Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Has Created Its Own FreeBSD (microsoft.com)
Simon Sharwood, writing for The Register: Microsoft has published its own distribution of FreeBSD 10.3 in order to make the OS available and supported in Azure. Jason Anderson, principal PM manager at Microsoft's Open Source Technology Center says Redmond "took on the work of building, testing, releasing and maintaining the image" so it could "ensure our customers have an enterprise SLA for their FreeBSD VMs running in Azure". Microsoft did so "to remove that burden" from the FreeBSD Foundation, which relies on community contributions. Redmond is not keeping its work on FreeBSD to itself: Anderson says "the majority of the investments we make at the kernel level to enable network and storage performance were up-streamed into the FreeBSD 10.3 release, so anyone who downloads a FreeBSD 10.3 image from the FreeBSD Foundation will get those investments from Microsoft built in to the OS."
does this mean they will replace GWX with a Get FreeBSD button?
I might give that a try.
I have run a bsd in a while.
...so anyone who downloads a FreeBSD 10.3 image from the FreeBSD Foundation will get those investments from Microsoft built in to the OS.
Clippy: I see you're running FreeBSD. Would you like to upgrade to Windows 10 now or reschedule for later?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
ack, ack ack ack,,, ack ack (Do not run, we ARE your FRIENDS) ack ack ack.
The interesting thing is that you would never see this happen under previous leadership. Forget the Windows 10 mess, even forget Microsoft selling one-off software at all. They are absolutely committed to using Azure to become the next IBM. The reason why IBM is still alive is because they draw massive monthly revenue from the mainframe business. You don't just buy a mainframe and a z/OS license as a one-time thing. You buy the hardware, the licenses, plus a huge monthly maintenance charge, _plus_ a pay-by-the-MIPS charge to use the hardware. IBM maintains the system for you, sends minions to replace parts, gives you access to upgrades, etc. for this fee. In an environment like this, it makes perfect sense to allow customers to run whatever they want as long as they run it on Azure. Microsoft will be the toll collector for anything their customers choose to migrate there. I'm working on a big Azure migration/rebuild project, and it's so obvious that Microsoft is done pushing their own software...as long as you rent their infrastructure.
Originally, the first TCP/IP stack and some command line TCP/IP tools (ftp.exe) were from BSD. Eventually Microsoft wrote it's own stack and tools.
It's beautiful.
Abort, retry, fail?
Although you joke, those who use Linux, especially those who use it seriously and for the long term, should be getting worried right about now.
We're seeing turmoil within the wider Linux community, mainly thanks to systemd. Regardless of your take on systemd, it has been very divisive.
Systemd has been a total disaster for many users, resulting in Linux installations that don't boot properly.
Even those who don't dislike it completely do realize that it represents a dangerous consolidation within the Linux ecosystem.
It goes beyond systemd, including problematic software like GNOME 3, PulseAudio, and even newer versions of Firefox.
A monoculture is developing, where all of the major Linux distros are becoming very much alike.
Linux users who don't want to be part of this monoculture are told to use obscure niche distros, which is a polite way of telling them to "fuck off and die".
So many have looked elsewhere. The *BSDs are an obvious choice for many refugees from Linux, and OS X for others.
We're seeing a resurgence of interest in FreeBSD and OpenBSD, and it won't be good for Linux.
There is now a whole generation of young developers and sysadmins who missed out on the FreeBSD glory years of the 1990s, but who are now rediscovering what we knew then: that the BSDs provide the best open source UNIX-like experience available.
So while we're seeing the Linux ecosystem disintegrate, we're seeing the FreeBSD and OpenBSD ecosystems becoming even stronger.
Linux users should be very concerned about the long term viability of Linux. Those who have enough foresight to see what's happening to the Linux ecosystem are already moving to FreeBSD or OpenBSD, and they will be glad that they got out before things got really bad.
Microsoft at one point was the #1 vendor of Unix systems, selling TRS-80 Unix systems at Radio Shack.
Office on OSX is the current #1 best selling Unix software.
Why are people surprised that Microsoft has a large Unix presence?
Correct me if I'm wrong but with FreeBSD addition, Azure is the only major cloud provider besides AWS that offers all three major operating systems available today: Windows, Linux and FreeBSD. Will definitely consider Azure for my cross-platform endeavors in the future.
Well yes, but there's a option to turn that off. It's in the cellar...without a staircase...or lights...in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the leapard."
. Microsoft needs to stay in their own yard and leave OSS to those who actually respect it and the license.
Fucking HILARIOUS
Microsoft is the NUMBER ONE vendor of BSD software. Microsoft Word on OS X is the biggest selling BSD product EVER.
You know how I know that you have no real understanding of IT?
I'm no Microsoft fan, but, they did submit their changes back upstream to FBSD. The BSD license doesn't require them to do that, but they did.
file:
So that means a totally free and legit Windows 10 install for those of us who never used Windows before?
I'll take it!
The worst Microsoft could do is spy on which games I play.
... and then sells all your data to the highest bidder.
Why does Android get away with this?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Of course they did. Microsoft wants Linux to work better on Azure, so any improvements they make which allows it to work better with Hyper-V, you can bet they want those improvements adopted. Otherwise, someone will simply decide to use AWS due to AWS working better with older drivers that were made to work well with Zen, but not Hyper-V.
ZFS and Dtrace were made by sun microsystem for open solaris... It's only recently that a project was FUNDED to have zfs on linux.
"Due to a Windows Update server misconfiguration, users who clicked "yes" to upgrade to Windows 10 after 10 June 2016 found themselves running BSD."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
No one with business acumen AND real IT experience should be using MS products.
I don't think you are using that word correctly. IBM dumped the PC division because the market is saturated and the margin is thin.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I've gotten free Blue Screens of Death from Microsoft plenty of times.
I used/supported MS products for nearly 20 years, but when I retired I decided I was done with MS' and other proprietary software. After seeing the bullshit MS is pulling with Windows 10, I would trust MS about as far as I could throw them. At least with their FreeBSD, I assume you can audit the source code, to be sure they haven't sprinkled little "telemetry" surprises in it.. *IF* I was going to run FreeBSD on a cloud-based virtual host, I'd stay the hell away from Azure, and it would be an actual FreeBSD release...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
We may be old (66 here), but we're just realistic.. MS can kiss my ass.. (somebody had to say it, many of us are thinking it..)
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
TRS-80 had Xenix, not Unix.
Xenix IS Unix, fully licensed, fully documented derivative of Version 7.
Microsoft wants Linux to work better on Azure
I'm not sure I'm following. Microsoft made some changes to FBSD, so it will work better on Azure and Hyper-V. They submitted those changes back to the main FBSD project. What does any of that have to do with Linux?
file:
I'd be polishing the ole re-zu-me, If I were you... That company is going down the toilet...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Hi folks,
Disclaimer: I'm a FreeBSD committer.
MS has been committing various Hyper-V drivers for months. Just like VMWare does for its hypervisor.
This is less
and more
You know, like every other cloud vendor's VM images. Nothing to see here, move along.
So, stop Hyper-Ventilating! ;-)
Having watched Windows grow from MSDOS, to Windows 3.1, to NT and beyond, and having observed the architectural stability through those stages (e.g. the registry), I have become convinced that the only way Windows will become truly stable and easy to maintain will be for it to adopt a UNIX architecture. This is not an absurd suggestion. Apple did it. It adopted a UNIX kernel, and managed to support legacy programs using virtualization. The process was in fact relatively benign from a user point of view. Old software appeared to continue working as it used to. When one opened a program written for legacy MacOS, a virtualized environment was created, and the program worked in the same way as it did in the older OS, even though it was actually running in OSX.
Windows could do this with relative ease. Create a brand new OS on a UNIX foundation. Create a virtualized environment to run legacy software. The god damned registry and all the other architectural mistakes can live in that space as long as MS wants to preserve legacy support. In the mean time, MS can move on from the detritus that has built up in Windows over the years. It can have a fresh start. The new windows can have things that other UNIX operating systems have enjoyed for years, like for instance proper hardware abstraction. Imagine using the same OS foundations on phones and laptops, like Apple has had for years. Imagine supporting different processor architectures with the same basic OS, like UNIX systems like OSX have had for years.
I left Windows years ago, partly for the reason that the OS was so badly engineered. It shocks me that Windows still runs the software engineering abomination that is the Registry. I currently use a combination of OSX and various UNIX systems. I will NEVER return to windows unless MS upgrades its OS to a more stable foundation.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
It does not, and I *really* wish people would realise that
a) a desktop computer or a server is an entirely different realm than a silly phone or tablet, and
b) "STEVE DID IT TOO!!" wasn't a valid defence even in kindergarten.
It's tiresome.
Do you see that big word MAJORITY in there? That means there are parts of the kernel that Microsoft is keeping closed source to themselves.
That is the classic, Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. We're to the Extend part right now. It has been extended with proprietary extensions that are not given back to the community.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
If you don't know what Microsoft Xenix is get off my lawn.
coking the books to make it look like it was a large money saver
You have no idea what a decent SLA on a service support contract costs on REL do you?
pigs with wings? devils in uggs?
> Microsoft at one point was the #1 vendor of Unix systems, selling TRS-80 Unix systems at Radio Shack.
They might have been the largest corporation pushing it but they likely were not the biggest vendor ever.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Why? I don't want to teach the receptionist how to use Debian. Anyone with real understanding of IT and business acumen knows that IT infrastructure has users, and those users have to be productive in order for your job to be worth anything, and IT is almost invariably responsible for making sure those users can use it effectively. I have *nix servers. I have Windows servers. The desktops for people that I'm responsible for use Windows. And they use Office. And Sharepoint. And Outlook. And we use Exchange. And Active Directory. And that's all because it makes my life easy in that area so I can focus on more important shit, and so it's easy to find someone to hire to pick up those extra duties that I don't want to pick up or that I'm too busy to pick up when necessary.
It barely takes any business acumen and barely any understanding of IT to know that the less basic skills such as basic computer use you have to train the people you need to be productive, the better off your organization is. And that doesn't get into replacing/adding IT staff. Competent *nix admins are not a dime a dozen and they are not as cheap as competent Windows admins.
In fact, screw the FreeBSD.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Both of these come from Redhat you know, one vendor. Some of these guys working there just happened to have big roles at Microsoft.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
" You know how I know that you have no real understanding of IT?"
There are A LOT of business using Microsoft products left and right.
Still, the parent poster has nailed it: "No one with any real understanding of IT would be using Microsoft products for anything serious anyway." (I would say "at all" instead).
The fact that it is the biggest software company in the world says a lot about the dismaying state of IT in general.
"It barely takes any business acumen and barely any understanding of IT..."
Yes: with barely any business and IT acumen and understanding comes Microsoft to be the biggest software company in the world after few decades. With deep business and IT acumen and understanding, on the other hand, things would have been completely different.
"Competent *nix admins are not a dime a dozen and they are not as cheap as competent Windows admins"
See? there you have an insight about "deep" business acumen: putting costs above productivity.
"Best selling" on Unix/Linux, however, is deceptive. These days a lot of the most popular programs for those platforms are free and open-source. Libre/OpenOffice, for example.
Productivity of your productive workforce I already covered. As far as productivity of your IT force, the real world called and they did the math and found the sweetspot between productivity and costs, particularly as it relates to the very real problem of employee turnover. There is absolutely zero productivity reason to go with a completely *nix/BSD IT solution from top to bottom. There is very much a reason to go with a hybrid approach, which is what I advocated, for a large variety of reasons, which I touched upon.
Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt... and not coming from Microsoft.
I demand proof, not FUD.
Yes: with barely any business and IT acumen and understanding comes Microsoft to be the biggest software company in the world after few decades. With deep business and IT acumen and understanding, on the other hand, things would have been completely different.
These statements seem silly. Why do offices run on Microsoft networking and Active Directory when Novell's product line predated both? How did Microsoft become the #1 word processor vendor when everybody already had WordPerfect? When both those companies went out of business, were their execs grumbling that they could never seem to find any customers with "deep business and IT acumen"? What do you suppose their boards of directors would think of an excuse like that?
Breakfast served all day!
I'm not sure I'm following. Microsoft made some changes to FBSD, so it will work better on Azure and Hyper-V. They submitted those changes back to the main FBSD project. What does any of that have to do with Linux?
The GP probably made a slip of the (virtual) tongue. But Microsoft already made all these changes to the Linux kernel. It submitted them, too. There was one year when Microsoft was one of the top Linux kernel contributors, owing to all the Hyper-V related changes it submitted.
Breakfast served all day!
Unlike Linux folks, FreeBSD users are encouraged to build their own kernel and user-space.
That's a pretty broad statement. What's Gentoo, then?
And I would certainly hope that anyone who considers themselves serious about Linux has at least compiled a kernel and ran 'make' a few times.
Breakfast served all day!
Not going to happen.
It's not a bug, it's a feature.
Microsoft needs lock-in to maintain their monopoly, and lock-in needs incompatibility.
An OS is its architecture.
If Windows adopts a Unix architecture, then Windows becomes Unix.
If Windows becomes Unix, then customers have their choice: Windows, Linux, BSD, whatever.
No more lock-in, no more monopoly, no more Microsoft.
And the "badly engineered" part? Well, Unix OSs tend to be well engineered. And if the defining characteristic of Windows is that it is incompatible with well engineered OSs, then pretty much of necessity Windows is going to be badly engineered.
I've joked about "MS Linux" for years, and now it looks like my worst fears have come true.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Should this be a surprise to anyone? BSD was a cornerstone of Hotmail and other web projects that Microsoft has had. They probably have the 2nd largest FreeBSD deployment outside of Yahoo.
"Why do offices run on Microsoft networking and Active Directory when Novell's product line predated both? How did Microsoft become the #1 word processor vendor when everybody already had WordPerfect?"
Because Novell was overly complex for the personal computer environment of the time (but, alas, the very moment Novell was an enemy no more, Microsoft launched the very same product Novell had for years: AD) and because Microsoft , while being an awful software company, has been a magnificent marketing company.
"What do you suppose their boards of directors would think of an excuse like that?"
They would think "we are not a damn IT company, we are a damn money-making company: if our buyers were unable to appreciate our products why did we insist in selling the best product instead of making sure we could sell our product?". Larry Ellison is another one that perfectly understood what was happening when he said he preferred a bad product with good marketing to a good product with bad marketing any day of the week. And I also remember an early interview to Bob Young stating that they should aim to sell their products to the bean counters, not the tech guys.
Their version of FreeBSD has some subtle tweaks that makes it optimized for Azure
Well to work on Hyper-V, yes. Much like their contributions to the Linux kernel.
and also some tweaks that "de-optimize" it for Xen/KVM and other virtualization schemes
I can't see such a thing in the FreeBSD tree anywhere, can you point to where these "tweaks" are?
Say it with me... Embrace/Extend/Extinguish....
Seems to me that "Embrace/Extend/Extinguish" actually means "Will become hugely popular", the phrase has only ever come up with Java and the result is that Java is the key language for the most prevalent mobile OS and can also be used on Windows, Linux and OSX among other platforms. Some people have tried to pretend they applied to HTML too, if that's true then it indeed supports the argument that it's a good thing because HTML is a broad open standard and even Microsoft themselves are pushing for the elimination of proprietary plugins. They killed off their own ActiveX and sliverlight support in favor of open standards. People also said it about them contributing to Linux yet it is now used even more widely than before, on Microsoft's own platform no less.
more old blah crap blah nonsense blah bollox.... move on, the train has left the station......
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
the queue for tin foil hats is just around the corner.....
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Blue Screen of Death?
I don't want to teach the receptionist how to use Debian
Why not? A receptionist needs to be able to use an address book and calendar, possibly a word processor, and email. These things are basically the same on all major operating systems. There are lots of people that it would be difficult to migrate to a different OS, but the receptionist ought to be one of the easiest.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You take your phone with you when you shit ? Remind me to never, ever call you.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Considering the libreoffice runs on a whole bunch of operating systems - including Mac and Windows as well as Linux, I sincerely doubt that.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Guess you don't remember a little something called Spyglass Mosaic ? The browser microsoft basically stole, rebranded and called Internet Explorer which then turned this product of a now bankrupted company into a flagship microsoft product that dominated the web for nearly two decades, destroyed the original netscape and for a very long time made large parts of the web entirely inaccesible to anybody who didn't use windows.
But that history goes back much further. They did the exact same thing with 86-DOS - killing Seattle Computer Products in the process, and not long after that the used an even dirtier trick to effectively kill MacOS before it even launched. The decline of apple (which did not end until the return of Jobs and the launch of the Imac around 1999 - which was only possible because M$ gave them a bunch of cash to stave of the DOJ) began with the launch of Windows which was a flagrant rip-off of the upcoming macOS that they did while under contract to develop apps for the prototype OS. Apple sued them - the court found Microsoft definitely DID commit copyright violation in creating windows, it's just that apple didn't have standing to sue since the technologies being sued over were not created by Apple but by XEROX (who had allowed Jobs to use it freely but still technically owned the copyright).
Hell Microsoft has a history of embrace, extend, extinguish that is literally the entire history of the company. Hell they themselves admitted it (albeit unintentionally). Ever heard of the Halloween Papers ? A leaked internal memo about how to deal with the "Linux threat" in which microsoft outlines a plan based on a step-by-step description of what we would come to call "embrace, extend, extinguish". To quote them: "The key reason why competing products like Linux is viable is because of commodity protocols like HTTP which allows non-microsoft products to use the internet just like our own products do. The best way to destroy this competition is to decomodify all protocols by adding proprietory extensions only our own products understand thus ensuring that other operating system users on the internet get inferior or no access to internet services like websites and email".
What do you think exchange was created for if not to decomodify SMTP/POP/Imap ?
Hell Microsoft even tried to pull an EEE on the tcp/ip stack standard handshake protocol. This is well documented, IIS flagrantly violated the standard handshake protocol, I.E. violated it the same way. The double violation would allow IE to instantly connect to IIS hosted websites, but any other standards-compliant browser would be forced into a time-out sequence (IIS would then switch to the proper standard upon the reconnect attempt) before managing to connect. Which made Linux browsers (and even windows versions of netscape and firefox) appear to have much slower performance than I.E. at least when connecting to ISS hosted sites.
Just how many examples do you actually want ?
Now is THIS an example of EEE ? It doesn't look like it to me, but to pretend that EEE was not a thing, and a major thing, which has done incalculable harm to the computer industry is just bold-faced lying. Frankly it's very easy to calculate the cost that EEE has imposed upon the computer industry. The number is readily available, this is one externality where the the cost is absolutely transparent. The cost of EEE to the entire IT industry is exactly equal to the combined total profits of Microsoft over the entirety of it's existence.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Because basic computer knowledge training is not the role of IT, it's the job of the perspective employee to have basic computer/word processing skills, which they will almost definitely have relevant experience if you're in a Windows environment.
Is anyone scrutinizing the code they upload for backdoors? It's no secret that Microsoft Windows is a key part of the NSA's surveillance tool set.
Only boring people are ever bored.