Microsoft Rep To Keynote Unix Conference

An anonymous reader writes "According to ZDNET Microsoft is going to be keynoting the Australian Unix and Open Systems Users Group conference. From the article: '"Don't be put off by Chris' Microsoft badge -- he is actually a long time Unix hacker," the user group said today in a statement updating users on presentations at the conference ... Green, Microsoft's local Unix Interoperability and High Performance Computing specialist, will update the conference on his company's "Unix and open source-related activities, including their efforts to provide a POSIX environment in Windows, and to integrate Windows and Unix systems."'"

Comments

Stigma

[Namronorman]

Maybe this will help relieve the stigma people have about a lot of MS employees that are well known. Not every person there is a microsoft recording.

I call bull hockey!

[yagu]

From the slashdot article:

will update the conference on his company's 'Unix and open source-related activities, including their efforts to provide a POSIX environment in Windows, and to integrate Windows and Unix systems.'

I call bullhockey on this. A lot of slashdotters probably aren't even old enough to remember when Microsoft first came out with NT. Their PR releases were all abuzz with their new advanced technology OS with special emphasis on their intent to have a POSIX compliant OS. At the same time they talked me into working for them (took three offers, a signing bonus, and a pretty nice stock option offer), under the ostensible work they'd have for me to provide support for their POSIX subsystem.

Once I was in the door, and within the first week I attended what was described as a "presentation on NT's POSIX subsystem", presented by the POSIX team. That team turned out to be a guy named Matt (don't know his last name).

The project manager Margaret (don't remember HER last name) got up before the presentation and said (and I can only paraphrase, I don't remember verbatim, but guarantee the accuracy of the spirit of her comments): "Before we proceed with this presentation, there's one thing I (Microsoft) want to make clear. The POSIX subsystem is a check box. We're only doing it to fulfill the requirement to have POSIX so we can get government contracts."

I was almost physically ill, what was to be MY role (my background was Unix) if their POSIX was to be a sham? (BTW, not only did they not intend to support it, they only implemented the API portion of POSIX, not the user environment and utilities.)

I called Larry Kroger who was in charge of things and desparately asked him what I was supposed to tell people who were asking POSIX support questions. He told me, "tell them we don't support it.". What if they ask about future plans for POSIX? He replied, "tell them we have no plans.".

Forgive me if have doubts about Microsoft's purity in "plans" today to do POSIX.

Oh, and for the record, anyone who doubts my accounts... the entire presentation was videotaped (1992), as were all of their internal presentations. I only assume it would still be available today but if it is, it will reflect my accounting of events.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[SuperDuG]

Bullhockey indeed. I too was brought in to start the design specifications and class role functions. I remember that meeting, HER name was Ororo Munroe and man did she have one hell of a stormy attitude. I didn't get three seperate offers, but I did manage to get a stock offer along with what at the time was a pretty decent salary.

They did video tape the presentation and it has been added to the microsoft underground archives at 1407 Graymalkin Lane. So much has been put away there, ideas that were deemed to "risky" but never allowed their creators to have because of non-compete and non-disclosure agreements. I remember my lawyer spent almost 8 hours going over my NDA and NCA before he even new what all I was agreeing to.

The POSIX design was needed for the certain government contracts, but don't forget the way that we managed to get the CMMI Level 5 before we even had a released product. The one thing that bothered me more than anything was the conversation they had 3 after the one you mentioned..

After getting the entire crew on board with the design specs and milestone timeline the NT CTO Erik Lehnsherr called a meeting of the respective heads. The delimna was the actual networking protocol, at the time there was NetBios, AppleTalk, and TCP/IP and they all pretty much sucked. We had some code from meeting the IEEE standards for IPv4, but the implementation was beyond ugly.

We ended up actually "borrowing" a lot of the code from FreeBSD. So I guess while the filesystem, operating structure, standard binary compliance, and pretty much everything else, NT did have POSIX compliance.

Did you ever work with Henry McCoy while he was there?

Re:I call bull hockey!

[hkb]

Welcome to 1995. I guess you didn't hear that Microsoft bought OpenNT (later known as Interix) back in the mid-1990s and created a product called "Services For UNIX" out of it, and that this component is free, mature and gives you virtually a full UNIX-like environment. So, it's not "in the works", it's already out there. However, it will soon be included in Windows by default, which is what these marketdroids are essentially saying.

That Microsoft created the original POSIX subsystem for government compliance is NO secret at all, as it's been openly "admitted" at several official MS events throughout history. It was basically a stupid little feature thrown in to meet a stupid little government requirement thrown in by some UNIX zealots to try and keep UNIX around.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[Halfbaked Plan]

Actually, as a registered owner of two copies of Softway System's Interix, and one copy of the crippled subset of it that Microsoft released after purchasing it, and further an observer of the further crippled version they now call Services for Unix, I call bullshit on you.

Microsoft bought Softway Systems to keep it a limited phenomenon, and to make sure it shrunk in power, didn't grow. They probably had Softway Systems by the balls in the first place, of course, because in order to get access to the trade secrets to integrate a powerful POSIX api with the NT kernel, they probably signed mega-NDA contracts.

I do remember that there was a period before Microsoft purchased Softway Systems when Softway was sending out appeals to the Open Source Community asking if Interix should be 'open sourced.' Not sure if that was a sham appeal or not.

But 'Services For Unix' is not _For_ Unix. It's for defending against Unix.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[Anonymous Coward]

You are ABSOLUTELY DEAD ON with your observations. We discovered Interix, and had very high hopes for using it, and even were in contact with its engineers about their product, how we liked it, how we wanted it to grow, etc. But they were living in constant fear of their lives. You are right, they had to do heavy duty NDA, and then when it came time to renew licensing Microsoft turned the screws essentially squeezing them out, then buying them. Forget growing THAT market... the last thing Microsoft wanted happening was people being able to have multiple accesses from remote Xwindows stations to ONE Windows box! I hated what Microsoft did for that!

As for Unix Services... it is the most convoluted and nightmarish suite to install. And it's (at least not yet) free... I typically run Home Edition cuz I don't think the extra $100 is worth it just to have IIS (I run apache). And you have to have PRO XP to install Unix Services. Yeah, Microsoft know exactly what they're doing.

Posting anonymously.... -yagu

Re:I call bull hockey!

[bani]

they hired him promising him one thing, then reneging.

of course, it's simply par for the course for microsoft. speaks volumes about their lack of ethics.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[Halfbaked Plan]

I posted my observations about direct before- and after-Microsoft experience with Interix. Yes, I bought 'Microsoft Interix' after the Microsoft purchase thinking it MIGHT be the same thing as Softway's Product.

It wasn't. With Softway Interix it was easy to install various services that made it trivial to install services to telnet into NT and run a command prompt, with programs like vi and other common Unix shell-based tools. The vi editor mysteriously disappeared in Microsoft Interix, becoming an awkward binary you could at considerable effort locate, download, and install. With Pre-Microsoft Interix you basically had a complete and fairly robust POSIX shell to log into on your NT box.

Stating at the end of your comment what Microsoft re-purposed Interix to be for is a distraction from what Interix was before the Microsoft acquistion. Be honest and admit Microsoft's strategy was to castrate the product.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[hkb]

Anyone's NFS (yes, even Sun's) is so badly broken that I may not mention it. NFS itself is a kludgey pile of dung.

Predictions

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

MS resurrects XENIX

Re:Predictions

[Tackhead]

> MS resurrects XENIX

...transfers license to SCO in exchange for a 25% interest in the company, and it's 1987 all over again!

Re:Yeah it's odd

[MightyMartian]

Experience thus far indicates that whatever the Unix guy might have been before he walked into Redmond, when he comes out, he's just a marketing shill whose purpose is to say nothing of any substance with as many words as possible.

Microsoft to lecture us on unix?

[pmike_bauer]

Isn't that sort of like asking Ms. Hilton to address MENSA?

Re:Microsoft to lecture us on unix?

[pmike_bauer]

Please mod me down; I regret posting this on several levels.

Obviously

[ryanw]

Can't beat em, join em, then beat em.

First suggestion for Windows interoperability

[Spy der Mann]

Support reiserFS and ext2 / ext3 file systems in windows!

Thank you.

Re:First suggestion for Windows interoperability

[Anonymous Coward]

If microsoft would actually give anyone sufficient information about NTFS to write good support for it, it would be written.

In othe news,

[Hershmire]

we were never at war with Eastasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia.

Sounds familiar

[Sponge Bath]

Don't be put off by Darths' black helmet -- he is actually a long time Jedi night

Strange Days

[FishandChips]

Looking forward to the next Washington State Unix and Open Systems Users Group which will be keynoted by Dame Edna Everidge (mistakenly hired by Microsoft as an f/oss advocate after Eric S. Raymond turned down the job offer).

Hey, maybe they do things differently down under. Take folks as you find them. Whoever this guy is, he could well have some very interesting and useful things to say. Claiming that the guy couldn't have anything worthwhile to say because he works for Microsoft is pretty dumb as well as rude to the local Australian group.

Re:Strange Days

[iggymanz]

Some of us have been listening to Microsoft say dumb and rude things about Unix and Linux for over 7 years; after a bellyfull of their slander and FUD and lies and "unbiased studies" conducted by paid stool pigeons, all the while causing businesses to lose billions due to poor security and blue screens of death, we're supposed to treat their new mouthpiece with dignity and respect?

Great opportunity!

[Locke2005]

All I need to do is secure the rotten tomato concession outside that conference, and I'll be rich beyond my wildest dreams! Oh wait... it's in Australia... never mind.

POSIX?

[shareme]

Would that be the same POSIX that they thought TSCO Group had IP lciense to when in fact Novel was the actual IP owener? I think MS should get their IP story straight before showing up at Unix conferences..

Re:doesn't matter what he DID before, he works for

[ebuck]

Quotes the parent poster, "Why on earth would anybody let an MSFT badge keynote a *nix conference is beyond me..."

I imagine it's the Krusty the Klown defense on why one must sell out:

Sobs for a few breaths then exclaims in anguish, "They parked a dumptruck full of cash on my front yard! What else could I do!?!?!?" More emphatic sobbing.

READ THIS BEFORE MODERATING PARENT!!!

[GameMaster]

Every name listed in the parent is the name of a person from the X-Men comics.

Ororo Munroe = Storm
Erik Lehnsherr = Magneto
Henry McCoy = Beast

1407 Graymalkin Lane is the fictional address of Professor Xavier's mansion.

The parent post is a troll.

-GameMaster

Re:READ THIS BEFORE MODERATING PARENT!!!

[justins]

You just know that anyone brought in to work on POSIX compatibility has got some problems. Being an X-Men freak is probably just the beginning...

Pfft

[vcv]

Yeah, Like Microsoft would ever offer anything POSIX compliant (coughSFUcough), like Linux does across the whole system (coughpthreadscough).

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[cortana]

You can use ext2fsd to read from and write to ext2 partitions. It can handle ext3 in read-only mode.

Hell

[CDPatten]

has frozen over.

In other news; next week Steve Jobs will be announcing an XPod video player for the Xbox 360.

Here you go (sort of)

[ag-gvts-inc]

http://www.fs-driver.org/
http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/ext2ifs.htm
http://ext2fsd.sourceforge.net/
http://freesourcecodes.tripod.com/ext2.htm
http://p-nand-q.com/e/reiserfs.html
http://www.wolfsheep.com/map/#RFSGUI
http://www.it.fht-esslingen.de/~zimmerma/software/ ltools.html

The above links were all gathered from http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/ext2ifs.htm I've not tried any of them, but this one looks the most polished. YMMV, knock yourself out, etc.

Re:Here you go (sort of)

[mixmasterjake]

I used Ext2FS Anywhere by Paragon a while back on a dual-boot machine. The Linux partition just shows up like a regular drive in windows explorer. I paid the $29 or whatever for it. Used it that one time, then never again. They also make Mount Everything which does the same thing plus more stuff.

Long-time Unix Hacker...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny they say that because I went to Microsoft career talks at my university (York University in Toronto) and every time a (different guy) came in and the first thing they said was:

  "... I was unix hacker for a long time before I decided Microsoft's the way to go ..."

Re:Long-time Unix Hacker...

[cgenman]

On the one hand, I can see the appeal of Microsoft's development ideology: Make it big, cheap, slow, and usable by idiots. Sadly, though, it tends to be used by idiots. And why would you pay an idiot 80 dollars an hour to setup your mail server and another 200 dollars every two weeks to reboot it, when you can pay someone competent to set it up once and have it run consistently indefinitely?

It's possible that everyone there was a unix geek. If they've been around long enough, that's really the only option. But the fact that they're doing recruiting at a university instead of coding should tell you something about who they are. I leave the ramifications of that as an exercise to the reader.

Re:Long-time Unix Hacker...

[1u3hr]

Simply put, that makes no sense. Why decide such an insecure, unstalbe OS is better than the stable, more secure OS that started it all?

They didn't say Unix was "better" than Windows -- but that working for MS was better than working in Unix. Which is likely true for them and many others. Lots of people spend their days working on useless crap, because that's what you get paid to do. The product isn't really that important, it's your quality of life, at the office and what you can buy with the paycheque.

Re:Long-time Unix Hacker...

[NickFortune]

It's a persuasion technique called "pacing".

It works on the principle that if he introduces himself as a MS guy, the Linux faithful will think "This man works for The Enemy" and disregard everything he says.

On the other hand, if he stands there and says "I was a UNIX hacker..." then folk start thinking "one of us! Let's hear what he has to say..." instead of keeping keeping firmly in mind that A) he's still employed by the Enemy B) would not have been sent except to evangelise and C) probably had his speech written by marketdroids at Redmond.

You can see the same approach at work in a couple of dozen Slashdot posts every time there is a Linux thread: "I used Linux for years until I finally realised..." "Much as I love Linux, I have to say..." "I use Linux on all my home machines, but in the real world..."

It's just another scummy marketing trick. That's all.

BS ... and freedom matters

[argoff]

The first way to tell that this is BS is to see if Microsoft is willing to guarantee Linux won't be sued for software patent infringement like IBM did. The fact is they won't and they don't want to. The deal here is that Microsoft has figured out that they can't beat Linux head on in the marketplace, so now they are trying to co-opt it. Watch out for the bullshit monster chasing after you and trying to give you a big fat kiss! I'm sure this is just the beginning.

Do not fall for it at all. Free software is inherently better than proprietary software because it is first of all free, and then and only then is it often better for technical or usage reasons. In free markets, freedom maters. None of the fundamentals have changed, you are what you hold yourself accountable to.

Re:BS ... and freedom matters

[Mistshadow2k4]

So this is why most open source apps are exact copies of their Windows counterparts(The UI especially)?

Since when? I use both OS software and Windows, and few of the OS software are exact copies of Windows anything. KDE, for example, is definitely not Explorer. It's not only more stable and far more configurable, it's just plain different. QtParted compared to Partition Magic? QtParted is way better and faster and has a simpler interface. Parition Magic is painfully slow by comaprison. There is no resemblance between K3b and any other cd-burning software I've seen on Windows, and I've had Roxio, NTI, Nero and a couple of others over the years. OpenOffice.org compared to MS Office? They're similar only to the point that they're both office suites; MS Office bears just a smuch resemblance to Corel's office suite. Xmms and Winamp? Again, they're similar because they do the same thing; there's as much resemblance between them as there is between all multimedia players. Well, with the possible exception of Xine, the GUI of which bears little resemblance to anything I've ever seen on Windows. The Gimp compared to Photoshop? I've heard that the Gimp's UI does bear a resemblance to the older versions of PS, but there's certainly little resemblance between them now; I've used both. And how do you compare OS software that there is no counterpart for on Windows except ports? Fluxbox the windows manager is one of these. Before Blackbox was ported to Windows, there was absolutely nothing like it on Windows at all. And what about Vim? And other text editors that bear no resemblance to Notepad or Wordpad whatsoever?

Firefox crashing? Yeah, it does that occasionally. Not even half as much as IE. Again, I've both; I used IE for years and it usually crashed about 3 times on a good day, not to mention all those "page cannot be found" but could easily be found by Opera or any othe browser. Now I'd rather break my finger than use IE. Not to mention that you can turn off software installation in both Mozilla & FF and this helps protect your Windows from spyware and viruses. And both can block popups without needing tird-party software. You can't do either with IE. Give me Firefox or Mozilla any day.

I don't know what universe you're in, but in this one, most OS software are not copies of Windows anything, let alone "exact" copies. If you're going to glorify MS against OSS you should come up with some facts instead of easily-refuted lies like that.

Re:Yeah it's odd

[Wonko]

Don't be put off by the 666 tattooed on his forehead and the left leg

Yeah, it just means his is readable and writable by himself, his group, and others :).

Good sign, don't hold your breath.

[Anonymous Coward]

The best thing microsoft could do for itself is to support unix, keeping in mind the market for their other products.

Windows isn't everything, if they're able to get in with the open source crowd they could design components, get everyone hooked and essentially take over the platform. This would take more than a fiscal quarter, which is probably the only reason they haven't already.

Well, thats what I would do if I were the CEO.

Re:Yeah it's odd

[cide1]

Don't be put off by the 666 tattooed on his forehead and the left leg

Yeah, it just means his is readable and writable by himself, his group, and others :).

Its a good thing he's not executable, or this joke would be killing him.

Bullshit...

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

I unserstand in the real world we are supposed to act all civilized and polite, but I say FUCK THEM, it's too late for MS to play nice. Welcome to the future, enjoy Linux and OSS, and FUCK YOU.

Now excuse me as I go back to finish working, I was using OpenOffice.org (latest beta of v2) and it's wonderfull and I'm carefull to make sure I submit any bugs I find. That's my part.

Troll here often?

[roystgnr]

It was basically a stupid little feature thrown in to meet a stupid little government requirement thrown in by some UNIX zealots to try and keep UNIX around.

No, it was a necessary feature thrown in to allow the government to avoid having to throw away all their software once the operating systems they originally developed on were no longer optimal. Games of "catch the moving API" can be fun and profitable for operating system vendors, but they're not so great for third party developers and users. The idea behind having a portable interface was to allow customers to choose different operating systems based on price, features, and performance. Obviously that's not the kind of market that a vendor can siphon tens of billions of dollars of profit from, however - I'm sure Microsoft much prefers the current situation where customers can choose different operating systems based on price, features, performance, and having to rewrite or replace all their unique applications.

Re:Troll here often?

[hkb]

No, it was a necessary feature thrown in to allow the government to avoid having to throw away all their software once the operating systems they originally developed on were no longer optimal. Games of "catch the moving API" can be fun and profitable for operating system vendors, but they're not so great for third party developers and users

1.) That's funny -- when Microsoft does this, it's called "vendor lock-in".
2.) Microsoft is notorious for backwards compatibility in their APIs. Probably a bit too much, actually.
3.) Microsoft's XENIX was still going strong back then.
4.) Microsoft wasn't a 300lbs gorilla back then, they were the IBM underdogs just over their honeymoon period.

The idea behind having a portable interface was to allow customers to choose different operating systems based on price, features, and performance.

s/different operating systems/UNIX/

The POSIX spec is based off of, and therefore highly prejudice towards UNIX. And since there weren't but a few major versions of UNIX, there wasn't really much choice involved. You picked your OS, and then got locked in via server hardware and maintenance contracts.

Obviously that's not the kind of market that a vendor can siphon tens of billions of dollars of profit from, however - I'm sure Microsoft much prefers the current situation where customers can choose different operating systems based on price, features, performance, and having to rewrite or replace all their unique applications.

Microsoft's monopoly appears to be dwindling, either due to the rise of opponents like Linux, or per the natural cycle of life and death.

What API CAN'T you write for on Windows? We have the shitty POSIX subsystem, SFU, cygwin, win32, .net, qt, gtk, xlib, perl, python, php, java, etc etc etc. So where exactly am I locked in, again?

Re:Troll here often?

[justins]

What API CAN'T you write for on Windows? We have the shitty POSIX subsystem, SFU, cygwin, win32, .net, qt, gtk, xlib, perl, python, php, java, etc etc etc. So where exactly am I locked in, again?

Don't forget, unless you've moved up to a 64-bit architecture, you've still got compatibility with win16 and MS-DOS (for the love of God). Early OS/2.

Anyone who claims that Microsoft doesn't do broad, highly backward-compatible API support is just arguing out of ignorance.

gui interoperability! ssh and X11

[pixel fairy]

remote apps still exist, they are still usefull. including a well done ssh and X11 implementations (preferably based on xfree86 and openssh) would make life soo much easier....

im not talking about full sessions (remote terminal/vnc/nx etc) but apps that blend in with your desktop and those running from other machines. X11 is the already used standard for this.

its like windows is hostile to X11 or something. on a mac (yes, 10.4 on a g4) i can watch a movie in firefox over X11 over ssh and forget its even remote, hell, i can even run blender like that.

but on windows ssh + X11 are hacked on 3rd party kludges...how long will MS pretend ssh doesnt exist? single sign on with ssh and X11 and SMB is like from a windows PDC/KDC only (for you konfused KDE freaks, thats key distribution server, as in kerberos) and still looks like a hack easily ruined by the next upgrade (new to smb, so maybe its my ignorance)

those two would make windows play so much better in a unix network. of course, it would also mean that windows is just playing along, and NOT the needed master so MS would probably not see "value" in it...

David Korn

[gswallow]

I recall a story I heard from someone years back, when MS spoke at a conference of UNIX geeks. A man stood up and criticized MS's POSIX subsystem for Windows NT 4.0, stating that a feature in Korn shell wasn't compatible with true Korn shell. The conversation went something like this:

UNIX geek: Feature X in your korn shell implementation isn't true to the korn shell spec. Wnen do you plan to fix that?

MS guy: We're certain it's copmatible with the standard. Are you sure you don't have it wrong?

UNIX geek: Yes, I'm sure. It's broken.

MS guy: And who are you?

UNIX geek: I'm David Korn.

May or may not be true, but it was an amusing story, nonetheless.

Re:David Korn

[BlueLightning]

It didn't go quite like that, but the basic story is true. Here it is, from the man himself:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/02/06/203020 5

Re:David Korn

[10Ghz]

"Due to Korn shell being one of the more popular shells written for the UNIX Operating System, Microsoft decided to include a version of it produced by Mortice Kern Systems in a UNIX integration package for Windows NT. This version was not compatible with ksh88 (a Korn shell specification), and David Korn mentioned this during a question and answer period of a Microsoft presentation during a USENIX NT conference in Seattle in 1997. Greg Sullivan, a Microsoft product manager who was participating in the presentation, not knowing who the commenter was, insisted that Microsoft had indeed chosen a "real" Korn shell. A polite debate ensued, with Sullivan continuing to insist that the man giving the criticisms was mistaken about the compatibility issues. Sullivan only backed down when an audience member stood up and mentioned that the man making the comments was David Korn."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Korn

Re:Mini-Question about VMWare and Windows

[csirac]

Because VMWare is way too slow.

Have you even used VMWare? Servers are headless. As long as you're not doing anything graphically intensive, VMWare performance is quite acceptable. The GUI is still quite responsive. In fact, browsing, word, etc. activities fool the user into thinking it's running native when in full-screen mode. You honestly can't tell until you go to play a movie or a game (movies still work, mostly).

In fact, using VMWare to manage servers is where VMWare excels.

He said he wanted to use it as a server under a Linux host.

And this, along with running servers under Windows hosts, is a _EXACTLY_ what a large portion of VMWare's core business is, apart from being useful for helpdesk operators. Check out their two most expensive products: "server infrastructure". And not that everyone uses GSX/ESX for "server" work either; I'm not the only one who has found VMWare Workstation edition useful in consolidating windows (and *NIX) servers onto one machine.

Even if Microsoft supported VMWare it would not get any faster due to the way it works.

MS _DOES_ support VMWare. WHQL certified drivers and everything.

If he wanted to use a virtual Windows server, something like Xen is the only choice.

Perhaps you should add a little disclaimer to your comments, something along the lines of "that's what I think, but I don't know because I've never used it, never researched it, and in fact I don't know anything about it all".

See my other post in this thread.

A Mark Of The Beast

[Maljin Jolt]

'Don't be put off by Chris' Microsoft badge -- he is actually a long time Unix hacker,'

May we consider he became a traitor, please?

What its all about

[MagicMerlin]

Microsoft is finally going to be POSIX compliant. This means it will be eaiser to port unix apps to the MS platform. This is a good thing guys, and heres why:

When you are considering deploying Linux in your business, you first need to make sure your entire toolchain is platform independent. You move all your stuff to open source apps which historically have spotty support on windows, and then just swap out the o/s. Better POSIX support means this proces is eaiser (it also means more options for win32 admins as well, so it's good all around).

Merlin