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Microsoft to 'Support and Usurp' Unix
qedramania writes "Computerworld has a report on the latest Windows server release and their Unix strategy." From the article: "R2 is built on the Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 and is geared towards specific workloads such as storage management, branch office server management, as well as identity and access management. It also provides a subsystem which supports Posix applications."
I guess Slashdot's picture of Gates as a Borg is applicable more now than ever
My work here is dung.
If you can't beat them, join them!
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i mean posix has been long available under NT, nothing new under the sun. Microsoft allready had als a fileserver update to have size limits on folders. In the end this is not unix specific it was user environments require.
There are a lot of similarities ofcourse however often they are result of standardisation, or the result of new technoligies, if you think about a SAN environments then folder based limits makes sence. I see more and more SAN's connected to MS networks.
I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change.
If it were anyone other than Microsoft I'd be happy about POSIX support, but you just know they're going to make it "MS-POSIX" or "POSIX++" or something stupid instead, and cause more incompatibility than they fix.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Will they get more than an '80% POSIX complaint' OS out of this effort?
And does anyone who uses a real UNIX actually care?
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
The POSIX layer is old hat - although I think M$ broke it...they've had services for Unix for a while now....whats new? M$ Fix Bugs?
So how come Jeremy Allinson and the other SAMBA guys have such a problem getting technical details out of Microsoft about the inner workings of SMB for their product that allows "Windows interoperability with Unix"???
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Windows is not Unix!
Why do article submitters assume us UNIX guys know all the latest buzzwords and upstart companies in computing? For the uninitiated, Microsoft are a software publisher who sell a toy operating system called Windows.
How many programs were developed for UNIX (or Linux, or ...)? For example, Apache? Now runs on Windows. Postgresql? Now runs on Windows. There is a LARGE amount of formerly UNIX-only software, much of which is open source, that can now run on Windows. Microsoft is no dummy. They too, just like SCO, can leverage this software.
Open Source is a double edged sword -- it gives you a fantastic advantage, but at the same time, your competitors are free to use your software, your IP, your efforts. One hopes that the benefits outweigh the advantages to your competition.
The real strengths of Open Source are leveraging development and testing all over the world (lower product costs, time to market, code reuse, etc.), much lower marketing and sales costs (Internet distribution), and better quality (many eyes make all bugs shallow).
MS has had a site for Unix migration for a long time. Resources for UNIX Professionals provides various takes on migration. Plus, as has been noted, Posix has been part of NT at least since version 4 and perhaps even 3.51 although I'm too lazy to look it up.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
This isn't news. There has been POSIX Support in NT4 and win2k forever (so it seems), and Windows 2003 already can do NIS if you know what you are doing with schemas and the Services for Unix. The only thing "new" would be unix shells native to the OS... but this can be done effectively now with other packages like cygwin or MinGW.
--- I never lie when I have sand in my shoes.
> A tu vieja le cabe, lo sabemos todos.
Something about CAB files and dying on Saturday, I think.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Microsoft's been doing Unix since Linus an elementary school kid playing with his Vic-20. It was the first Unix I used, running on Tandy hardware.
and it has always sUxx0rd. incomplete, poorly implemented, not really POSIX.
are they saying that they are doing it right now, or just pretending what is old is new?
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
POSICKS ? ... WE-NICK...which is of course Billy's real talent.
POSIX# ?
POSIX.NET ?
MoSftIX ?
ME-NIX / YOU-NIX (from Win-ME)
which leads of course to the British slang
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
Microsoft has been doing things for unix for a while. Microsoft actually had a big unix side. They eventually sold a big portion of it to a small company that i used to work for called proginet . I was amazed at all the microsoft stuff they had. They had some microsoft applications that I didnt even know existed .
I find it funny that now they are trying to go back to unix stuff.
For a full history of NT, Interix and SFU, see Should that not be GNU/Microsoft SFU?
don't forget PO$IX
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
Microsoft lost the golden age of UNIX. It implemented a half compatible system and lied to people telling them it was compatible. So most people kept UNIX.
Now, UNIX is dying anyway. Linux and BSD (mostly because of GNU tools) are each day less POSIX compilant, and the programs are using their extensions (that are quite usefull). Even more important, proprietary UNIX are almost dead aready, why does MS thinks that it will be sucessfull introducing a new proprietary UNIX now? Why does it think that people will buy that UNIX.
Windows surely needs a lot of improvement, and getting ideas from UNIX is a good idea. But MS shouldn't hype that compatibility, because it will lead nowhere.
Rethinking email
I honestly don't see how they find the time do all that and spew all the FUD.
-- Boycott Shell
Yep, a mexican troll.
I see that happening more in a server farm than desktops, but it's a start.
It's not the dollar value itself that is the problem. It's getting approval. Somebody has to sign off on the purchase and make it happen.
Then there is the matter of storing and keeping track of those silly hologram cards that supposedly prove that you have valid licenses. It costs staff time to deal with that. If you screw up, and maybe even if you don't, the BSA shows up with a bunch of US Marshals (or non-US equivalent).
Well, first of all the UNIX version can be configured to use threads. There are several other ways to run Apache.
Second of all, UNIX was dragged kicking and screaming into supporting threads. Lots of UNIX-like systems are still very bad about thread support. Thread creation is often slower than process creation. It was MUCH slower on Linux 2.4.
Third, threads share memory. This can be a curse. It is fundamentally less reliable. If the server has a bug, it will crash if running in threaded mode. A forking server just lets the crashing process die, and sometimes even helps it along by killing it. Unshared memory can be faster too. On SMP, shared memory requires cross-CPU messages whenever the memory mappings change. (a call to malloc or free for example)
I'd say it's suspicious too. Maybe Bill is going to try to claim that he invented UNIX now. Watch out SCO.
"Put your message in a modem, and throw it into the cyber-sea." - Rush
Posix, Shmosix. I want libraries. I want REAL built-in UNIX apps, not MS work alikes. When MS drops DLLs and The Registry and learns to play nice with others, wake me up.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
Good, sure... for a certain limited set of values of "good".
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
C is C is C (or rather, it ought to be, because that was the whole point of C).
The OpenBSD people pride themselves on being correct. I would expect that they would have written tight, neat, standards complient C. The BSD libraries are not ripped off from GNU. So, MS should have no problem compiling and linking a non-GPL version of the BSD code. Beside just using GCC would not emcumber you if you link against your own libs and headers, would it? How do you think the BSD people do it and avoid the GPL while using GCC?
Small example - symbolic links are not in the POSIX standard, even though every Unix since BSD 4.x (4.2? I forget...) has had them. Nobody's Unix compatibility system for Windows does symbolic links, because they're not a good fit for the Windows file system - the closest you can come is linking to a directory, not a file.
Windows has a POSIX-compliant subsystem, and has had it for years, but it doesn't do symbolic links, not completely. How many non-trivial Unix applications don't use symbolic links, either at build time or run time?
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Xenix became SCO OpenServer.
I just can't wait to see what MS does next to "support and usurp" Unix.
...but I still don't see the big differentiator here that'll convince a UNIX shop to adopt Windows over the latest iteration of their existing platform.
.NET experts recommend using XML-based, application-specific .config files over the monolithic registry). The Monad shell promises to be quite powerful and could address the severe shortcomings of the existing command shell and allow the OS to run usefully without a GUI. POSIX/UNIX compatibility will be further developed...and so on.
This isn't a really huge move actually--it is just more of the same "bundling" stuff that Microsoft has done with its OSes forever (applets in Win 3.0 is where it started and now we have Media Player, IE, firewall, etc). Microsoft has finally seen how successful projects like Cygwin have eaten into its SFU market space, and relatively speaking SFU has been a mild failure for Microsoft. W2K3 R2 now simply bundles an improved SFU right into its OS distribution and is betting that customers will be "lazy" enough to use their solution rather than adopt 3rd party solutions like Cygwin.
I do not think this will accelerate the demise of UNIX all that much though...I think that this will simply be more appealing to customers who are already migrating towards a Microsoft solution from legacy UNIX systems. Using Win2k3 as a drop-in replacement for a UNIX box simply because you can doesn't seem justified here, even if licensing and hardware costs are lower than for, say, SUN/Solaris. THe description just sounds like a model of inefficiency to me: All the UNIX stuff runs outside the kernel and still seems "bolted on". You have all this powerful hardware and all the work is being done by these bolt-ons and you still have the Windows kernel, fancy GUI and a load of services and drivers to support what you might not tough more than 5% of the time when in production. The only way that sounds appealing to me is if you are migrating to Windows and have new critical enterprise applications that run in the Windows environment alongside UNIX legacy apps.
Windows will only TRULY "ursurp UNIX" when it TRULY adopts a UNIX-like architecture: It has to un-couple all the client-ish stuff (well all of its components really) and offer tools to support this more modular architecture. W2K3 R2 is not nearly there yet. However, MS is definitely heading closer in that direction: The windows registry is essentially deprecated as of the release of Vista (it is supported but is considered "legacy support"...a lot of
"Vista Server" (or whatever they call it) won't be totally there but the one after that will be close enough...Windows server will NEVER become just another UNIX clone, but out of necessity it'll probably evolve into a very UNIX-like architecture that uses proprietary/"extended" protocols, languages, libraries, interfaces...
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"Bother," said Pooh, as lightning knocked out hi%#&(F*@NO CARRIER
Seriously, it's not like I need Microsoft to do anything I want with computers, so why add the bloat?
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
I remember reading that one of NT's big features was going to be the Windows, OS/2, and POSIX subsystems on top of a lightweight kernel. (Sounds similar to MVS and OS/400, two extremely powerful virtualized operating systems).
If anyone's ever wondered what Bill Gates cell phone number is it's +447849736863