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A Run Through Windows Server 2008
amcdiarmid writes "Tom's Hardware has a review of Windows Server 2008 RC0 up on their site. It has a few good points, and at 19 pages is certainly 'in-depth'. From the article's conclusion: 'Microsoft has used the time since the release of Windows Server 2003 very well. The new Server Manager simplifies system administration immensely. Unlike Windows Vista, whose new dialogues still confuse even experienced users, Windows Server 2008 makes the admin feel right at home and in control ... However, it's not all sunshine, either. Although our test system used a beefy Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 with generous 2 GB of RAM, the Server's user interface felt sluggish with Windows being drawn very slowly ... Microsoft also gets low marks for failing to include SSH support in the operating system. On Linux servers, working without SSH is simply unthinkable. At least the Redmond company includes its encrypted remote shell WinRS. However, secure FTP is still a missing feature. The FTP client is being treated like an unloved stepchild, to the point where it is not even included in the Server Manager.'"
Without SSH and SFTP, does it seem as if Microsoft is trying to build a wall between itself and Linux? To what end I'm not sure, but this is starting to seem deliberate.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
Now it is a problem if MS is not bundling software? Last time I checked, that was a good thing. At least it allows excellent third party products such as putty and pscp to thrive.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
What's really strange is that the MS PowerShell is actually pretty impressive. It's a lot like most *nix shells except that it passes objects around instead of strings. It feels vaguely similar to Interactive Ruby to me. There are actually tasks in Exchange 2007 that can only be done in the shell (not in the gui) and many tasks are easier in the shell. They've even mimicked most of your standard bash commands. It knows what ls, ps and man are (among others).
It appears to me that MS is quite committed to letting people run gui-less servers now, and their doing a pretty decent job of it so far. They're doing a lot better job of that than they are with Vista.
Believe it or not, many people use the server version as a desktop OS.
Yup. I run Win 2008 RC0 for development and it's great. As an aside, I dunno what was wrong with their setup to cause a "sluggish" UI. My setup only has 1GB and a single core. It is running in Virtual PC which is hosted on Windows Vista. Not exactly a setup for speed, but it's very snappy.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Actually, I've heard of *gamers* running Server 2003 because it's even faster than XP at a lot of things. Of course, installing DirectX is a tiny bit of a challenge, but once that's done, they manage to get performance boosts (small ones, I believe) over regular XP.
Maybe what will happen is when Server 2008 comes out, people migrate to that instead of the horrific mess that is Vista (I used it) just because it's more familiar than the new locations where Vista puts crap. Might be interesting to see how many people do the XP->2008 transistion over XP->Vista.
I wouldn't call them small. I'm running server 2003 x64 now and I think with out a doubt that it's the best OS mickysoft has ever put out. Alot of the speed comes from that most of the shit that is in XP comes turned off by default. You can turn most of it back on of course but that defeats the purpose of running 2003 in the first place. Luna is a fucking pig.
Almost everything you can do in XP you can do in 2003. The only thing that I have found is fast user switching and XP's pretty login. Directx went in easy but bluetooth was a bitch. I had to use a 3rd party BT stack.
I don't know about gamming since I don't use my computer for games, hello ps2, but for everyday use that fucker screams.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
As I spent the last week trying to untangle the mess of manifests, I realized one thing. Vista is NOT all crap.
:).
UI popup asking you to verify that you clicked something is not that great. But if you get a virus, you may stop and wander why you get popoup boxes all the time even if you didn't click it. Annoying but maybe effective? Don't know. This is the part of Vista I do not like at all.
manifest files - ughh! Well, if you understand them, they are not that bad. Still annoying to the developers but better than DLL Hell of yesteryears. If you want a different confusion for developers, look at OS X frameworks. Not exactly standard dynamic libraries there either.
The new folder locations are great. Vista is getting closer to what Linux/Unix had for years. Actually, they are easier to understand than Mac OS X stuff.
The real pain are the 64-bit/32-bit file/registry reflections. That is just stupid. Same application = Same key! The lack of manifest = registry reflection is also crap. Open a registry, and it opens a different one for you! Stupid!!
But the changes in Vista are not all bad. There are some good ones. (BTW, manifests and SxS execution was in place since XP or 2000, just no one used it until Vista is forcing it down our throats
Of course, I still find Gnome+Linux the most productive environment over Vista or XP or OS X. It just works.
PS. 2003 is not faster than XP. It will only be faster if you install crap on your XP box. What 2003 has is more throughput = less overhead. But that also means less interactivity. And people will not "transition" from XP -> 2008. If they do, then they have too much money in their pockets.
They're breaching the EULA, which specifically states that Windows Server 2003 is not licensed to be used as a desktop OS.
While I'm no PowerShell expert, I did try to use it as my primary shell for a few weeks (I normally do as much as I can in CMD.EXE), and it seems to me that it's great for writing scripts, but not very good for interactive use. For example, say I want to do the equivalent of MSDOS dir /o-d (show the contents of the current directory sorted by descending modification date, or ls -lt in Unix parlance). To do that in PowerShell seems to require this incantation: ls|sort lastwritetime -des. Not exactly as easy to type as the DOS or Unix versions. Or dir /ad to show only the directories in the current dir: In PS, ls|? {$_.psiscontainer}. The issue seems to be that the commands are all very generic--ls is actually an alias for get-childitem, which returns the children of any container object, not just directories. It works for registry trees, Active Directory domains, and various other stuff too. While this is definitely good in many situations, sometimes it's nice to have the command know what it's working on and have options specific to the type of data it'll be returning.
Now if there's a more compact way of doing that stuff, I'd love to hear it. And no, setting up aliases doesn't count; that strikes me as a cheesy workaround... Having to come up with aliases in advance for these little tasks that I may want to do in the future is not my idea of a good interactive shell.