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Sometimes It Seems Like Unix(*) Needs to Learn from Windows

Posted by d0nk3y on · 7 comments
MS MVPS Blogs; By Alun Jones 		Mail this story
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(*) By “Unix”, I mean Linux, Unix, AIX, OS/X, and similar flavours. Way back when, about twenty or so years ago, I was a Unix admin, and a Unix developer. I had to be both, because I was the only person in the company who could spell Unix. My favourite game was to go along to presentations for Microsoft Windows ‘new features’ and say “Oh, but hasn’t Unix had that for the last twenty years?” Sure enough, there were countless things that Windows users and developers were just discovering (TCP/IP, shared libraries, multiple sessions on the same computer) that had been in Unix for some time. Linux was yet to make a mention, but as I’ve moved firmly into the Windows world, and left Unix behind, I’ve pretty much assumed that technologically speaking, if Windows has it, Unix and the like must also have the same functionality.

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Comments (7)

jhansonxi ·
publicly available source code. Without it you can claim anything you want. Only fools will listen.
phsolide ·
Consider the source of this article: the author, Alun Jones, is a mainstay in the "Windows Software Ecosystem". He's written, maintained and sold a Windows FTP server for years and years.

FTP servers have come *for free* with every Unix/linux/*BSD (that came with a TCP/IP stack) that I've ever used, since 1988. Why would one buy an add-on FTP server?

I see my paragraphs as an ad hominum argument, but still...
justintime ·
I see my paragraphs as an ad hominum argument, but still...

Exactly, your point is completely irrelevant.
tuxchick ·
phsolide, not 'ad hominum', but 'consider the source.'
gus3 ·
Ad hominem is not always inappropriate.

Even if Charles Manson tells you the sun rises in the east, he's still completely untrustworthy.
Bob_Robertson ·
> publicly available source code. Without it you can claim anything you want. Only fools will listen.

A recent comment I read supporting Windows was, "Anyone can get the source code, so anyone can hack into it."

A complete reversal of reality, but for some reason that myth continues to be effective with some people to this day.
ABCC ·
Ugh, what silly arguments. Here's my selection of quotes:

"The *x systems I’ve seen seem to be built from the perspective that each system has its own attendant administrator, who is only too happy to manually deploy patches or tweak settings in line with some policy on a scrap of paper or post-it."

Hmm, as if scripting GUI-only configuration tools is easier than making templates of .conf files, is this guy serious? You'd assume as an MVP that he'd know a thing about GPO, AD, gpedit.msc and the like. A bit of familiarity with these tools should disavow you from the idea that Windows isn't very scalable. Perhaps his GPO knowledge is a bit flakely:

"I can even do that remotely, with remote registry editing from a script or group policy tattooing the registry."

The big 'featur'e of group policies is that a setting applied through gpo _doesn't_ tattoo the user and/or computers' registry. He's talking about NTconfig.pol, poledit and hand-written .adm files. You can still use those, since win2k there has been a better solution.Does MVP stand for Marginally Valuable Professional?

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