Uhm you know that you can run MySQL on Windows as well right? If you're going to put expensive proprietary db on Windows, might as well at least put the price of Oracle + RH Enterprise (any supported system) on the Linux side to keep things close to fair.
Without any extra programs (note: I'm saying that "yum" is an "extra" program here.)
Define extra program? This comes with distributions at times, and is built right into rpm. Would up2date, urpmi or apt be considered extra programs?
It's just that I can take a computer, set it to network boot, and have it completly re-formatted with all needed apps installed in 1.5 hours, without any user interaction other than the start of the network boot. Also, all updates applied, and joined to the domain. Yes, I can do that with linux, but currently it's FAR easier with windows.
With the quick use of redhat-config-kickstart and a dhcp config file, I was able to set up a cluster on the top 200 of the top500.org super computer list. It took exactly five minutes of configuration and 30 minutes of me pressing power buttons (over 200 nodes) to machines that were set to boot off the network. Total installation time for install/updates/reboot, a little over ten minutes each. I know for a fact that RIS and/or Ghost take a hell of a lot longer than that.
To a point, yes, but it's funny that I can stick my business with Word 2000 and just leave it. You don't need the upgrades if all you're doing is word processing/macro processing.
I understand that you DON'T have to upgrade, but what about when MS EOL's their products with regards to security? When RH EOL'd RHL 7.3/8/9, there formed Fedora-Legacy, Progeny Updates and a few other groups that provided security and bug fixes. That's one advantage that Linux will always have, as long as there is an interest something will be maintained indefinately. If there isn't an interest, and you have money to pay a developer it can also be maintained indefinately. People may see RHL's EOL of 7.3/8/9 as a forced upgrade, but the truth of the matter is that the EOL showed no Linux vendor can kill a distro that the PEOPLE want around still.
dont forget to deploy, patch, re-train, hire, and install all those darn apps
1) Deploying on Linux is very easy, especially with a little kickstart and dhcp.
2) Patching in Linux is easier, especially with tools like yum and what not. It's nice to patch all the apps too, not like MS with just the OS. If you want to patch Office you need to have a cd and all that bullshit.
3) Retraining is a must regardless, every few years MS crams another version of Office down your throat. Hell why bother to retrain, get a few cheap $40 licenses for Crossover, still cheaper than an MS desktop and use the existing Word licenses.
4) Hire? I don't get it...
5) With scripting and yum I can deploy a new app on an entire 200 cluster in less than a minute. Try doing that with Windows!
Most things that have GUIDs also have a text name associated with them in the registry. Have them search for that name. Devices using them is pretty rare though. I wouldn't suggest debugging COM references over a phone line. Also, this isn't an inherant flaw of the registry, but how it is used.
I don't think you are making anything up. I also agree that Windows has much weaker command line support than Unix. If you wanted Unix commands, there is always Cygwin.
My original point was that Windows console is more of an afterthought than a powerful system for accomplishing tasks.
I thought that eth0 was just the first installed adapter. In Windows's Object Manager, network devices are named starting with \Device\Network0. Most things use the long name and you can change that to anything you want.
Not the first installed, the first addressed. Once again I wasn't calling it THE primary nic, but the nic I primarily use (and in my case, the only nic). As far as the \Device\Network0, ipconfig doesn't seem to take that as an input on my box. A consistent naming convention for nics doesn't exist, in a gui world it doesn't have to.
I don't share your conspiracy theory about the registry being hard to use on purpose. The point of the registry is to provide a standardized configuration database for everything. Hardly anything in Unix is standardized; every single config file has a unique and incompatible format.
I have 2 books on the registry, one out of date one from MS Press and one from O'Reilly for Win2k Registry. They both point to these three points in making the registry: 1) The registry was made to provide a single place to store data (ie a single point of failure) 2) The registry was created to be harder to edit (ini files were easy to edit, and users would screw themselves over all the time) 3) The registry was to have a defined hierarchy
That is a globally unique identifier (GUID), to provide stronger identification than a text name. Its meaning depends on context. For devices, its similar to the devices in/dev that are called a number, like/dev/10. The stuff in HKEY_CLASSES refer to COM class and interface IDs. The GUID you mentioned is for the COM class CSCardTypeConv in the library scardssp.dll; a type library for the Smart Card Base Service Providers. This class is for converting various datatypes specific to smart card providers. One little registry search told me that.
So instead of/dev/blah I get {53B6AA67-3F56-11D0-916B-00AA00C18068}, great. If my machine gets screwed I'll have a jolly old time calling someone trying to tell them {53B6AA67-3F56-11D0-916B-00AA00C18068} (or something like it) over the phone. The registry should be easier than this...
We try to push them towards Thundirbird. I mean there is nothing I can think of that Eudora does that Thundirbird doesn't (other than suck) and lots of things it can't do.
I know of one thing that Thunderbird can't do, and it's a very important feature in Windows. That is, integrate with a Virus Scanner, obviously not Thunderbirds fault. However if you get an e-mail with a virus, the virus scanner tends to delete the infected file which in Thunderbird also stores all your previous e-mails. So if you use pop, instead of imap, and are running a Virus Scanner, be afraid... be very afraid.
Once again an afterthought. You yourself couldn't find something as common or simple as cut. Besides, most of these can't do everything you can do in the GUI, some don't even come close such as cacls. Don't even act like I'm making this shit up, even the MS group that converted Hotmail acknowledged this, why won't you Mr. Fanboy?
ipconfig | find "IP Address" I can't find an equivalent to cut. BTW there is no such thing as a 'primary' nic.
There is no primary nic, in the 'this hard drive is the master hard drive on the primary ide channel.' but there is still a nic you use the most. That was my point, on Linux I can pull info on just eth0. On Windows, there is no standard naming convention for nics. These are useful things for remote administration.
What's so unreadable about the registry, including the text version? Documentation isn't inline, but it is freely available. Services are supposed put their config info under HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\[ServiceNam e]. the DNS server is called DNS. For some reason, the zone info is under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DNS Server. The DHCP server is called DHCPServer. Much of DHCP's runtime data is in a Jet database named in the registry, usually dhcp.mdb in system32\dhcp. If you can't figure out the name of a service, look in the services control panel and go to properties. It will be in the 'Service Name' field.
Fan boy in it's finest. The whole point to the registry was to make it harder for people because the Win.ini/System.ini were too easily modified. It's in the MS Press Book on the registry. The fucking thing is worse than a sendmail.cf.
Don't believe me, tell me what the hell {53B6AA67-3F56-11D0-916B-00AA00C18068} means.
I'd like to help the community and I could actually install mozilla on several dozen of the PCs that I administer but the curve is too high for non-geeks. I will continue to use IE and endorse it with this kind of response.
My girlfriend is as non-geek as you can get. When I removed IE from the Desktop and replaced it with a Firefox Icon, she didn't even miss a beat. As long as all her bookmarks imported she could care less what was displaying the site.
That said, I don't think I've ever seen anyone miss a beat when using Firefox as opposed to IE. To most people, a browser, is a browser, is a browser...
What do you mean, they don't work? Are you talking about some third-party program that doesn't use the console correctly? Mabye you aren't using them correctly?
On Windows, console support is an afterthought. Face it, most Windows programs don't have a console api for administration period.
Windows commands don't work well together? What about find, for and cmd? How about all the Windows Scripting host commands?
Ok, show me how to pull out just the ip address on the primary nic of your machine in Windows on the console. On Linux it is done with ifconfig, grep and cut all working together. Show me Windows console apps that work the same way.
Let's say I want a drawing package. How do I find one? I don't know that there is one called 'inkscape'. All I know is that I want a drawing package.
Same way you find out in Windows what app you want to install. Either you hit up a search engine or ask someone who knows more than you.
You can create ASCII and Unicode files of your registry settings, too. See Regedit->File->Export or the command reg export.
How useful is that. In Linux, config files actually are damn near human readable (with the exception of sendmail, you need a Cylon to decipher one of those). Could you tell me all the relevant keys for any Windows Service such as DHCP or DNS? On Linux it would all be under/etc/dhcpd.conf or/etc/named.conf.
I'm no Linux Fan Boy or anything, but Windows is not as rosy as you people make it out to be.
There's no equivalent to su, but there is an equivalent to sudo... the RunAs Service, available in 32-bit Windows since Windows 2000.
Actually this is more like 'su -c' than sudo. When I type sudo foobar, it asks me for MY password and continues. If I type su root -c foobar, it asks for the root password and executes foobar as root.
NTFS may be more reliable, but on Win2000 and WinXP, I submit that unplanned shutdowns are less frequent and only rarely do I have to run a chkdsk on bootup because a FAT32 partition wasn't unmounted cleanly.
NTFS is not just more reliable, but it also has security on the filesystem. Remember with FAT32, all you can do is file sharing permissions. If someone logs in locally they have full control over the entire file system. NTFS by default is the same way, but can be locked down.
I see no justification for this based on current activity. People want cheap everything. They don't care what they pay for a computer. They just want it to work. If someone hears that their computer is FREE and they just have to pay for the OS they are going to jump at the chance!
Bullshit, else everyone would have Pseudo Computers such as MSN TV or other devices that only do the bare minimum and are dirt cheap.
It is likely going to be a slow process. Something like how they are testing the waters with the XBox. Lock the hardware, sell it cheap, and charge out the ass for the games...
It's possible that M$ could do that, but then it didn't work the first time when it was called MCA (IBM) or Beta (Sony).
It's going to take a few years for people to slowly become accustomed to it (it's already happened as we are paying for Windows with our new systems) but in the end MS will prevail in this instance.
I don't know about that. If anything Apple is cashing in on a lot of people just fed up with Microsoft. In addition, systems like Linux are really gaining ground. I don't think it's as clearcut as you do, but then again I don't expect M$ to disappear anytime soon.
Basically what I'm saying is, your anecdotal evidence is no better than mine.
Not true. Most of my post isn't anecdotal evidence, it's clear, specifies version numbers and specific issues with specific OS's and hardware. While your post is purely anecdotal, and offers absolutely none of the specifics.
I was clear in picking on the Intel NIC with Windows because I've dealt with a variety of them, a quick google will confirm that you have to be specific with the right driver. On Linux, the Intel 10/100's all work under the e100 driver, or the legacy eepro100 driver. Also quicky verifiable facts.
Changing out the cd drive on an old g4 will make you lose the ability to install or boot of cd. That's very specific, and a quick google will confirm that this is a known issue, and one that Apple will not address because it keeps their minions paying premiums for equipment.
Saying "In general, the Macs work out of the box with hardware that isn't even supposed to be supported.", well that's anecdotal, does't even say what OS, type of devices or anything else. Is it running YellowDog, NetBSD, Mandrake PPC, Mac OSX, Mac OS9 or Under? A Macintosh is a line of hardware, not an Operating System.
Virtually every USB/1394 storage device is a plug-and-go affair. Same for printing devices, etc. Linux is reluctant to do even this...
FC2 detects all my usb devices (mem stick, dvd burner, usb key) and even automounts them without any problems.
OSX 10.1 wouldn't even detect a standard USB CD Burner. In addition my buddy replaced his cd burner on his G4 with a faster cd burner and he could no longer do the following:
1) Boot of CD 2) Install Apps from CD
He was able to use it to play music and read burned data cd's and burn cd's. Quite a bit of lost functionality.
Basically what I'm saying is that OSX is very Apple Centric, using third party stuff usually doesnt work and that Linux is way ahead of OSX in terms of compatibility because it has to. It runs on standard x86 hardware, and has support better than the latest Windows out the box these days.
Hell Windows needs fifty different drivers for a Intel EtherExpress 10/100 NIC, Linux can use one.
And you think that's bad, I have a WRT54AB. It doesnt speak dhcp properly so a great many devices need to be set with statics, a pain for VoIP like packet8 that demands dhcp.
hehe there is an even easier solution. Use Deepfreeze. Lock down the machine with the actual OS it will use, allow them to write to one dir. If anything goes wrong just reboot.
This compatibility was achieved in the Wine way by using the original Microsoft Windows ntfs.sys driver. It emulates the required subsystems of the Microsoft Windows kernel by reusing one of the original ntoskrnl.exe, ReactOS parts, or this project's own reimplementations, on a case by case basis. Project includes the first open source MS-Windows kernel API for Free operating systems. Involvement of the original driver files was chosen to achieve the best and unprecedented filesystem compatibility and safety.
Slashdot Mirror
Finally a cross platform tcp/ip stack available for all to use . . . oh wait
Uhm you know that you can run MySQL on Windows as well right? If you're going to put expensive proprietary db on Windows, might as well at least put the price of Oracle + RH Enterprise (any supported system) on the Linux side to keep things close to fair.
I only have a few commments about your post:
Without any extra programs (note: I'm saying that "yum" is an "extra" program here.)
Define extra program? This comes with distributions at times, and is built right into rpm. Would up2date, urpmi or apt be considered extra programs?
It's just that I can take a computer, set it to network boot, and have it completly re-formatted with all needed apps installed in 1.5 hours, without any user interaction other than the start of the network boot. Also, all updates applied, and joined to the domain. Yes, I can do that with linux, but currently it's FAR easier with windows.
With the quick use of redhat-config-kickstart and a dhcp config file, I was able to set up a cluster on the top 200 of the top500.org super computer list. It took exactly five minutes of configuration and 30 minutes of me pressing power buttons (over 200 nodes) to machines that were set to boot off the network. Total installation time for install/updates/reboot, a little over ten minutes each. I know for a fact that RIS and/or Ghost take a hell of a lot longer than that.
To a point, yes, but it's funny that I can stick my business with Word 2000 and just leave it. You don't need the upgrades if all you're doing is word processing/macro processing.
I understand that you DON'T have to upgrade, but what about when MS EOL's their products with regards to security? When RH EOL'd RHL 7.3/8/9, there formed Fedora-Legacy, Progeny Updates and a few other groups that provided security and bug fixes. That's one advantage that Linux will always have, as long as there is an interest something will be maintained indefinately. If there isn't an interest, and you have money to pay a developer it can also be maintained indefinately. People may see RHL's EOL of 7.3/8/9 as a forced upgrade, but the truth of the matter is that the EOL showed no Linux vendor can kill a distro that the PEOPLE want around still.
That's why I stick with DOS, 0 remote root exploits in over 20 years. Even OpenBSD can't touch that record . . .
You mean Big Macs run Linux now? ;)
Yeah, but much like the original Mac linux port, it still uses the NetBSD boot loader.
dont forget to deploy, patch, re-train, hire, and install all those darn apps
1) Deploying on Linux is very easy, especially with a little kickstart and dhcp.
2) Patching in Linux is easier, especially with tools like yum and what not. It's nice to patch all the apps too, not like MS with just the OS. If you want to patch Office you need to have a cd and all that bullshit.
3) Retraining is a must regardless, every few years MS crams another version of Office down your throat. Hell why bother to retrain, get a few cheap $40 licenses for Crossover, still cheaper than an MS desktop and use the existing Word licenses.
4) Hire? I don't get it...
5) With scripting and yum I can deploy a new app on an entire 200 cluster in less than a minute. Try doing that with Windows!
Oh My God, this has got to be one of the funniest posts I've ever seen. Especially the Roswell and douching myths.
Thou art one creative Slashdotter . . .
Most things that have GUIDs also have a text name associated with them in the registry. Have them search for that name. Devices using them is pretty rare though. I wouldn't suggest debugging COM references over a phone line.
Also, this isn't an inherant flaw of the registry, but how it is used.
In theory, communism works . . .
I don't think you are making anything up. I also agree that Windows has much weaker command line support than Unix. If you wanted Unix commands, there is always Cygwin.
/dev that are called a number, like /dev/10. The stuff in HKEY_CLASSES refer to COM class and interface IDs.
/dev/blah I get {53B6AA67-3F56-11D0-916B-00AA00C18068}, great. If my machine gets screwed I'll have a jolly old time calling someone trying to tell them {53B6AA67-3F56-11D0-916B-00AA00C18068} (or something like it) over the phone. The registry should be easier than this...
My original point was that Windows console is more of an afterthought than a powerful system for accomplishing tasks.
I thought that eth0 was just the first installed adapter.
In Windows's Object Manager, network devices are named starting with \Device\Network0. Most things use the long name and you can change that to anything you want.
Not the first installed, the first addressed. Once again I wasn't calling it THE primary nic, but the nic I primarily use (and in my case, the only nic). As far as the \Device\Network0, ipconfig doesn't seem to take that as an input on my box. A consistent naming convention for nics doesn't exist, in a gui world it doesn't have to.
I don't share your conspiracy theory about the registry being hard to use on purpose. The point of the registry is to provide a standardized configuration database for everything. Hardly anything in Unix is standardized; every single config file has a unique and incompatible format.
I have 2 books on the registry, one out of date one from MS Press and one from O'Reilly for Win2k Registry. They both point to these three points in making the registry:
1) The registry was made to provide a single place to store data (ie a single point of failure)
2) The registry was created to be harder to edit (ini files were easy to edit, and users would screw themselves over all the time)
3) The registry was to have a defined hierarchy
That is a globally unique identifier (GUID), to provide stronger identification than a text name. Its meaning depends on context. For devices, its similar to the devices in
The GUID you mentioned is for the COM class CSCardTypeConv in the library scardssp.dll; a type library for the Smart Card Base Service Providers. This class is for converting various datatypes specific to smart card providers.
One little registry search told me that.
So instead of
We try to push them towards Thundirbird. I mean there is nothing I can think of that Eudora does that Thundirbird doesn't (other than suck) and lots of things it can't do.
I know of one thing that Thunderbird can't do, and it's a very important feature in Windows. That is, integrate with a Virus Scanner, obviously not Thunderbirds fault. However if you get an e-mail with a virus, the virus scanner tends to delete the infected file which in Thunderbird also stores all your previous e-mails. So if you use pop, instead of imap, and are running a Virus Scanner, be afraid... be very afraid.
XP adds several commands.
m e]. the DNS server is called DNS. For some reason, the zone info is under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DNS Server.
Once again an afterthought. You yourself couldn't find something as common or simple as cut. Besides, most of these can't do everything you can do in the GUI, some don't even come close such as cacls. Don't even act like I'm making this shit up, even the MS group that converted Hotmail acknowledged this, why won't you Mr. Fanboy?
ipconfig | find "IP Address"
I can't find an equivalent to cut.
BTW there is no such thing as a 'primary' nic.
There is no primary nic, in the 'this hard drive is the master hard drive on the primary ide channel.' but there is still a nic you use the most. That was my point, on Linux I can pull info on just eth0. On Windows, there is no standard naming convention for nics. These are useful things for remote administration.
What's so unreadable about the registry, including the text version? Documentation isn't inline, but it is freely available.
Services are supposed put their config info under HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\[ServiceNa
The DHCP server is called DHCPServer. Much of DHCP's runtime data is in a Jet database named in the registry, usually dhcp.mdb in system32\dhcp.
If you can't figure out the name of a service, look in the services control panel and go to properties. It will be in the 'Service Name' field.
Fan boy in it's finest. The whole point to the registry was to make it harder for people because the Win.ini/System.ini were too easily modified. It's in the MS Press Book on the registry. The fucking thing is worse than a sendmail.cf.
Don't believe me, tell me what the hell {53B6AA67-3F56-11D0-916B-00AA00C18068} means.
I'd like to help the community and I could actually install mozilla on several dozen of the PCs that I administer but the curve is too high for non-geeks. I will continue to use IE and endorse it with this kind of response.
My girlfriend is as non-geek as you can get. When I removed IE from the Desktop and replaced it with a Firefox Icon, she didn't even miss a beat. As long as all her bookmarks imported she could care less what was displaying the site.
That said, I don't think I've ever seen anyone miss a beat when using Firefox as opposed to IE. To most people, a browser, is a browser, is a browser...
What do you mean, they don't work? Are you talking about some third-party program that doesn't use the console correctly? Mabye you aren't using them correctly?
/etc/dhcpd.conf or /etc/named.conf.
On Windows, console support is an afterthought. Face it, most Windows programs don't have a console api for administration period.
Windows commands don't work well together? What about find, for and cmd? How about all the Windows Scripting host commands?
Ok, show me how to pull out just the ip address on the primary nic of your machine in Windows on the console. On Linux it is done with ifconfig, grep and cut all working together. Show me Windows console apps that work the same way.
Let's say I want a drawing package. How do I find one? I don't know that there is one called 'inkscape'. All I know is that I want a drawing package.
Same way you find out in Windows what app you want to install. Either you hit up a search engine or ask someone who knows more than you.
You can create ASCII and Unicode files of your registry settings, too. See Regedit->File->Export or the command reg export.
How useful is that. In Linux, config files actually are damn near human readable (with the exception of sendmail, you need a Cylon to decipher one of those). Could you tell me all the relevant keys for any Windows Service such as DHCP or DNS? On Linux it would all be under
I'm no Linux Fan Boy or anything, but Windows is not as rosy as you people make it out to be.
There's no equivalent to su, but there is an equivalent to sudo ... the RunAs Service, available in 32-bit Windows since Windows 2000.
Actually this is more like 'su -c' than sudo. When I type sudo foobar, it asks me for MY password and continues. If I type su root -c foobar, it asks for the root password and executes foobar as root.
NTFS may be more reliable, but on Win2000 and WinXP, I submit that unplanned shutdowns are less frequent and only rarely do I have to run a chkdsk on bootup because a FAT32 partition wasn't unmounted cleanly.
NTFS is not just more reliable, but it also has security on the filesystem. Remember with FAT32, all you can do is file sharing permissions. If someone logs in locally they have full control over the entire file system. NTFS by default is the same way, but can be locked down.
I see no justification for this based on current activity. People want cheap everything. They don't care what they pay for a computer. They just want it to work. If someone hears that their computer is FREE and they just have to pay for the OS they are going to jump at the chance!
Bullshit, else everyone would have Pseudo Computers such as MSN TV or other devices that only do the bare minimum and are dirt cheap.
It is likely going to be a slow process. Something like how they are testing the waters with the XBox. Lock the hardware, sell it cheap, and charge out the ass for the games...
It's possible that M$ could do that, but then it didn't work the first time when it was called MCA (IBM) or Beta (Sony).
It's going to take a few years for people to slowly become accustomed to it (it's already happened as we are paying for Windows with our new systems) but in the end MS will prevail in this instance.
I don't know about that. If anything Apple is cashing in on a lot of people just fed up with Microsoft. In addition, systems like Linux are really gaining ground. I don't think it's as clearcut as you do, but then again I don't expect M$ to disappear anytime soon.
Basically what I'm saying is, your anecdotal evidence is no better than mine.
Not true. Most of my post isn't anecdotal evidence, it's clear, specifies version numbers and specific issues with specific OS's and hardware. While your post is purely anecdotal, and offers absolutely none of the specifics.
I was clear in picking on the Intel NIC with Windows because I've dealt with a variety of them, a quick google will confirm that you have to be specific with the right driver. On Linux, the Intel 10/100's all work under the e100 driver, or the legacy eepro100 driver. Also quicky verifiable facts.
Changing out the cd drive on an old g4 will make you lose the ability to install or boot of cd. That's very specific, and a quick google will confirm that this is a known issue, and one that Apple will not address because it keeps their minions paying premiums for equipment.
Saying "In general, the Macs work out of the box with hardware that isn't even supposed to be supported.", well that's anecdotal, does't even say what OS, type of devices or anything else. Is it running YellowDog, NetBSD, Mandrake PPC, Mac OSX, Mac OS9 or Under? A Macintosh is a line of hardware, not an Operating System.
Virtually every USB/1394 storage device is a plug-and-go affair. Same for printing devices, etc. Linux is reluctant to do even this...
FC2 detects all my usb devices (mem stick, dvd burner, usb key) and even automounts them without any problems.
OSX 10.1 wouldn't even detect a standard USB CD Burner. In addition my buddy replaced his cd burner on his G4 with a faster cd burner and he could no longer do the following:
1) Boot of CD
2) Install Apps from CD
He was able to use it to play music and read burned data cd's and burn cd's. Quite a bit of lost functionality.
Basically what I'm saying is that OSX is very Apple Centric, using third party stuff usually doesnt work and that Linux is way ahead of OSX in terms of compatibility because it has to. It runs on standard x86 hardware, and has support better than the latest Windows out the box these days.
Hell Windows needs fifty different drivers for a Intel EtherExpress 10/100 NIC, Linux can use one.
I realize that. However it doesn't ship with a default static that it falls back on if it can't find a usable dhcp server.
I set up dhcpd on my Linux desktop, assigned it an ip and then configured it with a static ip for use with my braindead linksys router.
Not too hard for myself, but a long way from just plug into any router that does dhcp, which is what they claim on their web site.
And you think that's bad, I have a WRT54AB. It doesnt speak dhcp properly so a great many devices need to be set with statics, a pain for VoIP like packet8 that demands dhcp.
In addition it doesn't renew its lease properly.
I believe Apple has the monopoly on charging $100 for minor upgrades, ala OSX.
Nigga Please!
hehe there is an even easier solution. Use Deepfreeze. Lock down the machine with the actual OS it will use, allow them to write to one dir. If anything goes wrong just reboot.
www.deepfreezeusa.com
Apparently it can be done. Take a look at this.
http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/
This compatibility was achieved in the Wine way by using the original Microsoft Windows ntfs.sys driver. It emulates the required subsystems of the Microsoft Windows kernel by reusing one of the original ntoskrnl.exe, ReactOS parts, or this project's own reimplementations, on a case by case basis. Project includes the first open source MS-Windows kernel API for Free operating systems. Involvement of the original driver files was chosen to achieve the best and unprecedented filesystem compatibility and safety.
As I understand it, the IA-32 architecture does not support NX. I don't think you could just tack it on as an afterthought and have it work.
There are some kernel patches such as grsecurity which do emulate this functionality in the kernel, but that brings performance down.