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Sneak Peek at Windows Server 2008
stinkymountain writes to tell us that NetworkWorld got their hands on Microsoft's latest addition to the server OS market and had a chance to poke around inside Windows Server 2008. It seems that the new release is a vast improvement over older versions in both security and performance but still lacking in several key areas. "There's even a minimalist installation called Windows Server Core that can run various server roles (such as DNS, DHCP, Active Directory components) but not applications (like SQL Server or IIS dynamic pages). It's otherwise a scripted host system for headless operations. There's no GUI front end to a Windows Server Core box, but it is managed by a command line interface (CLI), scripts, remotely via System Manager or other management applications that support Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), or by Remote Terminal Services. It's also a potential resource-slimmed substrate for Hyper-V and virtualization architectures."
I'd think that if Linux is "lambasted" for being geeky it's because users need to do certain things with it, whereas most Windows users rarely ever open a console window.
The number of things that you need to do with bash on any Linux distro have decidedly decreased in the past few years, so I doubt the label is really applicable anymore. Perhaps the problem is that a lot of the problem-solving advice you can find online for distros like Ubuntu tend to use command line solutions, which is predictable if those solutions are being provided by more knowledgeable people who don't have a problem using the console to begin with.
I played with some of the early betas and Server 2008 is actually quite cool. The fact that most everything is now scriptable (the subset that wasn't before through WMI, at least, or the things that have been simplified) is a life saver, and the switching of server roles is very useful when you want to re-task a box quickly for whatever reason. Hosting companies will probably love it.
I think the important thing about 2008 is that it gives you the option to use a character-based environment, and it gives you a very good one at that (PowerShell). If you feel more comfortable with the GUI tools, they're all still there.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Yeah I mean geeh how renewing the idea of a small core and running different layers of applications on it. Anyhow atleast for Microsoft it is a huge move that somehow they we're able to cut allot of slack and somehow did go modular.
To little to late? Very Probable!
Codefile Defected to another Hexadimal Range refresh your CHAOSTACK.NLM file with a new copy
Someone should let Bill know about this.
and this: Gates predicts fall of the keyboardfrom: Gates: Keyboard use will decline
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I mean, at least with scattered .conf files, if one goes corrupt, so what? You only lose (some or all of) the one daemon that relies on it, while still being able to access the running server to fix it. The sole exception is grub.conf @ boot time, which (as saving grace if the conf file should go corrupt) can be edited and modified right there at the boot prompt. OTOH, if the Registry goes splat, you're not guaranteed much of anything depending on severity, meaning downtime to restore it at best, and a server rebuild/restoration at worst.
Not that I hate it per se, but I seriously believe it to be a huge potential liability in a standard production environment, let alone an HA/critical one.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
When you install server, you are given the choice of server core or standard server. Assuming you choose standard server, it installs server with a basic core of functionality. Then in server manager you add only those roles and features that you want for your system. For my notebook, I added the wireless feature and the search indexer, which is under the file server role.
They're really pushing the command-line thing for all their products. We got a demo of Exchange 2007 and not everything is configurable from within the GUI. Where it is, it gives you the PowerShell command at the bottom.
The worst part for me is that they're reducing support for a lot of their "old" API and everything has to be rewritten using command line tools. Essentially what I'm doing is making pretty web interfaces for something that should be part of their own product. Madness!
You don't need to tell me about the downfalls of the windows registry. I got to live it, yet again, the other week when I upgraded my motherboard and had to reinstall windows (why is there no option to tell windows to 'redetect hardware' instead of loading an incorrect SATA driver and immediately BSODing?).
.ini files in their respective directories, this wouldn't have been a problem. It would also allow me to:
So, as usual, many of the applications and games I had installed that decided to store all their settings in the registry had a fit when I tried to run them. Had they used
1. Move the app/game to somewhere else on the system without needing to reinstall.
2. Back up the entire program, including it's settings.
3. Move the program to another system by just copying it.
I hate the registry. It should be for the OS only, and read-only for applications.
I do have to say that I'm amused at the idea of a GUI-less Windows, considering that Windows began as nothing but a GUI, which ran on top of DOS. After all the effort Microsoft went through to make the GUI mandatory and supposedly integral to the OS itself, now they're talking about uncoupling it. MS-DOS 8.0 anyone?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
In my opinion the best way to illustrate the weakness of the MS registry design is to illustrate one of it's strengths at the same time. Run regmon.exe to monitor registry activity and then open folder. I just did this on one of my workstations. With no windowed apps open and limited non-XP services running, opening a folder triggered ~2900 registry actions(OpenKey, QueryValue, SetValue, CloseKey) On one hand, this is amazing. Those 2900 registry actions must be extremely efficient, as it doesn't take but a second for that folder to open. On the other hand, this IMO is part of why Windows performance always degrades over time in non-static workstation configs. The number of keys being queried from has linear growth over time, so those 2900 actions will get slower and slower as the registry grows.
I just don't see how it could be deemed efficient for a basic desktop app to query a registry of hundreds of thousands(millions?) of keys/values to decide if my background should be blue or green.