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Microsoft IT

Vista To Get Symlinks? 565

Posted by Zonk from the sounds-like-another-os-i-know dept.
TheRealSlimShady writes "According to a post by Ward Ralston on the Windows server team's weblog, Vista server is to get symlinks as part of the SMB2 protocol." From the post: "In Vista/Longhorn server, the file system (NTFS) will start supporting a new filesystem object (examples of existing filesystem objects are files, folders etc.). This new object is a symbolic link. Think of a symbolic link as a pointer to another file system object (it can be a file, folder, shortcut or another symbolic link)."
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Vista To Get Symlinks? More

Vista To Get Symlinks?

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  • Duplication... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Erik_the_Awful ( 675368 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @06:39AM (#13913691) Journal
    ...is a compliment of the highest form.

  • Yet more great (Score:5, Funny)

    by Skiron ( 735617 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @06:40AM (#13913693)
    innovation from MS.

    • Re:Yet more great (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 31, 2005 @06:44AM (#13913717)
      Yea, they better hurry up and patent it before those unix hippies copy it.

    • Funny thing is... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @06:53AM (#13913748) Journal
      that in about 2 years time, everybody will be running around saying that MS developed it, and that *nix copied it. Just the way it works.

    • Re:Yet more great (Score:5, Funny)

      by kd3bj ( 733314 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @07:43AM (#13913919) Homepage
      What's next?

      Forward slashes?

      Text files without ^m's?

    • Re:Yet more great (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 31, 2005 @08:23AM (#13914028)
      all your symbolic links are belong to SCO

    • Vista Will Probably Be BSD-Based (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 31, 2005 @10:30AM (#13914753)
      This is just one more clue that Microsoft has given up on the Windows code base, and that Vista will be based on BSD code.

      To review the previous clues:

      First, there was Microsoft's announcement that Vista (Longhorn) will use UNIX-like User Permissions:

      See Longhorn to use UNIX-like User Permissions [slashdot.org]

      Why would Microsoft do that, when even many Linux supporters agree that Windows permissions are finer grained? But if the new Windows is BSD-based, Microsoft would be forced to do that, or face rewriting a lot of the underlying BSD code.

      Second, there was Microsoft's announcement that Unix compatibility will be "built in" to Vista:

      See: Microsoft to Stop Releasing Services for Unix [slashdot.org]

      Third, there is the fact that Microsoft ported .Net to BSD, as well as pushing for other software to be released under a BSD license ("All the better to steal it, my dear.").

      Fourth, there was Steve Ballmer talking about the Vista "reset" which started around 18 months ago.

      See: Ballmer Pushes Microsoft Innovation, Talks Vista Reset [windowsitpro.com]

      Does anyone really think that Microsoft could succeed in doing a major rearchitecturing of the Windows code now, in only 18 months, after they had tried and failed to do so many times over the last decade?

      Besides, when has Microsoft ever shown the confidence or ability to succeed on their own? DOS, Windows NT, Internet Explorer, and .Net, were all based on other companies' products, or were developed by teams hired from outside.

      And now we have this new report that another basic feature of Unix, symbolic links, will be part of Vista.

      Given all this evidence, I am fairly convinced that Vista will be based on one of the Open Source BSD distributions. Unlike Apple, however, Microsoft will probably try to keep it a secret, and claim it as their own innovation.

      What will be the result?

      On one hand, a BSD-based Vista might be a good thing, since it will result in a more stable, and less virus-prone Windows.

      On the other hand, if Microsoft remains true to their history, they'll just screw it up with all the lock-in features they'll add on top. Like the VMS-and-OS/2-based Windows NT, which started out strong (version 3.51) then gradually degraded, I expect the benefits of a BSD-based Vista to be temporary.

      Then again, Microsoft is just playing for time, as they continue their strategy of locking in the Internet. Thus, they only need Windows to be better for long eneough to fool their customers, again, while they tie them up with a new set of decommoditized protocols (.Net, Palladium, DRM, Windows Media, Office 12, and so on).
      • Man, I LOVE /. posters.

        So you have three reports on /. One of them describes a feature that's been in Windows since NT 3.1 (and exposed as a public API since Windows 2000) (symlinks). The other describes an existing feature that's been available for Windows since NT 4 and is now apparently being included in the OS base (SFU). And the third that describes a feature that's been available for Windows since NT 3.1 (and made really usable in XP) (limited rights user accounts).

        From these three technologies, al
      • does this mean that we can finally say that Windows is dying?

  • Symbolic links? (Score:3, Funny)

    by el_womble ( 779715 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @06:41AM (#13913696) Homepage
    What a fantastic idea! Why didn't you UNIX guys think of that whilst you were eating ambrosia up in your ivory tower eh? ... Oh...

    Microsoft 'innovating' once again, and giving the people what the want (10 years after everyone else). Go Redmond!

    • Re:Symbolic links? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by m4dm4n ( 888871 ) <madman@nofrance.info> on Monday October 31, 2005 @07:06AM (#13913791) Homepage
      I don't believe that the word innovate was used anywhere except here on slashdot. While it's been a long time coming, the blog entry that originally posted this admits that all these additions are addressing limitations in SMB.

      It's not like Linux never copied an idea from another OS, yet it seems MS is not allowed to add a feature unless they thought of it themselves.

      But then I guess everyone here gets a bit bitter when there is one less thing to complain about MS.

    • Re:Symbolic links? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ben_rh ( 788000 )
      It's actually closer to 40 years.. but yeah :)

    • Re:Symbolic links? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Microsoft 'innovating' once again" - by el_womble (779715) on Monday October 31, @06:41AM

      And, more "F.U.D." attempts by the 'pro-Unix/Linux/BSD' brothers @ "/.", as-per-usual... or, the usual "partially informed/incomplete data spouting rumor mill" is @ work here again, as-per-usual.

      Take a read, so you are better informed:

      http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Junction.htm l [sysinternals.com]

      -----

      Win2K's version of NTFS supports directory symbolic links, where a directory serves as a symbolic link to another directory on the
      • 95%++ of the world's computers running Windows NT-based Operating Systems by now

        Actually, 95% of the world's computers are embedded microproccessors, most of which don't even run anything classified as an "operating system", let alone windows. I expect that what you meant was that 95% of PC's are running Windows NT based operating systems. I doubt that, there are still plenty of older, pre-XP home machines in use today, so probably as many as 15-20% of PC's are running Windows 9x-based operating systems. Yo

  • Allow me to be the first to say... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Noryungi ( 70322 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @06:41AM (#13913700) Homepage Journal
    Welcome to the 1980s, Microsoft.

    (Who was it who said: 'Those who don't know UNIX are condemned to recreate it. Badly.' ?)

    • Re:Allow me to be the first to say... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rolfwind ( 528248 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @06:48AM (#13913733)
      I'm sure that's what those Plan9 folks are thinking of the Linux/BSD camp^_^

    • Re:Allow me to be the first to say... (Score:5, Informative)

      by WWWWolf ( 2428 ) <wwwwolf@iki.fi> on Monday October 31, 2005 @07:00AM (#13913771) Homepage
      (Who was it who said: 'Those who don't know UNIX are condemned to recreate it. Badly.' ?)

      $ fortune -m 'condemned'
      ...

      Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly. -- Henry Spencer

      And those who don't understand fortune(1) are condemned to ask about quotes =)

  • OMG (Score:2, Funny)

    by Mateito ( 746185 )
    This is a joke, right?

  • Obligatory quote (Score:3, Funny)

    by OscarBlock ( 861399 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @06:42AM (#13913703)
    Those who don't understand UNIX are doomed to reinvent it, poorly." --Henry Spencer

    • It's worse (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Those who do not understand UNIX are doomed to buy Windows." --Anonymous Coward

  • Different than shortcuts (Score:5, Informative)

    by 246o1 ( 914193 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @06:42AM (#13913708)
    From TFA, before it gets slashdotted and someone asks:
    Well, a shortcut will only work when used from within the Windows shell, it is a construct of the shell, and other apps don't understand short-cuts. To other apps, short-cuts look just like a file. With symbolic links, this concept is taken and is implemented within the file system. Apps when they open a symbolic link will now open the target by default (i.e. what the link points to), unless they explicitly ask for the symbolic link itself to be opened.

  • "Virtual folders", I believe it's used for (Score:5, Informative)

    by Sockatume ( 732728 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @06:43AM (#13913709)
    Some of the Vista previews have shown off things dubbed "virtual folders" which work in a similar way to browsing by artist or album in the current version of Media Player. You can manipulate the files like it's a normal folder window, yet the actual files may be scattered over different folders and drives. Presumably it's an effort to make managing large amounts of music/video outside of Media Player easier. They almost certainly use these symbolic links. They're a bit different from shortcuts.

  • Security risk? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fm2503 ( 876331 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @06:43AM (#13913710)
    From TFA:

    "Now why is this relevant to the SMB2 protocol? This is because, for symbolic links to behave correctly, they should be interpreted on the client side of a file sharing protocol (otherwise this can lead to security holes). "

    Is it not rather:

    "If the client does not interpret symbolic links then nothing will work?"

    • Re:Security risk? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by IWannaBeAnAC ( 653701 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @07:37AM (#13913887)
      Presumably the security problem has something to do with symlinks that point to a file that the client does not have permission to read. If the server handles symlinks in a naive way, then on a request to open() a symlink it would open the target file (which is the usual behaviour of opening a symlink), but potentially with the wrong permissions.

      If the server did no special behaviour for symlinks then they would appear to the client as a duplicate of the symlink target, an ordinary file.

  • NTFS already does it since Win2K ! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 31, 2005 @06:43AM (#13913711)
    See here :

    http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Junction.htm l [sysinternals.com]

    Any feature new in Vista but the look and feel ? ;-)

    What about booting the OS with less than about 20 services started and 256MB of memory used ? :(
    • This was even posted on slashdot five years ago:
      http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/03/02/083321 1&tid=109 [slashdot.org]
      The links in the summary are broken though.
    • Doesn't really matter if Win2K could do it if the feature was buried and the user had no way to use it. Also, Sys Internals seems to imply that only directories may be linked, not specific files. Not quite the same thing.
      I've been wishing Windows would support this elemental feature for a long time now. I would have used it to create a directory tree with the structure I wanted to burn on CD, without having to move all the actual files around. The CD burning software I've tried doesn't understand shortc
      • If junctions only work on directories then you'd want to look at the CreateHardLink API [microsoft.com] (available in Win2K/XP/2003) which works only on files. You can create up to 1023 links to a single file using this API.
        • Hard links are different to soft links (symlinks). Hard links are two (or more) files that refer to exactly the same physical storage; rather than one file being a link to the other file, both links are precisely equivalent. This is completely transparent - multiply-linked files are indistinguishable from singly-linked files.

          Soft links are represented as a special text file that contains the name of the linked file. The default behavior on opening a soft link is to redirect and open the target file ins

    • Re:NTFS already does it since Win2K ! (Score:5, Informative)

      by TeXMaster ( 593524 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @07:40AM (#13913902)
      Junction points on NTFS are neither symlinks nor hardlinks: they are mountpoints for system volumes (partitions). Basically, they are the way NT deals with the Unix way of doing things (instead of the DOS way of assigning letters to volumes).

      NTFS does support hardlinks and, as the developers of the NTFS driver for Linux recently discovered (see details in this thread [theaimsgroup.com]), it also supports symlinks, provided Microsoft Services For Unix are installed.

      The important part of all this, is, I think, that open source tools ranging from the linux fs drivers (ntfs and cifs/smb) to the cygwin stuff should get updated and start managing the thing the way MS does it (on MS filesystems, of course).

      • They aren't just mount points for volumes. You can mount a volume to multiple places with junctions. You can also use a junction to link C:\temp\directory to X:\anotherplace\asubdir\destination.

        The pain (or feature) with junctions is the source directory doesn't have to be empty. As a System Administrator in the Managed Storage group this can be an incredible pain. If the destination points to another drive you don't want to include it in the backups since things will get backed up twice (since the os w

      • FAT does it too... (Score:5, Funny)

        by spiff42 ( 718678 ) <sd@symli[ ]dk ['nk.' in gap]> on Monday October 31, 2005 @09:01AM (#13914202) Homepage
        NTFS does support hardlinks

        Well. So does FAT, except it is called a crosslink, and aparently scandisk and various disk defragmentation tools do not handle it correctly ;-)

        /Spiff

      • Junction points, at least the ones created by the utility referred to, are in fact hard directory links. You can mount any directory from any NTFS volume as a directory at any point in any NTFS volume's tree, not just whole partitions.

        I have used junction.exe many times to save a lot of reorganization by mounting a directory from one volume onto another when the other is full and there is no unallocated space to add. For example, you can move directories from "c:\Program Files" to "d:\Program Files" and t

    • Re:NTFS already does it since Win2K ! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by astrosmash ( 3561 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @07:41AM (#13913905) Journal
      Rumors about real symbolic links in Windows have been swirling since before Win2000.

      The problem with Junction.exe is that the Explorer shell and all other applications do not differentiate between links and real folders. That is, applications never expect two different paths to point to the same object, which makes Junctions much less useful in practice. For example, file search results take much longer to complete and display duplicate results. I believe that is why they initially limited Junctions to just directories.

      Now, if Vista got persistent file handles, that would be interesting.

      • Re:NTFS already does it since Win2K ! (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Nurgled ( 63197 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @09:07AM (#13914224)

        Even more annoyingly, if you "delete" a junction point directory through the shell it will do a recursive delete just as it would for a folder, thus deleting all of the contents of the junction's target directory. If you set up the junction point then this is expected, but if it's someone else who isn't familiar with the concept they can easily mistake it for a bunch of duplicate files (since the shell displays them identically, and gives misleading disk usage information) and delete both copies.

  • Fantastic! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 31, 2005 @06:45AM (#13913724)
    Symbolic Link and SMB2 - should I also be waiting for ZeldaFS and MegaMon?
  • the date to see if it was April 1st.

  • NTFS already has symlinks, has done for years (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 31, 2005 @06:47AM (#13913731)
    They are just not accesible from the shell. You need 3rd party utils to use them.. http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Junction.htm l [sysinternals.com]

  • New strapline? (Score:3, Funny)

    by seanellis ( 302682 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @06:48AM (#13913734) Homepage Journal
    Vista - 1980's technology today^H^H^H^H^Hsometime next year.

  • Great... but (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 31, 2005 @06:53AM (#13913752)
    Now that NTFS has UNIX filesystem semantics, when will UNIX/Linux filesystems get some NTFS features like multiple streams and reparse points.

    These features are incredibly useful (arguably more so than symlinks), and the only Linux fs that comes close to implementing them is reiser4, which is not even part of the kernel.

    • Re:Great... but (Score:4, Funny)

      by gargleblast ( 683147 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @08:42AM (#13914108)

      Multiple streams are an absurdity. "Ok contestants, repeat after me: 'A file is a variable-length array of bytes.'" Steve Jobs: "A file is two variable-length arrays of bytes." BZZT. "Sorry Steve, thanks for playing." Bill Gates: "A file is N variable-length arrays of bytes." BZZT. "Whoops Bill, that's a directory. Looks like you're out too! Join us next week on 'Who wants to be an architect!'"

      Reparse points are more commonly known in the UNIX community as 'mount points.'

  • Lol, symlinks (Score:5, Informative)

    by DrSkwid ( 118965 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @06:54AM (#13913753) Journal
    The inventors of Unix scrapped symlinks when they did their next OS

    Symbolic links make the Unix file system non-hierarchical, resulting in multiple valid path names for a given file. This ambiguity is a source of confusion, especially since some shells work overtime to present a consistent view from programs such as pwd, while other programs and the kernel itself do nothing about the problem.

    http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/lexnames.html [bell-labs.com]

    NT *was* going to have executables that pretended to be files, i.e. when you opened the executable to get the contents it would run and return the output rather than the by bytes of the executable, with a special NT syscall to read the *real* contents. Kind of like a named pipe. I was looking forward to this but it didn't work out.
    • What happens when you mmap one of these suckers?
    • Well one could argue that scrapping symlinks was a really bad idea. Yes they can lead to messy filesystems if they are used in a bad way, but they are also the only way to solve a myriad of problems.
      For example, i have dozens of webapps deployed in their own directories, and they all need a configuration file in a their own directory. Since this config file is the same for each webapp, it certaily makes a lot of sense to have the file be a symlink to a real file somewhere else, in a kind of meta directory.

    • Symlinks were a BSD invention (Score:4, Informative)

      by Per Abrahamsen ( 1397 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @08:42AM (#13914106) Homepage
      That the Research Unix guys didn't add it to Plan9 doesn't have to mean anything else than they suffer from the NIH syndrome. I don't believe symbolic links were ever a part of Research Unix.

      The commercial product, SysV, got symbolic links, but they had to compete in the real world.

    • Re:Lol, symlinks (Score:4, Informative)

      by Paul Jakma ( 2677 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @10:08AM (#13914605) Homepage Journal
      Symbolic links make the Unix file system non-hierarchical, resulting in multiple valid path names for a given file.

      You're confused. Files in Unix filesystems have no hierarchy, with or without symbolic links. Files are quite independent of file names. Multiple directories may contain entries for the same file, the names need not even be the same. The same directory may reference the same file with multiple names. Note for examples that renaming a file changes the modification time of the /directory/, but not of the file.

      Symbolic links are a bit of a hack though, yes. But mostly because they must expose the limitations of "files are not the same as filenames" - not because they allow multiple paths to the same file.

      --paulj
  • There have been soft links in ntfs since at least w2K, and probably NT4. I believe they're called junctions in the NTFS jargon. You need the administrative tools to be able to create them. And at least now they're kinda problematic in the sense that there is no way to distinguish them from real folder or files ince they've been created unless you bring up cmd.exe and check with junction.exe if they are indeed symlinks. So it would certainly be a good idea to integrate them better and have them in the main r
  • ... getting to Vista and coming from FOSS or *nix. Apple demostrated that incorporating free software has lots of advantages without hurting sales much, if at all.
    And Microsoft, with its stance on patents vs copyright in software, already demonstrated it can do shameless 180 degree turns.
    Microsoft: how much can you trust us today? :)
    Gates on patents [corante.com]

  • So, will they also get hard links? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @06:57AM (#13913763) Journal
    My understanding is that NTFS does not use hard links (and the associated counts). If they are allowing symblics, why not allow hard links?

  • MS Motto (Score:5, Funny)

    by psiekl ( 310217 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @06:59AM (#13913768)
    We are the leaders, wait for us!

  • How sad (Score:3, Insightful)

    by photon317 ( 208409 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @07:00AM (#13913773)

    The Unix guys finally figure out how to move past symlinks to something better (private per-process inherited namespaces and bind() overlay mounts ala Plan 9 - coming to a Linux box near you soon), and now Windows starts implementing it for the first time (well .lnk links were kinda like half-baked symlinks, so they were halfway there before this announcement anyways).

  • ..and about time, too! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by unfunk ( 804468 )
    ...now how about they get rid of this god-awful heirarchy thing they have happening here?
    In Windows Explorer, the topmost level is the desktop, while in the CLI, there's as many 'topmost' levels as there are drives in the machine.
    I never thought I'd say this, but I think they should adopt a *nix-like heirarchy, so that anything can be 'mounted' anywhere. Of course, they'd have to change the structure significantly, and have a built-in translator for "C:\things\stuff" type commands and whatnot.

    But then, i

  • FOUR, er FIVE symlink styles, all kinda *wrong* (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ancient_Hacker ( 751168 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @07:14AM (#13913812)
    So there's going to be FOUR ways to alias files and folders and volumes:
    • (1) Mapping a directory to a drive letter.
    • (2) Shortcuts.
    • (3) NTFS mount drive as folder.
    • (4) The new symlink thingy.

    oops, isnt there still:

    • the old DOS "subst" command too?

    Make that FIVE ways. All of them looking somewhat alike, but all with subtly different syntax, semantics, overhead, and security implications. Sweet!

  • Improve on symlinks? (Score:5, Informative)

    by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @07:26AM (#13913849) Journal
    There can be some improvement, particularly with managing symlinks.

    1) When you move a destination object, symlinks don't follow the target . This leaves "broken" symlinks that refer to nothing. Why doesn't the mv command move these too?

    2) When you symlink a symlinked folder, the root symlink is ignored. Let's say you symlink /usr/tunes to /usr/local/tunes. Later, you symlink /usr/local/tunes/YMCA.mp3 => ~/my_favorite_song.mp3. Now, you have a symlink that relies on both the existence of "/usr/tunes/" AND symlink "/usr/local/tunes >> /usr/tunes". Thus, while deleting 1st ("/usr/local/tunes => /usr/tunes") symlink doesn't actually delete anything, it does cause ~/my_favorite_song.mp3 to become unworkable.

    3) Symlinks cause all kinds of weirds around chrooted file systems , especially ones on a different underlying filesystem. If you're not very careful, nothing is as it seems! Files go nowhere, files are accessable only sometimes, etc. It's logical when you understand and appreciate a symlink for what it is, just a referral, but it can be maddening when security contexts get distorted around a chroot...

    • The only way to really improve on symlinks is to get rid of file systems, and use a database instead. Symlinks are useful for simulating database views anyway.

      The purpose of using a computer is to manage information, and not binary data. Files are relics of the past. Operating systems should have databases for managing persistence. Benefits whould be tremendous:

      1. files are strongly typed.
      2. user can have views of data.
      3. improved searching.
      4. improved indexing.
      5. transactional logic available to any application.

    • The Fix: Aliases (Score:4, Informative)

      by Rosyna ( 80334 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @08:59AM (#13914193) Homepage
      Yes, the Mac OS had none of those problems with Aliases. I guess that's what happens when you design an OS from the ground up that doesn't use paths to reference everything. In fact, for a very long time there was no way to get a path in the Mac OS. OS X changed all that and now many programs are very fragile (like Preview).

  • Not the first time (Score:3, Interesting)

    by basilpronoun ( 700414 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @08:24AM (#13914032)
    MS have invented symbolic links before.
    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/03/02/083321 1&tid=109 [slashdot.org]
    The evidence is no longer on MS's website put you can find it here http://www.spinnwebe.com/contests/innovate/8.php [spinnwebe.com]

  • Already has this (Score:3, Informative)

    by coolsva ( 786215 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @08:39AM (#13914094)
    NTFS already has this and more
    Reparse points (like links) http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /library/en-us/fileio/fs/reparse_points.asp [microsoft.com]
    Junctions (to mount file systems) http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /library/en-us/fileio/fs/hard_links_and_junctions. asp [microsoft.com]
    Sparse files (highly underutilized) http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /library/en-us/fileio/fs/sparse_files.asp [microsoft.com]
    and of course the plain old short cuts that are really symbolic links in the traditional unix world.

    I remember architecting a product to implement all unix based functionality in NT (IPC, memory mapped files, etc) and found NT40 to have that and more. Thats the time I really appreciated windows as a OS more mature than Unix.

    The unfortunate part is people still think of DOS/Win95 code base when they think of windows. As a OS, W2K is much more mature in terms of the facilities they offer and as a filesystem, NTFS is way ahead.

    Give me a feature in Unix and Im sure there is an equivalent in NT. Thousands of smart people working at Redmond are not idiots and millions of corporate architects proposing NT based solutions are not stupid either. They propose windows based technologies not just for looks (though end users do appreciate that).

    • Re:Already has this (Score:4, Insightful)

      by trezor ( 555230 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @08:58AM (#13914187) Homepage

      and of course the plain old short cuts that are really symbolic links in the traditional unix world.

      Try sharing that shortcut over Samba. Didn't work you say? Then, absolutely nothing UNIX-like about it.

      The unfortunate part is people still think of DOS/Win95

      I use Windows XP and it still has lots of shortcomings. However it's multimedia support is waay ahead of Linux, and I use my machine mainly for multimedia. So whatever criticism I may serve, that's based on WinXP and modern Redmond-OSes.

      Give me a feature in Unix and Im sure there is an equivalent in NT.

      • Kernel and network support loading before the GUI?
        You'd think any serious server-OS would implement this...
      • Possible to recover the system without a GUI if needed?
        A reinstall with the textmode interface doesn't count.
      • Modular kernel which can be stripped of unneccesary features?
        For whatever reason, increased security, lightweight editions, added native FS support...

      Just to list a few. I do however have a job to do :-D

  • This is rich (Score:3, Funny)

    by linforcer ( 923749 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @09:13AM (#13914269)
    First Microsoft Shell and now this? Looks like MS Linux [mslinux.org] is nearly becoming a reality!

  • Vista escapes the Matrix (Score:3, Funny)

    by moojin ( 124799 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:09AM (#13915028)
    Later on, Vista wakes up. He sees his code-base pierced with dozens of acupuncture-like needles wired to a strange device insert new lines of source code.

    *nix Developer 1: He still needs a lot of work.

    Vista: What are you doing?

    *nix Developer 2: Your source code has atrophied, we're rebuilding them.

    Vista: Why do the symbolic links in my file system hurt?

    Vista blinks

    *nix Developer 2 : You've never used them before.

    Vista looks confused

    *nix Developer 2 : Rest, Vista, the answers are coming.

    Vista passes out again.

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