Microsoft Working on Porting Sysinternals To Linux (zdnet.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A Microsoft exec has confirmed yesterday that the company's engineers are working on porting the highly popular Sysinternals software package to Linux. Microsoft engineers have already ported the ProcDump utility and are currently working on porting ProcMon as well. More tools to follow.

Microsoft's decision to port this highly popular debugging utility to Linux comes after two months ago, in September, Scott Guthrie, Microsoft's executive vice president of the cloud and enterprise group, revealed that "sometimes slightly over half of Azure VMs are Linux." With Linux's growing adoption as the preferred OS for running Azure VMs, it's only natural that Azure engineers are now looking into porting their favorite debugging utilities to Linux, for both themselves but also for the company's customers.

Comments

How pointless is that

[fisted]

This is actually funny and sad. Don't the MS people realize that the only reason for using "sysinternals" is that their OS doesn't come with decent instrumentation by default? This toolset doesn't even come close to what's natively available in Unix or Linux.

smh

Re:How pointless is that

[slack_justyb]

Don't the MS people realize that the only reason for using "sysinternals" is that their OS doesn't come with decent instrumentation by default?

No.

This toolset doesn't even come close to what's natively available in Unix or Linux

Correct. However, no one wants to really learn how to use those tools. So that's where the demand for this comes from.

I guess the question, Should folks learn these tools? Should folks educate themselves? is the underlying question here. I know exactly how I feel but, how I feel doesn't change the mentality one bit.

Re:How pointless is that

[caseih]

To be fair, procmon is a pretty nifty GUI and can show you a lot of information in one place. More info than top.

One thing that's always bothered me on windows is the lack of a simple way to determine what DLLs are missing. A missing shared library in linux will be apparent with an error message from the linker when you try to run the executable. Or you can use the ldd command to determine what shared libraries it links to and whether they can be found on the system. On Windows, you just get an error dialog box that says the program won't run, with no information about what is missing. And it's not easy to find out what the missing dlls are either. You have to resort to DLL dependency walkers. In terms of tools Windows is a bizarre mix of complete deficiencies and the fanciest GUI tools.

Anyway it will be interesting to see what they come up with. The mere fact they want to port these highly OS-specific tools to Linux is very interesting, given MS's history with Linux. And we should be in favor of any tools that ease the transition away from a proprietary OS to something more open.

Re:How pointless is that

[MightyYar]

There is at least some benefit in having their entire team using a single tool across platforms. Apparently deemed worth the porting effort, anyway.

Re:How pointless is that

[fisted]

Correct. However, no one wants to really learn how to use those tools.

The premise here is people switching their OS, isn't it? I'd say the people who don't want to learn how to use new tools would also not want to learn how to use a new OS?

Re:How pointless is that

[llamalad]

I see we're well into the "extend" phase now.

Re:How pointless is that

[Anonymous Coward]

port these highly OS-specific tools to Linux

I'm thrilled to finally have regmon.exe on Linux. That's gonna be a life saver when systemd-registryd is rolled out!

Re:How pointless is that

[The MAZZTer]

ProcMon will show you file access attempts to find a DLL

Re:How pointless is that

[JackieBrown]

Well it is "highly popular."

Re:How pointless is that

[The MAZZTer]

ProcMon and Top have different uses. I think you are thinking of Process Explorer. ProcMon logs file accesses, registry accesses, and network activity. Very useful for analyzing process behavior and debugging a non-working application.

Re:How pointless is that

[ArchieBunker]

What are you talking about? It's been years since I've needed to go DLL hunting but every single program has told me what was missing.

Re:How pointless is that

[stooo]

https://www.brainyquote.com/qu...

Re:How pointless is that

[TheFakeTimCook]

I see we're well into the "extend" phase now.

Exactly!

Re:How pointless is that

[slack_justyb]

I'd say the people who don't want to learn how to use new tools would also not want to learn how to use a new OS?

One would think so. However, a lot of higher ups that would make the call to change the OS are not really concerned about the means, but more of the ends. So they see blah blah in marketing indicating Linux versus Windows, they instruct their underlings to get it done, and allocate all of zero time to the underlings getting properly trained. So the underlings resort to StackExchange to get day-to-day stuff done, wishing for a day where they could just use the tools they know to get day-to-day done. In this kind of environment you've got a statistical break. X% group will eventually pick things up by enough visits to Google, Y% will actually pick up a book and learn (maybe on their own dime outside of work), and Z% will just complain "Why can't this be easier?!" (incorrectly, mind you). It appears that Z% has tickled someone in the MS research department.

Project managers and the folks calling shots just see Apache, Tomcat, node.js, or whatever the ends are. Underlings are the ones actually dealing with the details Apache on Linux vs Apache on Windows.

Re:How pointless is that

[tepples]

Or you can use the ldd command to determine what shared libraries it links to and whether they can be found on the system.
[...]
You have to resort to DLL dependency walkers.

What's ldd other than a dependency walker?

I think part of the difference is that under Windows, the mentality is that the publisher of a particular application is responsible for quality control as to the inclusion of shared libraries needed to make the application operate on a freshly installed copy of Windows. If you're missing a library, you're supposed to get it from the installer that the publisher provided. If an application fails to run after its installer has completed, its installer is inadequate, and the user should ask for repair or refund.

Re:How pointless is that

[ElizabethGreene]

I do application compatibility work. Part of that is helping customers move applications to newer machines when the original install media has been lost or (for homebrew apps) never existed.

I go DLL fishing on a regular basis, and dependency walker (depends.exe) and Process Monitor (Procmon.exe) are lifesavers.

(I work for Microsoft supporting Enterprise Customers. A very small part of my job is helping customers get that last blocker-application moved off of /win[ntxp0-9]{,4}/ so they can finally upgrade to Win10.)

Re:How pointless is that

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Remind me of anything close to Process Monitor or Resource Monitor in Linux. Something as easy to use and visually complete.

Process Monitor (previously FileMon + RegMon) = inotifywait + iotop? Not even close.

Resource Monitor = a dozen of different utilities which you can quickly get lost in and where each one of them require a separate window/terminal?

What about deep memory overview which is provided by RamMap?

Even "simple" Task Manager in Windows 8/10 has nothing even close in Linux - something which shows processes and CPU/Disks/RAM/GPU/NIC utilization in a very easy to understand form.

To be honest most of other utilities in SysInternals are what you will routinely find in any Linux distro or something that's very specific to Windows (NTFS/Domain/Registry) but the ones I've listed above would be very nice to have in Linux.

Actually FileMon was available close to 15 years ago but it required a specific kernel version and it died without receiving too much publicity.

Re:How pointless is that

[mangastudent]

In their favor, it's MIT licensed. That's hard to abuse in a way negative for Linux except by using patents.

Re:How pointless is that

[Ravaldy]

Don't the MS people realize that the only reason for using "sysinternals" is that their OS doesn't come with decent instrumentation by default?

Statements like this make it obvious that fanboys of any kind don't understand that there are different markets and business needs. I'm a software developer that has coded on most platforms using many different compilers and languages. I don't make money or meet objectives by troubleshooting OS issues if my specialty is application development. I buy an OS which includes a large team of people that support said product. With Linux it's different as it's an open system which is intended to be tailored to specific needs. It's a versatile and lean OS which offers endless possibility. The flip side is you need to become more of an expert or hire said experts to achieve your objectives.

I'm not ditching Linux or MS. Instead I'm just pointing out that there was a time where MS didn't have a need to provide said tools. Now they feel it matters and I see only benefits for the Linux community..

Re:How pointless is that

[fibonacci8]

This toolset doesn't even come close to what's natively available in Unix or Linux

Correct. However, no one wants to really learn how to use those tools. So that's where the demand for this comes from.

I guess the question, Should folks learn these tools? Should folks educate themselves? is the underlying question here. I know exactly how I feel but, how I feel doesn't change the mentality one bit.

From anything false, anything follows.

No one wants to pay employees enough money to learn what the employees willingly learn themselves, unless they can see an immediate profit from it. The false assumption that the thing with more restrictions, including price and licensing, is therefor the better thing means that Microsoft can continue to attempt embrace, extend, and extinguish simply by having more restrictive licensing when extending a Free product. Anyone who complains about restrictions imposed by the GPL variants being intolerable is pulling your leg. I recommend reading what closed source terms actually entail sometime. "Not being allowed to plagiarize" in exchange for permission to use copyrighted works by other people isn't a bad trade, and it's optional.

Re:How pointless is that

[fisted]

strace, ltrace, hell, dtrace. if you have the source and aren't incompetent, gdb and valgrind.
are just the first few that come to mind.

Oh, you're looking for a tool *exactly* like file/regmon that craps out tens of thousands of lines in a piss poor performing text widget, faster than it can actually handle the input, so by default you have to add blacklisting filters (in addition to the dozen blacklisting filters that come preinstalled) to even narrow down the data to what you may be looking for? Yeah, sorry, I don't think that's happening, nor that anybody really needs/wants it. And it only makes sense for the classical Windows problem "something is wrong but nothing tells me even remotely what may be going on so I'll have to look at all processes and the kernel at the same time", anyway.

Re:How pointless is that

[fisted]

Some people may want folks to come over to linux, but that doesn't mean they want those folks to bring the windows approach to operating systems over to linux.

If they're looking for a Linux that's a perfect (or imperfect) clone of Windows, they should probably stick with Windows, because it's not going to happen and it would be an incredibly pointless exercise too.

Re:How pointless is that

[fisted]

I don't see what the reply has to do with the quoted part, or with the whole comment for that matter.

What's fanboyish about pointing out that there's no need to port over the highly Windows-specific ersatz-instrumentation when the target OS already has it?

Re:How pointless is that

[Jahta]

This is actually funny and sad. Don't the MS people realize that the only reason for using "sysinternals" is that their OS doesn't come with decent instrumentation by default? This toolset doesn't even come close to what's natively available in Unix or Linux.

smh

On the other hand, one of the selling points of Linux has always been choice; "there's more than one way to do it". The sysinternals tools are a mature set of system utilities and maybe, just maybe, at least some of the Linux ports might offer a useful addition/alternative to the existing Linux tools. Time will tell.

Re:How pointless is that

[Skuld-Chan]

How do I watch filesystem/network events from a specific or collection of applications running in user/admin space in realtime on Linux?

I see lots of addons for Linux as well (nothing out of the box), but nothing as simple as procmon.

Re:How pointless is that

[HeckRuler]

"We just want to extend the functionality of the native Linux. Make it better and easier to use! Of course it has to go through our SysInternals, as that's how we package that functionality. Trust us, once there's a group of people using these features, we PROMISE that we'll continue maintaining sysInternals and that everyone who is locked in and dedicated to using these features won't be bit in the ass. It's open source! If they don't like where it goes they can just switch away or fork it. We've got our top men working to make sure it's not a convoluted clusterfuck that's impossible for others to pick up. Top Men. And if they do try to fork it and develop it on their own, we certainly won't yank the chain with backwards-incompatible changes to the official branch."

Re:How pointless is that

[Gadget_Guy]

Some people may want folks to come over to linux, but that doesn't mean they want those folks to bring the windows approach to operating systems over to linux.

I'm not sure how true that is considering how much work has gone into WINE, DXVK etc on Linux!

Besides, in what way does SysInternals go against the Linux way of doing things? It's basically just a collection of small utilities, all of which can be installed independantly and some of which are straight versions of UNIX functions (or at least inspired by them).

If they're looking for a Linux that's a perfect (or imperfect) clone of Windows...

Considering that Sysinternals is not a part of Windows (and is not installed by default) then porting it is hardly making Linux a clone of Windows. One of the first things that I do when I install Windows is copy my trusty bin folder to it that contains the Unix utilities that I can't do without. Similarly, I install PowerShell when I make a Linux system. You might as well be pragmatic about what you use. You only inconvenience yourself if you become territorial with what is allowed to be written for your OS of choice.

Re:How pointless is that

[whoever57]

ProcMon logs file accesses, registry accesses, and network activity.

So equivalent to strace?

Re:How pointless is that

[whoever57]

All you are doing is showing your ignorance of Linux.

strace provides the answer to your question.

Re:How pointless is that

[Gadget_Guy]

I see we're well into the "extend" phase now.

What exactly do you think that Microsoft is extending? They are not changing anything that already exists on Linux; they are porting new utilities that will not be part of any standard Linux installation (perhaps with the exception a default install on Azure). But none of these utilities will displace the existing GNU utiltiies.

If Microsoft ported Office to Linux, would you call that extending the operating system or just writing software that works on it? Sysinternals is no different to that.

Re:How pointless is that

[caseih]

Good for you. You're must not be a developer. Or one that deals with cross-platform developing and deployment including cross compiling. Most build systems have pretty good tools for making sure all the right dlls are bundled with the executable, but sometimes there are problems. As well as the kinds of things the other poster posted about.

I'm very glad you haven't had to deal with these issues. But they are very real and Windows doesn't make it super easy to track them down.

Re:How pointless is that

[caseih]

It's not a dependency walker in the Windows sense. ldd simply parses the executable and spits out all the shared libraries the linker is going to need to find to load the executable because they are all listed there. In Windows this information can't always be found by simply looking at the executable because dlls themselves can refer to other dlls. So you figure out you're missing dll A but when you copy it in, now the whole system is missing dll B and so on. A dependency walker has to, well walk the dlls and make a big list of all the dlls that are ultimately needed by the exe.

Elf shared libraries, on the other hand, can and do refer to other shared libraries, but the executable itself usually has to have all of these subdependencies explicitly linked in to the binary itself. So except for dynamically opened shared libraries (Qt and GTK+ both do that for some functionality), you can very quickly and accurately get a list of required shared libraries from binary itself.

Re:How pointless is that

[higuita]

you already have that in gnome dconf

Just try it, type "dconf-editor"

That is why many people say that gnome is the linux "windows", one size fits all, they are always right, everyone else must follow then and even include a registry! :D

Re:How pointless is that

[F.Ultra]

However ugly gconf is it's at least not a big binary blob of a database like the Windows registry.

Re:How pointless is that

[higuita]

And currently you can use in any linux strace and maybe gdb to find what the app is doing.
On newer linux distros you have or multiple extra tools, like perf, ltrace, ftrace, lttng, sysdig, eBPF, systemtap

Probably MS will hook strace and maybe some perf, ltrace and maybe eBPF for more advanced things ... lets see how will MS eBPF code will crash the kernel in fun ways! ;)

Re:How pointless is that

[higuita]

so your problem is that you know windows tool and do not know the linux ones... so of course everything is hard that way!

process monitor: duh, strace! more complex things you can use perf or eBPF
resource monitor: are you talking of htop and atop and many other tools that merge those other tools stats?

No idea what is RamMap, but i suspect it is a GUI for /proc/1/smaps and maybe other proc files

Simple "task manager", htop works fine... you do not have network in there, it is included in the IO as linux have not a easy way to map network usage restricted to process

Or maybe you mean that you do not like text based tools? that is ok, there are some GUI tools too, but sysinternals ones will be just one more

Re:How pointless is that

[eneville]

> ProcMon will show you file access attempts to find a DLL

systemtap and dtrace not good enough for you?

Re:How pointless is that

[i.r.id10t]

"Even "simple" Task Manager in Windows 8/10 has nothing even close in Linux - something which shows processes and CPU/Disks/RAM/GPU/NIC utilization in a very easy to understand form. "

You should check out gkrellm (client/local app) and gkrellmd (daemon process for server monitoring) - you get all that plus CPU/GPU temps, fan speeds (CPU and Chassis), voltages and more.

Re:How pointless is that

[dougmc]

Should folks learn these tools? Should folks educate themselves?

That's definitely a fair way of looking at the issue.

I certainly do install cygwin on Windows boxes rather than learn how to really use all the stuff that Windows has to offer natively ...

(I know how to use some of it, but ... for the more complicated stuff, I tend to do it in cygwin because it's easier.)

Re:How pointless is that

[thegarbz]

Extending their own product into a competitors?

I assume you're chasing cheap laughs with your EEE comment and aren't silly enough to think that this is a viable strategy given what they are doing, what product they are targetting or how they are currently operating. If you think it is, then you should go back to the start and re-read how EEE works.

Re:How pointless is that

[mangastudent]

Guess they shouldn't have sent Linus to reeducation camp and imposed one of the worst CoCs known to man, err, xir, hired a non-technical HR type to advise on how to enforce it, including setting up a new Committee of Public Linux Safety. Remove what kept the kernel sane, and who knows how it might eventually get twisted. Meanwhile, I'm moving to OpenBSD (which in all fairness I started because of systemd).

Re:How pointless is that

[fisted]

Besides, in what way does SysInternals go against the Linux way of doing things?

You seem to have gone on autopilot there. I haven't said it's against any way of doing anything. I merely find the idea of porting that amusing (have you even considered how portable sysinternals is going to be given what it does?) and pointless.

Similarly, I install PowerShell when I make a Linux system.

Wow

Re:How pointless is that

[higuita]

uhhhmm ... lets use file... /home/higuita/.config/dconf/user: GVariant Database file, version 0

yes, you are correct, it is a big binary gvariant database, totally different! ;)

This because "apps" need to constantly check for their configs instead of loading a text file on startup... loading a text file every 5s is slow and adding some reload menu option is ugly, so lets use a binary blog so it is 30% faster!

Re:How pointless is that

[spitzak]

ldd also does such recursive searches.

Re:How pointless is that

[Gadget_Guy]

I haven't said it's against any way of doing anything.

Then what does this mean:

...that doesn't mean they want those folks to bring the windows approach to operating systems over to linux

Re:How pointless is that

[rastos1]

strace does not tell you what process accessed the file specified by the filename (I think inotifywait can do that). Or what was the full commandline of process, that produced the event, and is now gone. And it is kind of difficult to track down the IP address and port from socket descriptor (though you can get much information from tcpdump).

Re: How pointless is that

[Provocateur]

Better than getting VenerealD,I suppose, regardless of platform.

Re:How pointless is that

[Ravaldy]

I don't see what the reply has to do with the quoted part, or with the whole comment for that matter.

Maybe, depends how you read the comment

What's fanboyish about pointing out that there's no need to port over the highly Windows-specific ersatz-instrumentation when the target OS already has it?

Why not have more than one option? We have multiple options for spreadsheet editing, document editing, CAD editing, dev IDE... What makes this different? You know a tool and if you can use it across multiple platforms it's a win for the user.

Re:How pointless is that

[F.Ultra]

a fuck, I was almost sure that it was in xml. Must have thought about something else.

Re:How pointless is that

[higuita]

previous gnome versions used gconf, that where many xml files ... as they were many and xml is not that easy to parse, it was slower than it needed to be... that was why they went the binary format for dconf (again, instead of simplifying/reverting to simpler and fewer text files like ini, yml, json) :)

Re:How pointless is that

[caseih]

You're right. I got it wrong. Mod my original post back down and mod spitzak up.

The new code...

[reanjr]

The Linux port operates on the command line, and is simply two line bash scripts and aliases.

Re:I don't know how

[ctilsie242]

There is a difference. Back in the Halloween Documents era, MS wasn't making money from Linux. Now, they make money, hand-over-fist over Linux. That Android phone? MS makes something from each and every one of those. Azure? It doesn't really matter what OS people run on their cloud platform; they get charged for the VM anyway, so might as well make Linux work better.

MS is in an odd position where their financial interests lie in keeping Linux going, so if they want to port some of their useful utilities, more power to them.

with an EULA that gives MS full rights to your

[Joe_Dragon]

with an EULA that gives MS full rights to your system.

Re:with an EULA that gives MS full rights to your

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has stated that, per the USA Patriot Act, the US government could have access to the data even if the hosted company is not American and the data resides outside the USA. However, Microsoft Azure is compliant with the E.U. Data Protection Directive.

That sounds very contradictory. I doubt it is possible to be complaint with US and EU directives at the same time.

Re:with an EULA that gives MS full rights to your

[jgtg32a]

I'm guessing it depends on which data center you are in.

Re: with an EULA that gives MS full rights to your

[reanjr]

Even in the US, EULAs are pretty limited. Much of their content is regularly thrown out. The main thing is that by violating one, you can lose your copyright license to use the software. If you already have critical systems using the software, this can compel you to jump through EULA hoops in order to preserve your license against threat. The issue then becomes copyright law where you have no rights to the software someone makes unless granted.

First they ignore you,

[mackul]

then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. And then you win. Couldn't be happier today ;-)

Re:First they ignore you,

[iggymanz]

nope. that was against colonial Britain.

The U.S. way is how it will be.

they laugh at you, they fight you, they regime change your ass and use your country in an endless war for power and profit.

Extend?

[Gravis Zero]

Now that they have Embraced Linux, now they are Extending Linux. I wonder what's next. ;)

Re:Extend?

[stooo]

Next step is obviously Extinguish.
But this time it could be MS that gets extinguished...

Re:Extend?

[DarkOx]

I think so actually. Nadella I think has been dead wrong on his management of the Windows properties. Opening it up has if anything slowed Windows development down in all the places that are important.

Market share-wise its still king but that could change pretty fast in a progressively more web / network driven experience on the desktop, and the ability to move .NET / MSSQL server over to Linux pretty painless on the server end.

Mind share-wise do you know anyone who is talking about Windows technologies as part of the long term road map; I sure as heck dont. When you IBM suggesting the TCO of managing a bunch of OSX machines is lower than windows desktops... Windows infrastructure in the enterprise is being increasingly seen as 'legacy' and burden to manage. In the cloud space is all "me too me too" "hey you can run docker containers and borne shell scripts on Windows" - "hey who gives a crap why would want to do that?; license fees and 10x the disk foot print are not features."

As far as transitioning to a cloud provider; clap clap clap for Nadella - he took the leading software provider and turned it into the also-ran cloud provider... Microsoft's numbers still look pretty good but the last 3M in the market have not been "great" for them especially compared the broader market. I am struggling to see how MS's current strategy does not ultimately turn it into IBM - a lumbering tech dinosaur that survives on the back of CTO's who have not updated their opinions since the major computing publications stopped issuing printed magazines. Unless there is vision I am not seeing reading the tech press and the investor press - its not a bright future.

Re:Extend?

[thegarbz]

Now that they have Embraced Linux, now they are Extending Linux. I wonder what's next. ;)

Silly quotes by people who don't understand strategies or how they apply?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Windows will become a Linux desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no doubt Windows will become just another Linux desktop eventually. Why bother paying Microsoft people to develop Windows OS when you can develop a hybrid Linux OS that run Windows apps. Obviously Microsoft is focused on Azure, the cloud, and enterprise services. That's where the real money is, not is useless consumer Windows products. Office 365 runs on anything, so its pretty clear Microsoft is not interested in a closed ecosystem anymore.

Re:Windows will become a Linux desktop

[Eravnrekaree]

I can see this happening. The value of Windows kernel is pretty much gone, all it is is another expense on Microsofts budgets, so they could just shed the whole thing. They would mainly be concerned with porting all of their .NET stuff over to Linux as a migration pathway, which is already happening. I can could see them dropping the Windows kernel and replacing it with Linux kernel, basically Windows becoming a Linux distribution, maybe even dropping their C++ compiler and their C-land toolchain as well. It would still be called "windows' but much of the internals would be Linux stuff like the kernel, who knows, maybe even Wayland for graphics stack. A compatability layer (like WINE) for Windows applications to run on top of it. Maybe Microsoft will just fix up WINE to be good enough as a migration path.

BSOD

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi hope they port the BSOD screensaver from the sysinternals kit as well.

Re:BSOD

[Tablizer]

Hi hope they port the BSOD screensaver from the sysinternals kit as well.

They did; it's called "systemd".

Re:BSOD

[antdude]

https://www.jwz.org/xscreensav... has a BSoD screen saver. :P

eat our own dog food

[AndrewFlagg]

oh how the times have come around. .. when only a few core developers used NN 4.while other core developers only drank the MS IE Kool Aid. I miss OS/2 Warp yet I loved the C6 and C7 dev tools along side Borland C .. happy monday.. long live cron...

You mean

[ArchieBunker]

systemd doesn't have APIs for Python to do this already?

Brick wall

[QuietLagoon]

I wonder if the Linux version will show Ballmer's brick wall, just like the Windows version does?

Re:I don't know how

[Anonymous Coward]

RedHat was just bought by IBM. While IBM supports Linux they do tend to mess things up. So maybe the next popular server distro will be Microsoft Linux in a few years? You never know, it could happen.

Other way around

[qzzpjs]

I wish they'd go the other way and port fuser to Windows! I am so tired of Windows telling me I cannot unplug my USB drives because something is using them. But finding that something is almost impossible since process explorer either doesn't see it or just returns svchost. There's about 30 svchost processes running and no one knows what they're being used for.

Re:Other way around

[Wolfrider]

> I am so tired of Windows telling me I cannot unplug my USB drives because something is using them. But finding that something is almost impossible since process explorer either doesn't see it or just returns svchost

--More than likely, it is a virus scanner that is holding the drive hostage. One way around this is to get a USB drive that has a hardware-level write-lock switch such as Kanguru provides. Yanking the drive when it is doing a read operation shouldn't hurt it (CHKDSK if necessary), but everyone should have a backup of their USB drives justincase.

This is one step, not the goal. Someone got confus

[raymorris]

I think there are two possible explanations for this.

Most likely:
The boss figured out there is no reason for Microsoft to keep developing their own kernel when they can just slap their UI on top of Linux. The boss said "port the system internals to Linux". A programmer got confused and ported SysInternals", the toolkit for seeing the system internals.

Also likely:

The eventual goal is to switch the system internals to Linux.
In Agile fashion, Microsoft figured they'd start with a bite-sizdd chunk work that feels like it might be kinda going in that direction. It won't actually be used in the end, because it wasn't planned out, it was Scrumed.

Why?

[DarkOx]

Wouldn't it be easier to make a nice gtk front end for strace or something?

Re:Easing Windows Admins to the Truth

[iggymanz]

are you kidding, the ones that know powershell have mastered the most complicated programming language on planet earth!

Top needed porting too

[cruff]

At one point top needed to be ported to Linux too.

When anyone utters M$ & Linux in the same brea

[Hallux-F-Sinister]

It’s. A. Trick.

Get an axe.

...then you win

[NikeHerc]

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

From Eric Raymond, speaking of open source, and quoting Gandhi.

Which GUI library?

[tepples]

Part of it depends on which GUI library you expect the Python program to use to elicit commands from the user and present results to the user. Out of the box, Python ships with only Tkinter, which can't even handle Unicode code points outside the basic multilingual plane. (See for example bug 30019 and the other bugs that its comment by Terry J. Reedy cites.) I imagine a lot of users would prefer something made with wxWidgets, GTK, or Qt.

Why this is a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand there is a lot of skepticism about this, but I think this is great for the Linux community. While long-time Linux users will never use these tools, it makes the transition cost for the top-tier Windows users a lot smaller.

Most of the stereotypical Windows sysadmins have no idea what these tools are. Their standard troubleshooting involves rebooting, rebuilding, trying some magic registry key that once fixed another problem. Those users will stay in their comfort zone.

The Windows users that understand how an operating system works and truly understand how to use various tools to analyze a problem and troubleshoot it will be able to make the transition. Sure they will use the tools they are familiar with first, but these are the personality types that will adapt. They will not be the proponents to move more Linux into legacy enterprise environments. Many will become valuable contributors to the community.

at least MS already has a head start

[denis-The-menace]

WinInternals (old name for Sysinternals) had a FileMon for Linux.
I still have my copy.

Re:Silos

[ledow]

Precisely.

Though it doesn't mean "put in full support for every theoretical platform", coding to the exclusion of other platforms was always a silly idea.

The problem was the link between, say, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. An office product shouldn't care about what OS it's running on and now that you can get it on others, it's actually more saleable. But that was to the detriment of Windows, which held the monopoly because "it's the only thing that runs Office" (in effect).

When the monopoly was in their favour, they adored it. Now that it's not (i.e. they were shut out from other platforms and beaten by cheaper tools that work everywhere), they are all suddenly "behind" not being part of a monopoly. All it shows is that the courts should have taken harsher action, and faster, because it didn't really hurt Microsoft, but it did hurt the market enormously for a long time.

Steam has had the same kind of realisation but never locked itself into an OS - their slow response is more surprising, they could have support Mac and Linux and even mobile platforms an awfully long time ago, without interfering with their primary money-makers (the games and marketplace store).

Platform-specificity is not a good thing, for consumers or for the businesses that enforce it. If you have a service, you want it accessible to as many potential customers as possible. Anything else is artificial, monopolistic and counter-productive.

Someone please tell Apple. Because I see absolutely no reason that you can't have Mac/iPad services work on a PC/tablet, and work better.

And if MacOS really was SUCH a marvellously better OS, then people would be willing to pay for it, no? (In reality, I don't think it is, and Apple know that, and they know that their hardware is nothing special either - if they stopped the exclusivity and allowed MacOS to run on PC or just sell computers that people can choose the OS they want to run at purchase, they'd see huge losses... cheap PC's would kick their hardware offering's backside, and people would - at best - run MacOS on PC and get more out of it.)

All these platform-lock-ins profit only the businesses that enforce them, and only for short-terms, and to the detriment of the consumers. And it's VERY profitable, as Microsoft and Apple have shown, and yet still they "lose" regularly.

I've never worked out how Apple forcing you to "buy" MacOS on their machines (despite being capable of running other OS quite easily) is any different to what Microsoft did/do. Or what Google are being rebuked for with Android. Same for bundling office apps, things like Pages, Garageband, etc. and services like iTunes.

If your service is really that good, you'll let me use it from the platform of my choice.

It's a trap!

[kbg]

It's a trap!

Re: This is one step, not the goal. Someone got co

[SirSlud]

Everyone here is dumber for having read your theory.

MS bought SysInternals in july of 07...

[Anonymous Coward]

you know when MS first "bought" sysinternals a long time ago ... it created the dilema for open source / closed source. Why? Well that's easy. Sysinternal's was already linux based and free!

so MS now wants to release sysinternals ...

would anyone like a complete copy of sysinternals ... i still have a few thumb drives with the open source linux software and the new MS owned version. Yes I was there back then...

ps
get off my lawn!

i think i'll visit a torrent site and upload ...

Re:This is one step, not the goal. Someone got con

[LostMyAccount]

I kind of wonder if Microsoft actually *has* considered this and how much work it would actually take to port the UI to Linux. I'm guessing at some point it's a weird bastard with just the kernal calls swapped but most of the shared code still in external dynamic libraries.

Who's driving this truck?

[ellbee]

Hmmm.... the author of SysInternals (many, many years ago) is the CTO of Azure - coincidence?

This is SO deep into Coals to Newcastle territory.

[outlander]

Umm, Linux must need this because there's a complete dearth of tools for performing diagnostics on Linux and *NIX platforms.

It's heartbreaking how Linux SAs just don't have any choices of tools. Poor things.....they will welcome this new gift from our Corporate Masters! ;)

Re:Silos

[Guspaz]

> But that was to the detriment of Windows, which held the monopoly because "it's the only thing that runs Office" (in effect).

This has never been true, though. Office basically started out as Macintosh exclusive software that was ported to Windows years later. This was the case for Excel and PowerPoint, and for a span of four years, Word existed only for DOS and Macintosh. Office has always been available on the Mac,

Re:This is one step, not the goal. Someone got con

[eneville]

How confused would this website be if that happened? Would we finally declare it the year of Linux on the desktop, or would we gnash our teeth about Microsoft being in the end stage of the "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy?

I think linux has done EEE to MS. You now have WSL, there's a better console now, powershell is on Linux, it even has a solitaire clone. I mean the Windows clone is good, but its not as good as the Linux one.

Re:Embrace, extend, extinguish.

[eneville]

Learn these words.

I don't see how EEE[1] applies here, though I don't know how it applies since unless it is GPL'd it'll never find its way into core distros.

1: fun fact, it's roughly the 20th anniversary of the Halloween documents.

Re:uhm.. Why?

[eneville]

> netstat

ss deprecated 'netstat', though that is a Windows thing too.

'strace' on windows would be handy.

One of the things that makes Windows such a dead and forgotten OS is the lack of basic tools in the default install. It's a real PITA to get tcpdump or even telnet on a Windows machine. Linux is light years ahead in this respect. Given the lack of ease in operationally supporting Windows it's no surprise that no dev person wants to go near it.

Re:Embrace, extend, extinguish.

[TooTechy]

EEE works by allowing users to experience a consistent set of tools across platforms. These tools, over a long period of time, will dumb down a generation of users. After some time, you allow the quality of the tools on one platform to slip somewhat. Just a little. At that point the other platform starts to become slightly more preferable. No. Everyone wont switch to Windows. But there would be some who will.

cmd.exe

[trb]

Oh gee, while they're in the neighborhood, I hope they port CMD.EXE to Linux. Sometimes a hacker just gotta get his DOS on.

not being a windows guy...

[JustNiz]

Sorry but not being a Windows guy I have to ask:
What does sysinternals bring to the party that we can't already achieve with existing Linux-based tools?

Re:First they ignore you, then write the history.

[mackul]

So does that make Linux a monoculture since it's the winners that write history?

Just in case you're reading slashdot and have some connection to IT, you should be able to know that Linux cannot become or me a "monoculture", because there are so many "flavours" of it. Do you remember the famous Microsoft poster against that diversity in Linux which would be dangerous? https://www.armoredpenguin.com... Today, that poster would have to show a dozen or so more penguins: from a small one (for Raspi, e.g.) up to the mammuth or whale version running on the world's largest supercomputers.

It would be stupid not to. But how seriously?

[raymorris]

It seems to me that since high-quality free kernels are available, it would be stupid to NOT spend a few minutes considering the option. They must have thought about it *a little bit*. How seriously they considered / consider it is the question.

Re:Embrace, extend, extinguish.

[eneville]

Isn't that what WSL gave Windows folk?

Re:Don't kick them when they are down

[NikeHerc]

MS lost the Operating System tug of war. We can cut them some slack now.

No, don't cut them any slack, not as long as ms is a profitable company. They wouldn't cut you any slack. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish which says '"Embrace, extend, and extinguish", also known as "Embrace, extend, and exterminate", is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found was used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences to strongly disadvantage its competitors.'

I prefer what George S. Patton said: "Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more."

Sic'em, Linus!