Microsoft Trying To Appeal to the Unix Crowd?

DigDuality writes "With the news that Windows 2008 (recently discussed on Slashdot) will have GUI-less installs and be fully scriptable, that they've opened up their communication protocols for non-commercial usage and are providing a patent covenant (Redhat Responds), and now finally an interesting rumor floating around that Microsoft will be taking on GNU directly. Has Microsoft totally switched gears in how it is approaching the Unix and FOSS sector for direct competition? According to an anonymous email leaked from a Microsoft employee, it seems Microsoft will be developing a framework that will be completely GNU compatible. Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, said on Friday (23 February) that they are aiming to restore a Unix-like environment to its former proprietary glory, at the same time proving that Microsoft is committed to interoperability. Ballmer emphasized that Microsoft's new strategy is to provide users with a complete package, and this includes users who like Unix environments. According to the supposedly leaked email, UNG, which stands for UNG's not GNU, is set to be released late 2009."

Comments

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Wow

[ZeroFactorial]

Modded as flamebait? Who the hell is the jackass Microsoft employee that modded it so?

It's a legitimate point. Microsoft is engaging themselves further (because they've pretty much already been engaged) in a holy war with *nix OSes. This is just a MUCH larger step in that direction.

Perhaps you modded it as flamebait because of my suggestion to sell Microsoft stock?

My mistake, you're not an employee, you must be a concerned shareholder.

Disagreeing or having a financially vested interest in something doesn't qualify as grounds to mod as flamebait.

Go ahead Mod THIS as flamebait, jackass, er, I mean Steve.

Try to buy just a copy of Excell, just try

[crovira]

I keep being led around to buy a copy of Office even though don't WANT a fuckin' copy of fuckin' Office.

All I fuckin' well want is a fuckin' copy of fuckin' Excel.

And they keep asking all these fuckin' questions.

ALL I WANT IS A FUCKIN' COPY OF EXCELL.

I DON'T WANT A FUCKIN' INQUISITION!

THE CLIENT CAN GO AND FUCK HIMSELF.

Re:Wow

[cbhacking]

I use Interix (the Unix-like "OS" taht runs in the NT kernel's POSIX subsystem) almost every day. I've got everything from vi (came with it), to ssh and sshd (installed binaries from Interop systems), to programs like sox - I needed it for something a while ago - that I compiled myself, using (a modified, and redistributed with source from Microsoft, version of) the GNU build toolchain.

To those who ask "Why?" and point out that I could just use Linux/Cygwin, there's a couple of noteworthy points here:

• I do use Linux, but I don't always want to reboot just to run a bash script or compile a tarball that requires a Unix-like environment.
• I can, from the shell (bash, though I have a few others as well), run Win32 programs as well, including piping or redirecting their output. This even works with popen() or system() calls.
• It's native to the system, and probably runs faster that cygwin (no syscall interpretation layer).

There's probably a few other issues, both good and bad. I've not used Cygwin enough to know, for example, how it works with limited accounts (on XP, or using UAC on Vista); Interix handles it quite nicely including the use of su and sudo (in Vista, su to "root" will require enabling the full Administrator account, however... note that this should be password protected even if disabled since it gets enabled if the computer is booted to Safe Mode). Interix does not come with an X server, but it does come with the X client libraries; I use Xming (a port of the freedesktop.org X server to win32) for an X server when I need it.

The only real problems are that you can't get block device access to hard drives, etc. and you can't use Linux-specific code or libraries (syscalls or things like the varius Linux-only ioctl tricks). Some programs won't compile because of this. It also uses Windows PE format executables, not ELF binaries (although it does have .so libraries) so it isn't binary-compatible with non-Interix compilations even if it has the needed libraries.