Novell is to investigate whether it can give customers the option of a Windows kernel for its Netware operating system. Earlier this week the company said it will offer customers the choice between a Netware and Linux kernel for Netware 7, which is due next autumn, but the company also plans to research whether it can offer a Windows kernel option.
Novell to Investigate Windows Kernel Option
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Eugenia Loli
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…well this just seems wrong
given the fierce war between novell and microsoft over the small/medium business server space …. is this not just adding insult to injury?
>> given the fierce war between novell and microsoft over the small/medium business server space <<
Which fierce war, brother? The war has long been ended, and you know who the winner is. What happened to Novell is exactly what will happen to Unix servers on the high end –if they continue with their 30-year old habits
and what habbits are that?
Annoying command line, crappy font rendering, extremely slow UI, etc. I swear if I see a Linux developer in real life I’m going to bloody his nose, that’s how frustrated I am with Linux.
given the fierce war between novell and microsoft
er… so it’s a “war” between an already dead and buried moribund, and a brisk lion with sharp fangs.
On this point, you will not feel i’m cheating if i bet on Bill ? ;-)))
That says more about you not being aware of recent developments than that Unix is stuck in the past.
> Annoying command line,
But still 100x better than DOS and perfect for data management. There are a lot of things that I can do faster in the commandline (using shell patterns) than with a GUI.
And no, I’m not an old school Unix user, I started with Windows 95.
> crappy font rendering
Fontconfig, Xft and Freetype2. ’nuff said. You’re just ignorant to the reality.
> extremely slow UI
Go get some well-supported hardware then. Don’t even get me started about how slow Win95 is with the SVGA driver!
> I swear if I see a Linux developer in real life I’m going
> to bloody his nose, that’s how frustrated I am with Linux.
Oh sure come on, I’ll beat you up before you know it. That’s how frustrated I am with YOU!
So let me get this straight. They’ve announced they’re going to offer the choice of the novel or windows kernel, er, if the windows kernel is feasible and if it works at all. Reminds me of GM and their electric cars. ‘We’ll be selling electric cars in 2000!, er, if we can extend their range and improve their performance, that is.’
How can you just switch a kernel in an OS? Don’t you need to replace every app then? Will it be possible to run Windows apps when using a Windows kernel? Thanks in advance.
Basically, if you code things right, changing kernels is just a matter of recompiling. For instance, IIRC once GNU Hurd comes out *cough* Debian is planning to support it, they already have limited support for it.
Since the Novell kernel is already some sort of mutated DOS, going from that to the a new Windows kernel shouldn’t be that hard. And you can create compability layers (like cygwin) if theres something missing or different on one of the kernels.
That PBS guy Cringely actually suggested Windows should start using the Linux kernel half-seriously.
You can do this because the meat and potatoes of NetWare
are in the services it provides. They want to move the
services to the more popular platforms. Should not be
a real problem to implement such a thing. The problem is
deciding what to keep and what to scrap. For instance do
they really need their file system on these other platforms
or do they use what’s already there? Then NetWare FS is
pretty nice from a lot of standpoints and NSS is getting
better all the time (last I used it was 3 years ago so it might be a total pos by now but I have heard good things).
Anyway, it’s really not that big of a deal except to the people still using it….
Annoying command line?
What has the command line done to you? My command line just looks at me.
Crappy font rendering?
Crappy font rendering on a server is not a problem. It’s a server not a desktop. Why do you need pretty fonts anyways? Are you running a resource hogging GUI?
Extremely slow running UI?
You are running a GUI! Why? Are you that adverse to learning how to use the command line? Point and click admins are not admins. Perhaps if the frickin’ command line would stop being so darn annoying you could learn Linux.
I swear if I see a Linux developer in real life I’m going to bloody his nose, that’s how frustrated I am with Linux.
You probably won’t. They’re usually working on Linux and other projects. They simply don’t have any face-punching time these days. While you’re waiting waiting to exact your revenge for being born “special”, try picking up a book on programming. Books can be tricky too. They have lots of text and no pretty buttons that make them go. Good luck!
don’t insult my beloved!!! 😉
>Annoying command line, crappy font rendering, extremely
>slow UI, etc. I swear if I see a Linux developer in real
>life I’m going to bloody his nose, that’s how frustrated
>I am with Linux.
don’t like command line? winders has one too.
switch to mac & shutup.
you’re frustrated because you’re stupid.
and stupid people suck.
And by the kernel I mean everything that runs in kernel mode. That includes all of the gui. Then (since you can’t modify their source) you have to work around any incompatibilites that are built into the kernel. Then to make the kernel work you would have to make sure that you have the right versions of all the user space tools (win32 subsystem mainly)that the kernel relies on to function properly. Then you would have to pay the full license fee for the windows install to microsoft (for windos) and to Novell (for Netware). I really don’t see how this would help anyone.
Are you that adverse to learning how to use the command line? Point and click admins are not admins.
This is the same kind of mindset that says all Windows users are stupid – just more elitist bullshit from the CLI whores.
and mac has got one now! (finally)
ssh and go.
yep Groupwise, Zenworks, NDS, and even border manager would be great for linux.. specially for an upgrade/migration path. ..Not sure what the meaning of immature meant, but I am sure it was the usual idiot complex from senior mis-informed execs..
> This is the same kind of mindset that says all Windows users
> are stupid – just more elitist bullshit from the CLI whores
Nope, it’s a proven fact that in many cases, especially remote management, the commandline is more efficient. I started out with Windows 95 and now I can’t live with a decent commandline (which Windows does not have!)
Your statement is just more “I-Dont-Use-A-Commandline-So-I-Am-Better-Than-You” elitism from GUI whores.
the NetWare kernel has absolutely nothing to do with dos. NetWare was a 32 bit kernel since the very days of 386. And even in the days of 286, it utilized all the advanced features of that CPU (including it’s increased address space and virtual mode). NetWare has always been a modular microkernel, with it’s own drivers, memory manager etc. It has as much in common with DOS as a fridge has with the Golden Gate.
i dont know how u can say command line is crap ?? and if it was why are Microsft trying to get python, perl and better shell scripting support for “their” new shell which they want to make like linux ?? lol
Snake
I can’t believe you guys wassting your time arguing OT about whether the cli or gui is essential. Different people need to use different ones in different circumstances. Understand the DIFFERENCE?
… for “their” new shell which they want to make like linux ??
Oh, so that’s a Linux innovation then?
And, duh, Linux is a kernel. Even Linux supporters can only keep their facts straight when it’s convenient for them.
>> Point and click admins
>> are not admins.
That’s elitist bull. The tool does not the admin make, and I have seen one million and ten incompetent admins typing into a CLI. The ability to use a CLI does not a competent admin make.
CLI is so powerful, especially for scripting purposes. At the same time, certain tasks are much better handled via a GUI tool belive it or not.
Bottom line is: MS already has a good GUI environment. It is currently aiming to acquire an equally powerful CLI environment, and it has actually made a lot of progress on this end recently. Once it puts all the pieces together, it will be able to match Unix, feature by feature. And it will also have features that isn’t available on Unix systems.
What are you doing about that, arrogant geekhead?
> This is the same kind of mindset that says all Windows
> users are stupid – just more elitist bullshit from
> the CLI whores
Nope, it’s a proven fact that in many cases, especially remote management, the commandline is more efficient.
Dude, you didn’t say that. If you had said the CLI was more efficient than the GUI in many cases, I wouldn’t have said a word. But what you said was that GUI admins are not admins. I mean, how much fucking brainpower does it take these days to set up a Linux box with web & email server capabilities? Even several years ago when I did it, it wasn’t very hard (assuming the kernel recognized your hardware) – basically everything came working out of the box without even touching a GUI. People who use these kind of setups are not born efficient with the CLI – it takes a bit of effort before you can get to the point where you can do 45 minutes of work with one command, but you don’t HAVE to have this kind of effort to admin a CLI box, and a lot of people don’t.
So, I stand by my original comment – your original statement is nothing but elitist bullshit. And yes, I would agree with you that the GUI makes it a lot easier to admin a box badly, but to simiply state that it is impossible to admin a GUI box well without having ever touched the CLI is simply not true.
that you could just license the Windows Kernel… Oh wait I guess they can get the Kernel from Win NT 3.51 for free and make it ready for the Enterprise.
heh.. yeah windows kernel license.. isnt that what happened to Citrix .. license the Kernel the MS comes behind you and steal your engineering into their own solution … MetaFrame or Terminal server…. hrm…
gui: easier way to do CLI crap so you don’t have to rember a million properly formatted languages;keywords;functions,etc, in a certain program (ie, try setting dhcpd options, then try apache, its diffrent right? (duh)
CLI: good if your server is a p90 and cant run any sort of gui; i mean, come on, any hardware you buy unless your looking for $2 hardware these days, can run any gui; be it windows, x, beos, qnx, etc.. but on a flip note, i can also click a checkbox in a gui, or 10 checkboxes, and guess what? somehow thats easier than typing those same 10 commands into a CLI/programs “config file” it’s old, it’s outdated, get over it.
Linwood
>> Point and click admins
>> are not admins.
>>>> This is the same kind of mindset that says all Windows
>>>> users are stupid – just more elitist bullshit from
>>>> the CLI whores
Um… As an admin of BOTH Windows and Linux / Unix machines, I have to say, if you CAN’T use CLI, you CAN’T administer a machine. This is NOT elitist bullshit. It is 100% true. Even with Windows NOT ALL TASKS CAN BE DONE FROM THE GUI. If you don’t know how to do ‘ipconfig /release’ or ‘ipconfig /renew’ or one of the MANY of HUNDREDS of commands and options, then you have never really administered even a Windows server.
By the way, Windows does NOT have a good GUI. It is ugly, non-customizable, and half the time when you do things, the GUI won’t apply changes without restarting. You CAN however fool the machine into doing stuff from the commandline most of the time.
I still think Linux runs better as a server. I’ve never been able to keep a Windows machine running with an uptime of over a year and a half like I have my many many Linux servers…
nbtstat
net * (stop,start, use, file, send, share, config, accounts…etc etc etc)
are your friends (to name just a few)
no self respecting ms admin is clueless about them.
To that anonymous guy who said he wanted to punch a Linux developer: ummm you sir are a complete and utter knob. Yeah I could really see you doing that, “Damn you for giving away your software for me to use!!! You will die now!”.
Anyhoo… There are pluses and minuses to GUI and command line, and they _complement_ eachother, one is NOT a substitute for another.
I think doing simple configuration of things is better via the gui, but once a program has a LOT of options, it becomes cumbersome to check a zillion boxes, and to try to find stuff in nested after nested GUI dialog boxes.
I’ve found for most server software on *nix machines, they have a sample config file with lines like
#comment this out if you want blah blah
so it’s really quite simple to go through a file with a text editor and set things. Then you can back up all the config files and use them on other boxes.
Also, nothing can beat having a scriptable environment to automate all of your tasks. With GUI only environments, you are restricted to what the software makers have allowed you to do. With a scriptable environment, you’re free to customize and do things that your vendor may not have thought of. For example, scan through logs gathering statistics and generate plots (yay gnuplot), which are displayable remotely via an apache admin page.
At uni I made an instant messenger with nothing but xmessage, bash, sed, grep, cat, and gawk
Using various command line options it can grab a users display variable from a config file, and format and display a message on their screen via the wonderful network transparancy of X. It even word wraps the text using a simple for loop in gawk. (If you don’t know what a for loop is, you’ve never done programming, so don’t worry about it).
The Solaris admins at my uni have heaps of custom software they use to automate all their tasks, and our servers are _never_ down and they provide services for more than 3000 students with only _two_ guys administering them. The Solaris workstation I used (along with 3 others, through sunray clients), was up for 306 days before it got taken down to add new hardware. During this time, heaps of software was installed, security patches, and loads of heavy simulations were run. The windows terminal servers, which do nothing but run office and some statistics thing, are rebooted every night, otherwise you risk crashing. Also they are rebooted for every Microsoft hotfix that comes in.
Unix is power and configurability, Windows is pre-packaged and restrictive. Different tools for different jobs.
Highly Customizable, if you’re willing to learn.
Shell replacement. Replace the Ugly Explorer, and problem solved with GUI situation. Ever hear of Litestep? A shell replacement for Windows, (originally to give the AfterStep feel of the ASWM of *nix to Windows.) Now, the most highly customizable shell, and oldest/actively updated and maintained, Litestep can make Windows do virtually anything you want, but make coffee (We’re still working on that.)
There is all a whole SLEW of other applications that are just as easy. If you want the Blackbox feel, there is BlackBox4win, also Bluebox for Windows, SharpE, and, well I’m tired and could go on for quite some time. For more information on shells in general, check out http://www.shellfront.org, http://www.blizzle.com . http://www.litestep.net , http://www.lsthemes.com ,www.joeblade.com and best of all sites. http://www.google.com.
My point is, You can make the Windows GUI look and act any way you choose, even make it work along side the cli, add options to Windows that MS is just NOW considering, but have been available since Win95.
And to the cli/gui debate, GUI is a very powerful option if used correctly, a GUI can be just as fast, if not faster than cli functions, even the previously stated ipconfig /release-renew can be done from with in the WinGui, I’m forgetting my point, oh yes, but an OS CANNOT live without the cli, and to be a truely good sysadmin of a Windows environment, I still believe it greatly important to learn the cli. What happens if your login or some system critical file gets lost/corrupted, and you’re forced to use Recovery Console, but you don’t know basic cli functions due to a institutionalization of the gui, you’re screwed.
I still use the cli in Windows every day, along with my gui, I wouldn’t have it any other way, same goes with my FreeBSD server. Some cli uses may be forgotten or outdated, but in general you can’t get rid of it, and should atleast use some of it.
Ok this is WAY OT from the original news brief, but I don’t know much about Novell.
I swear if I see a Linux developer in real life I’m going to bloody his nose, that’s how frustrated I am with Linux.
Don’t use it, then.
What happened to this site? It used to be great.
Yeah and you can install DJGPP and various other GNU tools to have a reasonable CLI environment (except for the fact you can’t resize the terminal window to anything you want, damn that annoys me).
But it’s not the “culture” of Microsoft Systems. Most of the settings for things are Binary, the Logs are Binary, etc…
And I’m not talking about customization by writing a bunch of software or a new environment like litestep, I know you can get different Desktop Environments for windows. I’m talking about easily automating tasks with shell scripts without being a software developer.
Even with these addons it’s still a frustrating environment for me. For example, where I use to work I had to use win 98 first edition. To keep my sanity, I installed cygwin, and then I could script various processes (like archiving my project, automating the build system, etc). Even with this it was still a frustrating OS to work with (not helped by the fact that it crashed six times a day – I wonder how the _hell_ Microsoft got rich of this thing, and the only reason I can think of is because they didn’t have any competition. Linux is now way better than win9x (IMO it’s better than winXP, but hey:), but Windows has gotten better
).
Anyway, we are waaaay Off Topic
Bah Novell, we had a Novell server and it was a slow POS and it always whinged about licences because when people would log in a bunch of times (e.g. machine crashes/reboot), their old login wouldn’t expire for a while, so we’d get damn messages popping up about licenses all the time… I sooooo wanted to replace their myriad of Novell/Windows servers with one Linux box (File/Print, email, Matlab, CVS, etc). I also wanted to setup ht://dig (or whatever its called) so I could search through all their damn word docs when I wanted to find something. Oh it was so frustrating working at that company with such a crappy setup for their machines.
Unix r0x0r5!
I think it’s in desperate need of a slashdot style moderation system to keep 12 yr old morons like that guy hidden from the rest of us
[quote]IMO it’s better than winXP[/quote]
Whatever, if Linux is so much better, why isn’t the remaining 90% of the pc users not adopting it??
Because it’s not better for those 90% of people.
In case you don’t know, IMO = In My Opinion. So my comment was completely subjective, not objective.
I’ve used Windows XP a bit, and it annoys me. It’s hard to explain really, but the new explorer is annoying, the damn dog is annoying, where they’ve moved all the options and how they’re buried deep deep deep into the control panel somewhere. The animated taskbar is distracting, the hiding of systray icons, the default luna theme, etc all suck
IMO of course.
I don’t mind windows 2000. It’s functional. It looks very corporate, pre-packaged and boring. Which is okay, because that’s what windows is.
There is one thing I like about XP, the little hardware detection thing that pops up in the systray when you plug something into USB, etc. I wanna make one of those for KDE, so when /sbin/hotplug is run it will notify you of what’s going on. The only other way I can think of to do that is to open up a terminal and type “tail -f /var/log/messages” and then plug in the USB device
I wonder how the _hell_ Microsoft got rich of this thing, and the only reason I can think of is because they didn’t have any competition
You are exactly right, as the idea of ‘Linux on the desktop’ hadn’t really took off yet, and zealots were arguing that LaTex was a better word processor than Word. Funny how the more things change, the more they stay the same
hehehe, LaTeX _is_ better
Well I don’t really know much LaTeX, but I know LyX rocks for doing reports/thesis etc… After using LyX I really don’t wanna touch WYSIWYG word processors ever again.
Wow, we are _really_ OT. Better say something about Novell.. um, Novell is okay, they make server stuff, yay.
“if you’re willing to learn.”
Which most Windows users are not. That is the whole point!
“Yeah and you can install DJGPP and various other GNU tools to have a reasonable CLI environment (except for the fact you can’t resize the terminal window to anything you want, damn that annoys me).”
Even with those tools Windows’s CLI is still 10x worse than Unix. In Windows, spawning processes is slow, the DOS box/cmd.exe window is slow, no auto completion, no shell patterns… you name it. In other words, all the stuff that make the CLI *usable* and *productive* are missing!
Even if you install Cygwin Bash, that still leaves the slow DOS box and slow process spawning problem. And my DEL key doesn’t work in Cygwin!
GUIs are cool cos they let you have many terminals on the screen at once!
Yeah Cygwin is slow as anything compared to native unix cli. Windows does have tab auto completion, but it is _off_ by default!! What moron decided that? Give me an example where you want the tab key to actually be a tab character in the cli! Aparantly you have to hack the registry to turn it on, yay.
If you want confusing, just look at the windows registry. I’d rather hack kernel source code then hack that thing. Besides the fact that if you stuff up the registry, you can render your machine unbootable, and since it’s binary, booting into that lame recovery console is useless (unless you got a backup to restore, but make sure that backup is in C:WINDOWS!!)
Oh and don’t get me started on the recovery console, what a joke that thing is. I’ve always been able to recover a Linux system (boot knoppix, fix, reboot), but when my win2k install went west, I couldn’t do anything.
And yeah, Novell, good luck to them..
(except for the fact you can’t resize the terminal window to anything you want, damn that annoys me)
I very much agree with this point. However, you can set yourself up with an SSH server and then use any regular Windows terminal like PuTTY to get your resizeable window. Cygwin is better than DJGPP, IMHO
As far as the Novell on Windows goes, I would expect that they would use the Windows CE system which is free (IIRC). There are definitely some limitations to it but no crucial ones. Most of the basic APIs are the same.
– the Cygwin-compiled stuff is horrendously slow. I use the natively-compiled Win32 ports of Unix tools
http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/
– the DOS prompt is very limited in features, but you can simply use bash, and you’ll rock
to return a bit ontopic: in NetWare you can use CLI, menu-based (curses) and GUI tools to manage your network and servers, but the important point is that Novell’s philosophy has always been speed of use. I.e., you can administer hundreds of users, groups, organisational units, printers, DNS domains, DHCP ranges etc. with very few moves. This holds true for any of the tools. In comparison, the user and group management in Windows NT 3.5x and 4.0 have really hurt me with it’s unpracticality.
> And by the kernel I mean everything that runs in kernel
> mode. That includes all of the gui.
the GUI is extremely decoupled from the rest of the kernel. Apart from some fields in the EPROCESS and ETHREAD structures (the high level – AKA Executive, thus the E prefix – representations of processes and threads in the Windows kernel) specific to the GUI subystem (that, when the subsystem isn’t active, are completely ignored – and since they are pointers, they just take up 4 to 8 bytes each), Windows can happily run without the GUI (fact: the Windows pre-setup program, the one that runs off the CD, partitions disks and copies the setup program proper, is just a custom Session Manager Subsystem, running on a stock Windows NT kernel and implementing keyboard input and screen output all by itself)
> Then (since you can’t modify their source)
don’t be silly. If you buy a license to use the Windows kernel without purchasing the whole system (e.g. *not* Windows Powered server appliances running Windows 2000 Server and the SAK), this means you have access to the sources. They don’t give such licenses to anyone that can’t apply for a Windows source license too
> you have to work around any incompatibilites that are
> built into the kernel.
don’t talk about things you don’t know. The Windows kernel contains so many features that it’s almost the equivalent of three traditional kernels combined – it has all of the Unix,Windows and DOS features, plus it still retains its original microkernel features, *and* it has native debugging facilities, both for user and kernel mode, both local and remote (yes, you can debug drivers on the same system they run – on build 2600 and later). There’s hardly anything missing from the Windows NT kernel
> Then to make the kernel work you would have to make sure
> that you have the right versions of all the user space
> tools (win32 subsystem mainly)that the kernel relies on to
> function properly.
nope. What the Win32 user-mode subsystem does is implementing super-trivial LPC protocols (hard error handling, SRM control, I/O error logging, etc.) in the most bloated way possible (especially SRM control when backed by the SAM). It’s not unlikely that Novell will decide to use them anyway (rationale: they are already there, and they work), but they could well do without them
> Yeah and you can install DJGPP and various other GNU tools
> to have a reasonable CLI environment
DJGPP? An Unix emulation running on top of a DOS emulation running on top of Windows? WTF? are you crazy or what? There’s much better ways to have Unix tools on Windows
> (except for the fact you can’t resize the terminal window
> to anything you want, damn that annoys me).
you can (I have 50×100 consoles with a buffer of 1000 lines). Only, you can’t adjust the width by dragging the window border. Don’t ask me why – that always beat me
> But it’s not the “culture” of Microsoft Systems. Most of
> the settings for things are Binary, the Logs are Binary,
> etc…
logs are binary because they have to contain binary data. Easy. Do *I*, Windows user, have to remind *you* how many disgusting hacks are required to write control characters into a text file without breaking its structure? have you seen how many tools are beginning to support the –zero option, telling that the record separator is not the newline but the NUL character, because something as basic as a path containing spaces or newlines (valid filename characters in all Unix filesystems) can break practically any existing Unix script?
> I’m talking about easily automating tasks with shell
> scripts without being a software developer.
you can. I only resort to actually developing software when I need a command that doesn’t exist at all – and usually it’s pretty low level and single-task-oriented stuff that can be easily automated with find and xargs
> Even with these addons it’s still a frustrating
> environment for me. For example, where I use to work I had
> to use win 98 first edition.
sucks to be you
> I also wanted to setup ht://dig (or whatever its called)
> so I could search through all their damn word docs when I
> wanted to find something.
All Office applications have a built-in search engine for Office documents, and starting from Windows 2000 it’s distributed with the system, integrated with the indexing service too. Learn to use the tools you *have*, before whining about the tools you *don’t*
This is funny windows kernel for Netware.
Also, nothing can beat having a scriptable environment to automate all of your tasks. With GUI only environments, you are restricted to what the software makers have allowed you to do. With a scriptable environment, you’re free to customize and do things that your vendor may not have thought of. For example, scan through logs gathering statistics and generate plots (yay gnuplot), which are displayable remotely via an apache admin page.
So you want scripting? Who doesn’t? It’s just that inter-program scripting is still in its infancy on X11.
You might want to look into REXX, as used on OS/2 and ARexx. Apple have tried something similar with Applescript, but I’m uncertain as to how widely implemented it is there in comparison with the aforementioned platforms. Window has got scripting too, but I’m unaware of how and where they manage that there. But scripting programs, both internally and between programs, is very common on both AmigaOS and OS/2, despite being GUI platforms.
[quote]IMO it’s better than winXP[/quote]
Whatever, if Linux is so much better, why isn’t the remaining 90% of the pc users not adopting it??
Cuase people don’t know about linux like they do windows, maybe if they would advertise in more than linux magizines & sites.
A thread about Novell wanting use a Windows kernel turns into a Windows vs Linux flame war thanks to a troll *cough* linux_baby *cough*. And who would have thought that the immaturity of the osnews readerdom could carry it on this far? (hint: me)
Let me re-word my origional post. I did not mean to say that it was not technically possible for the kernel to be decoupled from the gui, but I ment that Microsoft would force them to take it so that it still “looked and felt” like Windows. The reasoning would be that the gui runs in kernel mode so you have to take it with the kernel. And if it does not look like Windows, how do people know what they are using and why they are paying fees to MS?
Also since (especially in the recent versions of NT) most of the other environment sub-systems are routed through the win32 subsystem before they are sent to the kernel that would probably get included with the kernel.
I also didn’t make clear that the incompatibilites that I mentioned would be introduced (alla DR-DOS and windows 3.1) so that Netware would not run as well as standard windows on the same kernel (why buy from them when ours works better?). This would not me immediately apparent to Novell since the shared source licenses that they would get do not allow them to build the source into a functional binary and distribute it. This is not only due to MS’s desire to not have competing products on the market, but from the fact that the source that is passed out to those who pay is not 100% of the system. They have a few sections of code that are not distributed as source to those who have purchaced the right to see it.
You’ve brought up some good points about the Windows kernel — stuff I either wasn’t aware of (microkernel features), or knew but hadn’t really thought of (control chars in text files). I present a few counterpoints:
If you buy a license to use the Windows kernel without purchasing the whole system (e.g. *not* Windows Powered server appliances running Windows 2000 Server and the SAK), this means you have access to the sources. They don’t give such licenses to anyone that can’t apply for a Windows source license too
In theory, yes, you can obtain, modify, and compile your own Windows kernel. In practice this will only be an option for large corporations or sick, sick wealthy persons — and not without a finely-crafted 75-page contract written in LegaleseXP. This makes it decidedly unflexibler a solution than most out there.
DJGPP? An Unix emulation running on top of a DOS emulation running on top of Windows?
Well, Windows is a useless extension to a minor patch release for 32-bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16-bit patch to an 8-bit operating system originally coded for a 4-bit microprocessor, written by a 2-bit company that can’t stand for 1 bit of competition. So I don’t see the harm in a few extra layers, do you?
Do *I*, Windows user, have to remind *you* how many disgusting hacks are required to write control characters into a text file without breaking its structure?
Agree 100% — this has always been a gripe of mine.
> I’m talking about easily automating tasks with shell
> scripts without being a software developer.
you can. I only resort to actually developing software when I need a command that doesn’t exist at all – and usually it’s pretty low level and single-task-oriented stuff that can be easily automated with find and xargs
*nix (well, its native shells) is still more script-friendly than a standard install of Windows, which was the poster’s point IIRC.
> I also wanted to setup ht://dig (or whatever its called)
> so I could search through all their damn word docs when I
> wanted to find something.
All Office applications have a built-in search engine for Office documents, and starting from Windows 2000 it’s distributed with the system, integrated with the indexing service too. Learn to use the tools you *have*, before whining about the tools you *don’t*
Damn, you were sounding really smart up until this part. This person was talking about setting up one Linux server to replace the tangle of Novell and Windows servers that were there. Countless large organisations have done just that, because it can save money and it simplify the network. Therefore, the “tools you *have*” don’t cut the mustard. Is the bloat-tastic and highly fickle MS Office really an appropriate replacement for a reputed, 8-year-old GPL project that is suited perfectly to the task in question anyways?
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[1] I’m well aware that ‘they’ isn’t technically an appropriate pronoun here. I’m also aware that “he/she” is very annoying if it’s written more than once or twice per paragraph.
If they want a Microkernel, I would’ve thought QNX would be better. I’ve read some of the docs on that kernel (and I have a bootable CD at home), and it seems pretty damn sweet. Even drivers operate in their own protected memory space, so a driver theoretically can’t bring down the rest of the system if it dies. I’ve also witnessed QNX just change my display drivers on the fly as many times as I want, how is that for convenience? Sometimes I wonder about the monolithic approach of the Linux and *BSD kernels. I hope Hurd is finished before I die (note: I’m 22 years old)
And to those people saying if they use a Windows Kernel they will have to have GUI and all this rubbish in there are full of it. I’m sure MS have a very sophisticated build system and you can chop bits out just like you can when you compile a Linux kernel. And besides that, Novell will have the source, so they can hack whatever they want out of there.
Many people on this thread are confusing the question of if Microsoft will require the GUI component to be licensed with the question of whether or not it is required to run windows.
A week after Novell announces it will support Linux kernel, it starts exploring the Windows kernel option. I wonder whether billg made yet another business trip to lobby this option, and whether he used threats and/or bribes.
KDE is getting scripting support similar to apple script. Also you can already do cool stuff with the dcop command in any ordinary shell script (e.g. set a new background wallpaper). You can basically call any functions a KDE app exposes via dcop.
Probably threats, if anything: it’s cheaper, and billyboy has definitely a leverage on Novell, unfortunately. How? I leave that as an excercise to the reader.
However, said that, I don’t think this announcement had anything to do with pressions from Microsoft. I think (“my feelings, as usual”) that Novell wants to have the market and Microsoft guessing. I didn’t know Novell can replace the NetWare kernel so easily, and with such flexibility.