201–210 of 296 posts
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> People ahem really need to update their thinking of what it means to be Windows. Why? What benefit is there to me using windows rather than a proper operating system?
What are your criteria for a "proper operating system" that just happen to exclude the most-used desktop operating system?
That is really something, before as a dev coming from linux when I first was about to login on a Windows Server I didn't understand how to do it since it were no SSH. Administrating the server via a GUI always felt backwards somehow. Why waste CPU cycles on rendering a UI when the CLI is so great (on linux)?
Microsoft's GUI management tools were really good and generally very discoverable. IMO they were a much better way to manage an OS than cryptically named CLI programs and text files. And most of them worked remotely. And by comparison to modern software they can not even remotely be considered bloated. Every electron application ever made is larger than all of RSAT. Now of course they suck ass because MS has no idea…
The snap-ins?
A main criticism of all this is that the usual tools didn't work remotely - you need a different, undiscoverable, possibly differently licensed, set of tools from what you use to change settings on your local computer. And of course you can't easily set up Computer A and then clone its settings to Computer B; you can only do this globally through things like Group Policy.
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Microsoft has come a really long way recently towards moving to CLI-based management. Starting with Server 2016, the default installation method of Windows Server no longer includes most of the GUI (called the Desktop Experience), leaving you with a command prompt window in the middle of the screen instead. An even thinner version of Windows Server, Nano Server, is also available, and includes even less GUI, being mu…
They started on this in the late 2000s when I was an intern there. But there was a lot to untangle. It’s the biggest refactoring job you can imagine. A decade long effort. Back then they didn’t really understand the point of ssh though. They had a vision of remote management via .net RPC and powershell.
This is partly why nobody developed proper open source Exchange clients: the Exchange protocol is MAPI over DCE/RPC, and you need to build a lot of infrastructure before it will even talk to you.
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So, I am not a big fan of windows- so do not take this for defence of windows. But my understanding is that windows fleets are just administered drastically differently than Linux fleets. On Linux we have a lot of config management tools and commandline remote administration kits. In windows they have SCCM and remote access GUIs which do not get rendered on the target server. It’s very common to see a GUI program whi…
This is changing: * Desired State Configuration: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/dsc/overview * Powershell Remoting (please, please let SSH replace this) * Microsoft's new command line push - cmd and the underlying console have had big updates recently * https://github.com/microsoft/console * https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/07/20/wind...
In contrast, .NET Core supports various old Windows-only features, such as COM and soon WinForms.
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They also got notepad to not blow everything up when opening a file with normal line endings. It still fucks everything up when creating new files though.
I guess, with "normal" line endings, you mean instead of .
OpenSSH with powershell is such a great combo. I was very skeptical about powershell, but after writing many scripts I’m a convert. Powershell does so many things nicer than bash. It feels like a real programming language but still not loosing its scripting roots. For running tests for a GUI application which requires us to spin thousands of Machines in parallel, manage job queues, interact with Windows UI automation…
The amount of people who try and explain bash basics to me when I say I use Powershell is staggering. I'm quite good at regexs thanks, I just like my scripts picking keys 'select' and 'where' rather than scraping with grep / awk etc. The amount of (poor) pwsh clones on Linux is a good testament to the solidness of this approach.
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The irony is, with Windows 10/2019, it's the other way around: Linux has switched its kernel to NT. See WSL.
> Linux has switched its kernel to NT. See WSL This makes absolutely no sense. Linux is a kernel. If Linux 'switched its kernel to NT', it would not be Linux. Perhaps you meant the userspace, which is not dependent upon the kernel?
> Linux is a kernel.
You also know that 'Linux' is more commonly used as a description of the userspace and other common software. You are starting an unnecessary argument.
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This is changing: * Desired State Configuration: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/dsc/overview * Powershell Remoting (please, please let SSH replace this) * Microsoft's new command line push - cmd and the underlying console have had big updates recently * https://github.com/microsoft/console * https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/07/20/wind...
Yes and no. Having used DSC and powershell remoting extensively, these create as many problems as they solve. Nothing works smoothly. Not a thing. The saving grace here will be SSH because then at least we can drive all our kit across both platforms from Ansible and be done with the entire MSFT management stack. At the moment we use Ansible but it runs over WinRM which is completely unreliable due to some architectur…
I'd disagree. I've been managing fleets of Windows machines since NT 3.51 (and fleets of Linux servers since 2003). It's all about knowing the tools well.
Whilst I've been using Linux since around 1995 (Slackware!), and prior to that various Unix and Xenix(!) boxes had popped in and out of my IT life, I'd never managed more than one or two machines. That was until 2003'ish when I went to work for a shared hoster. It took me a while to become as proficient at managing all these new Linux boxes that entered into my life as I was with Windows. I had the learn the tools.
I'm not suggesting you weren't properly trained, but most of the complaints I hear about Windows being a devil to manage is usually because admins haven't learned how to use the tools and generally haven't a clue what they're doing.