I can't understand why people are still using proprietary software like Windows or OSX when superior free software exists. It's a testament to the hidden monopolizing forces which exists in our society.
Because the free software isn't superior
Microsoft Dependency Has Risks
61–70 of 238 posts
Re: Microsoft Dependency Has Risks
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, it’s stuff like Active Directory and how everything’s tied together. Once you’re using that for auth, it’s really tough to back out without a lot of effort. We’ve looked into FreeIPA and similar options, but honestly, nothing really holds a candle to Active Directory yet.
AD is one of the few good MS projects. But you can use it with Macs and Linux just fine! Just keep a couple of Windows servers running AD, and migrate everything else.
Apple doesn't recommend joining Macs to AD -- their implementation is awful, along with their SMB implementation.
But it is technically possible.
Re: Microsoft Dependency Has Risks
#63The trick with Microsoft is to very carefully separate the good parts from the bad ones. Labeling all of Microsoft as banned is really constraining your technology options. This is a gigantic organization with a very diverse set of people in it. There aren't many things like .NET, MSSQL and Visual Studio out there. The debugger experience in VS is the holy grail if you have super nasty real world technology situation…
Microsoft, for all their warts, has the absolute best documentation for every public API in Windows. I'd go so far as to say it's better on average than manpages in Linux and BSD and light years better than the actively hostile bullshit from Apple. Submitting a bug report though, you gotta know people or know where to ask.
It really depends how far you go. The basics - they're pretty good. But for the more complicated things they just ignore all context and pretty much restate the names of functions/arguments without explaining how/why things work. See for example https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/tsvirtua... and https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/tsvirtua... What does the terminal services renderer do? "It renders bitmaps you dummy, just look at those arguments!"
Re: Microsoft Dependency Has Risks
#64I still find it hard to believe that so many people and companies are prepared to use Microsoft's online/cloud services. Not ony is this a single point of failure but it's one they've no control over whatsoever. Same goes for Google/Youtube etc. It's as risky as flying a passenger jet with only one engine. What are they thinking, why are they prepared to risk everything? It boggles my mind.
It's a simple opportunity cost calculation. The service is there, provides value. Creating a replacement is not realistic. Paying for another replacement gives you potential headaches from using a less popular service. So when choosing between not doing a thing or doing a thing with the risk of spof, it's often a reasonable choice to go with those services.
Re: Microsoft Dependency Has Risks
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I think you misunderstand- game engines are complex beasts and visual studio and/or .Net (in any of its incarnations) have the best debugging workflow I've seen." I think you misunderstand: the market, ie the number of people who actually care about developing game engines, is tiny. How many games developers do you know as a subset of the people you know of? OP only managed to find a niche product area for MS to shi…
A game engine is often an example of a 'complex beast'. No one is arguing that developing game engines specifically is common.
Thanks for trying to expound on my expounding on the original. But, the response indicates they don't know and actively avoid learning. Thus, nothing would change their mind.
PS: to throw some shade- I'm surprised they didn't (mis)spell it M$- after all everything they mentioned is making me nostalgic for phpBB based tech forums in 2004.
Re: Microsoft Dependency Has Risks
#66The trick with Microsoft is to very carefully separate the good parts from the bad ones. Labeling all of Microsoft as banned is really constraining your technology options. This is a gigantic organization with a very diverse set of people in it. There aren't many things like .NET, MSSQL and Visual Studio out there. The debugger experience in VS is the holy grail if you have super nasty real world technology situation…
"There aren't many things like .NET, MSSQL and Visual Studio out there. The debugger experience in VS is the holy grail if you have super nasty real world technology situations. There's a reason every AAA game engine depends on it in some way." I'm not interested in AAA games engines writing and nor is most of the world. If that is it, then you have damned MS with (very) faint praise.
Well. this is clearly just a example of a hard problem where MS tools are good for.
The MOST common developer that work on MS stack is in business apps and web, data, integration stuff.
There is much better fit for MS and there is NO good counterpart in OSX or Linux.
One of the major shocks I get when starting to work on OSX is how much less developed EVERYTHING is outside the ms stack.
The only good reason you have a life working in OSX and less in Linux is because the web lower the playing field.
But if this were a contest of "native" vs "native" is clear MS stack is ahead.
(Much more before, because of course the web change the equation so you can claim things FOR THE WEB are better on linux and even osx)
Re: Microsoft Dependency Has Risks
#67The trick with Microsoft is to very carefully separate the good parts from the bad ones. Labeling all of Microsoft as banned is really constraining your technology options. This is a gigantic organization with a very diverse set of people in it. There aren't many things like .NET, MSSQL and Visual Studio out there. The debugger experience in VS is the holy grail if you have super nasty real world technology situation…
Azure has some things about it that I don't like (compared to AWS), but it wins over AWS for Azure App Services. Essentially, IIS (webserver) as a service (PaaS), with autoscaling, auto-deployment, hot swap slots, auto-recovery, backups, etc. At it's core, it's basically a managed Docker container (either Windows or Linux) with IIS, so you can customize it quite a bit like a familiar VM, but unlike a VM, updates and security is all managed for you.
Beanstalk is a joke compared to AAS, and I'm more than happy to stay far away from Docker/K8s until that complexity is actually required, which it usually isn't until an entire department handles your K8s clusters/EKS.
Re: Microsoft Dependency Has Risks
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Out of curiosity, how hard would it be to copy Active Directory in an open source project (like how Excel is copied by LibreOffice)? Like if orgs need this capability why is there no good open source solution?
Active Directory is not one single product. It is an ecosystem. Windows desktops, Windows servers, Microsoft Office, Azure, third party apps running on Windows using Windows APIs and Microsoft server products are all supporting it. Here is a typical office use case in an engineering environment: A user logs into their Windows laptop. It uses a Windows domain which is part of Active Directory system. It connects to th…
And, you can couple all that with Microsoft 365 to enable cloud-first for everything that makes sense. Cloud Active Directory (a.k.a. Entra), Intune and Autopilot for devices that can be shipped directly from Dell and provisioned/set up through a M365 sign in by the end-user. IT never even has to be in the same zipcode as the new laptop or ever remotely connect to it to perform maintenance tasks.
Cloud AD also works seamlessly with on-prem AD, allowing things like online, self-service password reset for the domain, and in the reverse direction to use TPM-backed certificates/WebAuthn for securing web apps or anything behind MS-linked SSO. Of course, it also integrates tightly with Azure, so you can do RBAC for any VM/service in Azure, since they automatically get service identities in your AD.
That level of integration is so far above anything else on the market that it isn't even a discussion.
Re: Microsoft Dependency Has Risks
#69I can't understand why people are still using proprietary software like Windows or OSX when superior free software exists. It's a testament to the hidden monopolizing forces which exists in our society.
Superior for who?
What you value is not what everyone values.
Also, I'd argue that the monopolizing forces are not so much hidden as targeted.
Re: Microsoft Dependency Has Risks
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Active Directory is not one single product. It is an ecosystem. Windows desktops, Windows servers, Microsoft Office, Azure, third party apps running on Windows using Windows APIs and Microsoft server products are all supporting it. Here is a typical office use case in an engineering environment: A user logs into their Windows laptop. It uses a Windows domain which is part of Active Directory system. It connects to th…
And, you can couple all that with Microsoft 365 to enable cloud-first for everything that makes sense. Cloud Active Directory (a.k.a. Entra), Intune and Autopilot for devices that can be shipped directly from Dell and provisioned/set up through a M365 sign in by the end-user. IT never even has to be in the same zipcode as the new laptop or ever remotely connect to it to perform maintenance tasks. Cloud AD also works…
> IT never even has to be in the same zipcode as the new laptop or ever remotely connect to it to perform maintenance tasks.
That sounds nice, but that's not exactly a feature specific to AD.
All perfectly possible with a couple well placed scripts and some remote logins.
> TPM-backed certificates/WebAuthn for securing web apps or anything behind MS-linked SSO
Yeah this is the overengineered stuff that is therefore difficult to replicate. Certs and auth predate AD and Azure, the lock-in comes from the overcomplicated SAML style rickety tower of doom that just barely functions...