP, NIS, /etc/passwd, /etc/passwd.db, a MySQL database, or anything else. And indeed, it will be on the complexity order of whatever that algorithm chooses -- it's not a flat search.

      I will agree that there are a lot of things that should be done with the Unix "directory services", but not that which you describe. The greatest problem is that Unix still uses numeric UIDs, whereas it should be using symbolic UIDs (such as Kerberos principles).

  4. SFU was only good for one thing by DrXym · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Free NFS. Other than that it was a pigs ear. It was just various Unix bits and pieces slapped together and massively intrusive to install, requiring reboots and services to be running all the time. I tried it for a bit, noticed the huge slowdown in startup times, the poor Unix environment which was next useless and uninstalled it. Cygwin is miles better.


    And if you really need a real Unix / Linux on XP then colinux can provide it running at near-native performance.

    1. Re:SFU was only good for one thing by aggieben · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I tried it for a bit, noticed the huge slowdown in startup times, the poor Unix environment which was next useless and uninstalled it. Cygwin is miles better.

      What are you even talking about? What startup times? A poor Unix environment next to useless? Cygwin is better how?

      What this sounds like to me is a person realizing that he's not familiar with SFU (read: BSD), says it sucks, and retreats to the nice, warm, Cygwin (read: Linux) blanky and sticks his thumb in his mouth.

      SFU is a much cleaner implementation that Cygwin, and it sits directly on top of the NT kernel rather than bringing its own layer of abstraction to the party. This makes SFU perform much better than Cygwin. Also, pkgsrc has support for SFU, which means that SFU has a proper package management system and Cygwin does not.

      The *only* thing lacking from SFU is a POSIX-compatible mapping from the X11 api to the DirectX api. Cygwin has this, to its credit. Everything else about SFU is superior.

      --
      Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
  5. The full story by mparaz · · Score: 5, Informative

    The eWeek article is just a summary. The full story is here.

  6. I love SFU 3.5! by georgeha · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I support a Solaris based printer, and with SFU 3.5 I can make the customer's Windows server host the jobs, and make them responsible for the NFS server, while all I have to do is add one line to vfstab. This is one good thing Microsoft has done (and Slashdot, I first read of them freeing it here).

  7. Reimplementing unix, poorly? by MarkEst1973 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    What's the old koan of wisdom?

    Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.

  8. Heard that Before by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hmmm, when Windows NT was still new, there were great plans to implement not only the win32 API, but also the DOS and win16 APIs, and even POSIX! All of these were implemented to some extent, but the POSIX personality never reached a state where it was really usable.

    Knowing that, and knowing all the announcements that Microsoft has been making about great new features that were going to be in Longhorn, and the subsequent withdrawal of nearly all of those features, I find it hard to believe that Microsoft will be providing POSIX compliance in Windows.

    Of course, there's always Cygwin. And BTW, what came of CoLinux?

    --
    Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
    1. Re:Heard that Before by Spiked_Three · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I don't know about now, but at the time Microsofot did the POSIX implementation it wasn't so much that MS version of it was useless, it was more that the spec itself was useless. It did not have things like printing and network access, so in all reality not one single useful application in the world could say it was POSIX compliant.

      I know, I worked for Microsoft Federal at the time. The only reason POSIX compliance was ever mentioned by a customer was to keep Microsoft out of a bid. So we put in POSIX. No one ever userd it or intended to use it, but it shut up the excuse to not buy Windows in the federal marketplace.
      Maybe POSIX is something more today. If it's not I can certainly see why Microsoft would drop it.
      Services for Linux on the other hand is useful and used in quite a number of places, and Microsoft might as well throw it in there, if nothing else just to make it easier to install. I can't see where the overhead is significant if it isnt being used.

      --
      slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
  9. Perhaps they should change the name now, too? by Shoten · · Score: 5, Funny

    Instead of Microsoft SFU, perhaps it would be better known as Microsoft STFU?

    --

    For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
  10. New kernel by marcantonio · · Score: 4, Funny

    Microsoft says that this integration couldn't be done with past architectures.

    Because, unbeknownced to the world, Microsoft is using a BSD kernel in Vista.

    Use Cygwin.

  11. Windows POSIX implementation by nickos · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "the POSIX personality never reached a state where it was really usable"

    Wasn't this needed in order for Windows to be used by certain US governmental agencies that stipulated that all OSs they used must have POSIX compliance. If I'm right in thinking that they must have been accredited with being POSIX compliant from someone so it can't have been all that bad...

    You're right that Cygwin's the way to go though. I'm hoping that one day Microsoft will resurrect Xenix and port the Win32 API to it ;)

    1. Re:Windows POSIX implementation by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Ironically, WinNT was the first OS to have POSIX compliance. MS was the first company to bother with the cerification. The UNIX companies saw the fact that they were POSIX as blatantly obvious, and didn't both initially. They came around when they saw they were losing "POSIX" contracts to WinNT.

      Originally, WinNT was a Microkernel, with OS2 and POSIX support. Both of the latter were bare minimums, to satisfy contractual obligations (IBM and OS/2) or checklists for new contracts (POSIX). Neither worked well. As tiem went on, more and more things ended up in the kernel (graphics, apps and servers) it would be hard to call it a microkernel anymore, more like some kind of hybrid.

    2. Re:Windows POSIX implementation by sconeu · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually, the Santa Cruz Operation became Tarantella, which was recently bought by Sun.

      The current entity calling themselves "The SCO Group" is what used to be called Caldera. They bought *something* from Santa Cruz (definitely their Operating Systems Division) and some sort of assets (but they can't produce the purchase agreement), and changed their name from Caldera to SCO. Allegedly this was for name recognition/branding, but apparently was really to sow confusion for their lawsuits.

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  12. Holy Confusion Batman by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ``I don't know about now, but at the time Microsofot did the POSIX implementation it wasn't so much that MS version of it was useless, it was more that the spec itself was useless. It did not have things like printing and network access, so in all reality not one single useful application in the world could say it was POSIX compliant.''

    Wow, slow down for a bit. You're saying three different things here and presenting them as a single argument.

    First, your argument that POSIX is useless. Certainly, POSIX does not standardize everything under the sun. That wouldn't be possible, and it wouldn't be a good idea either. That doesn't make it "useless". It standardizes the interface to a lot of system functionality, from basic file I/O to sockets, threads and shared memory. This facilitates porting of applications between conformant systems - for many applications, the core functionality would not need to be rewritten for a new system. POSIX-compliance is what causes most open-source software to quickly spread to all alternative operating systems, whereas it takes a long time to get ported to Windows.

    Then, the point about the Microsoft POSIX implementation being useless. Last I read about it, it said that the POSIX personality and the win32 personality were basically completely isolated from one another. POSIX process ids are separate from win32 process ids, POSIX processes cannot start win32 processes, and communication between the two types of processes is difficult. In addition, large parts of POSIX were unimplemented, which means that many POSIX apps simply wouldn't work on NT.

    And then the claim that no single application in the world can claim to be POSIX-compliant. Well, just because not everything in an application is also specified in POSIX doesn't make it not POSIX compliant. As long as everything that is in POSIX is also done the POSIX way in the application, it can be called POSIX-compliant. And for the record, there are hordes of applications that are purely POSIX; basically any Unix command-line program or daemon is a good candidate.

    Finally, an interesting bit of knowledge: although POSIX is typically associated with Unix-like systems, there are other systems that are POSIX-compliant, too. IBM's MVS and VMS are two examples.

    --
    Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
  13. fork() and pipe() by squarooticus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As a mostly-Linux developer who has done his share of Linux->Windows porting, the lack of fork() and pipe() are easily the most irritating aspects of programming for Windows.

    Oftentimes in security code, you want to know which process is speaking to you on the other end of a pipe. Under Linux, this is very easy. Under Windows, it is a huge bear, not the least reason for which is that Windows lacks the concept of a named pipe, so you have to make something up based on shared memory or some other such garbage.

    And fork()... well, as anyone who has written a fork()-based program (i.e., one that doesn't just exec() right after forking) knows, this entirely changes the structure of the application. Yukk.

    Last I head, pipe() and fork() are both POSIX, so I hope these system calls appear when Microsoft takes the plunge and replaces their crappy kernel and API with something closer to UNIX. Given how long UNIX has been around and how much important software exists for it and is being developed daily (mostly on Linux and MacOS these days), I can't wait until we can finally declare system API "victory" and move the fight to something that causes much less irritation for developers.

    --
    [ home ]
  14. Many a true word spoken in jest. by carldot67 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Bill Gates' SWOT ANALYSIS:
    Strengths:
      1. Marketing == Massive propaganda machine.
      2. Proprietary == Huge market penetration.
      3. Rich applications == User lock-in.

    Weaknesses:
      1. Bloated and frankly god-awful code-base
      2. Expensive to maintain, insecure etc
      3. Cant really afford to start from scratch
      4. Cant steal Linux due to GPL

    Opportunities:
      1. Use BSD
      2. Convert some UNIX/Linux/BSD sites
      3. Remove some barriers to entry at UNIX shops

    Threats:
      1. Linux
      2. IBM
      3. Open Sourcerors

    The logical BUSINESS APPROACH is this:
      1. Grab BSD.
      2. Break the interfaces.
      3. Call it "WinBSD".
      4. Creat compatibility layer: "WinBSD-API"
      5. Patent "WinBSD-API" so you now own WinBSD
      6. Trivial porting exercise
      7. Brand it like youve never branded before

    What does this give you?
      -It gives you something that looks like Windows and works like Windows, but is better than it.
      -It leaves you with all your existing apps and protocols still working at minimal update cost.
      -It means your customers expensively bought/developed apps will still work.
      -It give UNIX shops one less reason to reject windows as a solution.
      -It locks out OS/3rd party developers due to the broken (and patented) WinBSD interface.
      -It offloads a large amount of knackered code.

    Now add all this up and it gives MS EXACTLY what they have always strived for: Continuing user lock-in to the Windows monopoly while maintaining a very painful barrier to anyone else who wants to write for the platform.

    Disclaimer: I am not an OS guru so there will be some technical issues with my analysis. Im just looking at it from a business point of view.

    --
    I wish at was Friday, but I dont want to wish my life away. So I wish it was last Friday.
  15. Never understood the name by vijayiyer · · Score: 4, Informative

    Shouldn't it have been called Unix Services for Windows? In another example of MS marketing spin, they act as if SFU somehow does something for Unix, when it instead adds basic functionality to Windows. I used SFU for about 1 month. I still was so frustrated doing Fortran development under Windows that I wiped the drive and installed Linux.