SQL Server on Linux? HELL YES! Linux on Windows 10? Meh

Once the second biggest enemy of Linux (SCO Group takes top honours), Microsoft is positively giddy about not just supporting Linux but actually building tools that run Linux in Windows and about putting previously Windows-only software on Linux. You can run Ubuntu inside Windows 10, install CoreOS and Docker containers inside …

[Paul Crawford]

why not just run Ubuntu and put Windows in the virtual machine?

Is exactly what I do and it works very well.

But then I don't have a corporate sysadmin insisting that my desktop has to be a standard Windows image for their ease of management organisation wide, so for those in that situation I can see it kind of makes sense. But then you have to have Win10, so maybe you would ask for an Ubuntu VM on your Windows 7 corporate machine?

[gv]

I'd like to do this, but I'm forced to run Win10, so I have an Arch VM where I do my real work.

[Missing Semicolon]

why not just run Ubuntu and put Windows in the virtual machine?

Because the laptop you are using has no open-source drivers, the graphics are flakey, suspend/resume doesn't work, the wireless requires manual futzing with to operate, and the battery goes flat is an hour.

The main lappy makers are on a bung to ensure that Linux DOES NOT run them.

:-( I'd love to run Mint on my T100Chi, but no chance.

[Jonathan 27]

Re: why not just run Ubuntu and put Windows in the virtual machine?

You can buy a laptop that supports Windows just fine from one of the major brands if you're careful. They don't actively try to stop you running Linux, most just don't really care if Linux works well or not. Look for ones that have a large percentage of Intel parts. Intel Wi-Fi, Intel iGPU, Intel CPU, Intel chipset, Intel platform management chip, they all have reasonable open source drivers. Nvidia and AMD GPUs are so-so on the open source drivers but you can get them to work if you try hard enough. But that goes for everything, not just laptops. Nvidia's binary drivers work ok if you're willing to install them.

My XPS 15 (9550) runs Ubuntu very well, but I admit I have the Nvidia binary driver installed (Optimus even works) because the open source drivers have much worse performance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: why not just run Ubuntu and put Windows in the virtual machine?

I got an Asus N550JK about 18 months ago, it came with Win 8 or 8.1 but just a couple of weeks before Win 10 was available.

Back then, there were a number of issues --in Windows--, most of which have not been resolved with the few driver updates Asus have provided since then:

- the DVD drive was *really* slow, replaced with ssd anyway so no bother

- it would not resume from hibernation properly and still doesn't

- every time the sound is 'engaged' after not being used for a while, there was nothing at all until the volume was turned up by around 20% from where it was set. If it is already over 50% then it comes out really loud until I tap + or - just once, then it goes to where it should.

I installed Mint, which required this configuration:

- install

- install Intel open source gfx drivers

- add noatime to ssd mount options

- change some acpi_osi= option in grub config so screen brightness buttons work

That's it, it's been perfect ever since and for the work I do, the battery lasts exactly the same time and there are none of the above issues that Windows has.

Even hibernation works flawlessly in Mint, but not Windows.

So on that particular device, in terms of 'OS supporting the hardware' I'd have to say Mint wins hands down.

But there is always the other aspect of 'software supporting the OS', and Windows clearly has the edge here, but for what I need Mint generally does a better job.

I tried reinstalling Windows in a VM but it complains about the OEM licence key, and they wouldn't allow me to transfer it, even for use on the same physical device, in a VM :(

Also, I was noticing that Windows thought the best time to reboot due to updates was during the night (before they added active hours), and I'm a night owl so often it was rebooting when I was downstairs making a coffee. I can generally use any OS for my tasks so if I am in Windows and they decide I'm not using it and it's safe to reboot, then they are shooting themselves in the foot because it will boot into Mint.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: why not just run Ubuntu and put Windows in the virtual machine?

And the suspend resume still doesn't work if you have a Broadcom network card

Which is why I ditched Linux Mint and went to Windows 10 reluctantly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: why not just run Ubuntu and put Windows in the virtual machine?

Broadcom suspend / resume depends entirely on the kernel. Its fixed in later Kernels.

This is why I dont recommend Ubuntu to most people (unless they're using older kit). Ubuntu tends to use older kernels, sometimes tragically old.

The key thing to do when researching a laptop for use with Linux is visit one of the many Linux compatibility databases. I use the Arch wiki as it not only flags problems but also provides possible solutions.

You should also check the forums. Unless the kit you're looking at hasnt been released yet you can almost guarantee some has tried to load Linux on it and will have flagged up problems (if any) that exist.

I generally stick to a specific formula to ensure I get the best compatibility.

CPU - Intel Core Series (avoid ATOM, its a minefield).

Graphics - (If its a laptop, Intel, if its a new GPU nvidia, if its an old GPU AMD).

Network - Atheros / Intel / Broadcom

Motherboard - Asus / SuperMicro / Intel

Stick to this and you will have very few issues.

[dajames]

Re: why not just run Ubuntu and put Windows in the virtual machine?

You can buy a laptop that supports Windows just fine from one of the major brands if you're careful.

See icon.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: why not just run Ubuntu and put Windows in the virtual machine?

>> The main lappy makers are on a bung to ensure that Linux DOES NOT run them.

Yep - its the vendors conspiring against Linux, and the dodgy tactics of microsoft, and the stupidity of the users for not adopting Linux, and basically everyone elses fault that Linux isn't doing so well on the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: why not just run Ubuntu and put Windows in the virtual machine?

@missing semicolon

Utter bollocks.

Asus and Lenovo Laptops are often absolutely fine.

I myself run Arch on a UX303LA with zero problems.

Battery life is around 6 to 7 hours. Which is about 2-3 hours more than Windows 10 because of better CPU management.

Also, do a clean install of Windows on any OEM machine and I guarantee most of them won't even have networking unless you download the required drivers from the manufacturers website.

Id say out of the box, by default, Linux supports more common hardware. Especially network cards.

Its very very rare for me to have to install a third party driver into Linux. Whereas every Dell laptop ive installed a clean Windows on I've had to spend at least an hour installing drivers and rebooting.

Granted Wifi on Linux can be poor, but to be fair if you end up buying a laptop with poorly supported hardware your research failed not Linux.

I always thoroughly research specific components before I buy anything.

Usually by downloading the drivers from the manufacturer and having a look at the handy INF files and using the extremely useful Arch wiki.

Finally, if you sir are struggling to spec a laptop to fit the requirements of a piece of software then you sir are not fit for this community.

My daft old Northern Monkey dad can manage it so you shouldn't even have to think about it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: why not just run Ubuntu and put Windows in the virtual machine?

"... if you end up buying a laptop with poorly supported hardware your research failed not Linux."

Well said - if you know you're going to be using Linux on any system before you own that system then this is so true.

[Mark Dempster]

Re: why not just run Ubuntu and put Windows in the virtual machine?

>Battery life is around 6 to 7 hours. Which is about 2-3 hours more than Windows 10 because of better CPU management.<

That's an unusual experience; battery life in Linux / Win10 is most commonly the other way around

>Also, do a clean install of Windows on any OEM machine and I guarantee most of them won't even have networking unless you download the required drivers from the manufacturers website.<

That very much depends on how old your Windows installation media is, just as it would for Linux

>Id say out of the box, by default, Linux supports more common hardware. Especially network cards.<

It has a lot of generic drivers, which might *just about* work for particular hardware, but often it's not well optimised.

>Granted Wifi on Linux can be poor, but to be fair if you end up buying a laptop with poorly supported hardware your research failed not Linux.<

But aren't you arguing the opposite in Window's case?

>Finally, if you sir are struggling to spec a laptop to fit the requirements of a piece of software then you sir are not fit for this community.<

But should you really need to in 2017? Surely it should all just work.

Linux has its uses, and its devoted fans, but it has a long way to go before it can be properly manageable in a corporate desktop environment. The very flexibility/customisability that its fans love count heavily against it - and the same is true for non-techie home users too.

[Wayland]

Re: why not just run Ubuntu and put Windows in the virtual machine?

I'm running Mint on my ex-corporate EliteBook 8440p. I had to unlock the BIOS before I could make any changes though.

[BinkyTheMagicPaperclip]

Re: why not just run Ubuntu and put Windows in the virtual machine?

>The main lappy makers are on a bung to ensure that Linux DOES NOT run them.

>:-( I'd love to run Mint on my T100Chi, but no chance.

Do take off that tinfoil hat.

The majority of manufacturers don't care if you're running anything other than the recent versions of Windows. It simply is not tested sufficiently/at all elsewhere.

There's a post on OpenBSD tech today saying that, they need to pretend to be Darwin to get suspend working correctly on Apple hardware. Linux has had to do the same thing.

ACPI/etc tables are tested only against a restricted set of configurations. In the event that NewMungeyOS is passed in as an identification string, don't expect to receive anything reasonable back.

[Missing Semicolon]

Re: why not just run Ubuntu and put Windows in the virtual machine?

Well, that was interesting. Do the 12 downvoters seem to think that I can nip down to PC world, and pick up J Random lappy, blow away WIndows 10 and stuff an Ubuntu DVD in? It might work for the mainstream corporate/engineering machines, but consumer devices have no chance.

[TheVogon]

"At the very least it meant that SQL Server had a cost above and beyond the financial."

You mean "costs" such as SQL + Windows Server having the lowest combined database + OS security vulnerability total for every single year for the last decade versus any other commercial OS + database vendor combination?

[TheVogon]

"why not just run Ubuntu and put Windows in the virtual machine?"

Because it likely works better to run Windows as the base OS and run Linux as a VM - Hyper-V generally outperforms open source Hypervisor options out of the box - and driver support and performance is usually better for Windows...

[Anonymous Coward]

Running Linux on a laptop

I've never had a problem running Linux on my laptops. The first was a Dell I bought in 2001, suspend/resume didn't work on it, but then it didn't work properly when I booted in Windows XP, either. In 2006 I bought a Toshiba, and suspend/resume kinda worked, but not reliably enough to use. I didn't boot Windows on it often enough to know if it had the flaky suspend/resume also. I got a Dell in 2011, and it everything worked perfectly it on it, I'd leave it booted for months and just close the lid. I just replaced it with an HP (17t with Kaby Lake if you're curious) and it works perfectly too.

That's not to say there isn't a little futzing required. I can't remember what I had to do on the first couple, but I remember on the last Dell I had some wireless issues that took a little digging for unreleased patches to resolve, that were handled in the next kernel update a few months later. With the HP 17t I had a really weird problem where wireless simply didn't work, because there was an "acer-wmi" driver being loaded that thought it was wireless and overrode the real wireless. Took a few hours of google research before I tried something that realized that, then it was a simple matter of blacklisting that driver.

I think the keys to my success are:

1) don't buy ones with any weird or cutting edge hardware, like a built in fingerprint reader, and expect it to work

2) Install the version of Fedora (or similar relatively cutting edge distro) released AFTER you buy the laptop, that way it will have a new enough kernel that it has all the drivers you need. If you run some sort of LTS type distro then you'll be too far behind and you'll have problems unless you buy last year's laptop on special

3) get the model with the Intel GPU, not the discrete NVidia/ATI GPU - then you have to deal with either binary drivers or poorly maintained open source drivers

4) get the model with the Intel wireless/bluetooth cards, not third party

[oiseau]

Gut feeling

Hello:

I ran on MS-Windows OSs for many years, from DOS 6.0 onwards through 3.0, 3.11 and the various versions of W95/98/NT/2000/XP with the exception of Me, so I can say I've seen and had to wrestle with quite a bit from and about MS systems over the past 20+ years.

Now I only run Linux on my three machines and when I eventually need to use some MS only software, I load it on a VirtualBox installed in one of them, obviously totally isolated from the web.

Not being a specialist or a developer, a technical opinion I can back up and argue for is beyond me.

But ...

My gut feeling is that this is not something good for Linux or the Linux community, I have cannot shake off the idea that eventually and when we least expect it, it will roll back to bite us all from behind.

And then it will probably be too late.

But never mind.

It's just my gut's $0.02.

Cheers.

[Robert Helpmann??]

Re: Gut feeling

I am with oiseau on most of this. Penguin tools on MS boxes are nothing new (POSIX toolset and later the horrible PowerShell aliases, for example). If non-MS folks are working on this, then there is a chance it will work reasonably well. However, just from the multiple uses of the phrase "believe it or not" in the article, I am leaning toward the "not" side of things. I think MS SQL on Linux will probably be good for all involved, but much of this sounds like needlessly complicated solutions to problems that have been solved repeatedly (see other comments in this thread).

[Baldy50]

Re: Gut feeling

Started with 1.28 I think and you're probably too young to remember CFG files and G=C800:5 UPV BTW.

[streaky]

Re: Gut feeling

Gut away.

It makes it easier for people like me who develop from the windows desktop for linux servers to use linux tooling. That's what it's mostly for and it doesn't hurt anybody any more than running a linux vm from windows does. Quibbling over it does nothing, it's happening and there's nothing anybody can do about it.

Long term hope (but AFAIK not stated goal) is it improves both standards and interop at microsoft (people give them shit but they've been trying very hard for many years).

FWIW the believe it or not stuff is because people think there's some war going on that actually ended like 20 years ago when Bill Gates bailed out Apple. I know enough senior people with Apple and Linux gear at Microsoft to know that the Haskell nerds perception of reality has no basis in it.

[AMBxx]

Who cares what the OS is!

Logical progression is SQL on Azure. At that point, you really don't know what the underlying OS is. all that matters is the database tools and the authentication.

Announcement feels like something that just won't matter soon enough.

[Adam Connelly]

Re: Who cares what the OS is!

SQL Server has been available as a service on Azure for years now. You don't need to worry about setting up machines, installing the server, etc. You basically just choose the level of performance you want, and create databases. It handles everything else. You can even get it to automatically scale your databases up and down to handle different load.

But I'm guessing this must be aimed at a slightly different market, presumably because not everyone is comfortable running stuff in the cloud right now.

[JimmyPage]

Re: not everyone is comfortable running stuff in the cloud right now

More accurate to say not everyone understands the cloud right now.

[Jonathan 27]

Re: Who cares what the OS is!

Larger companies are going to want to run their own database servers regardless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Larger companies are going to want to run their own database servers regardless.

... and their prices will start to reflect this.

I have just left (in disgust) a major UK insurer whose *only* justification for not using "cloud" is that they have to justify the £thick-end-of-a-million they've spent on a data centre. Ostensibly for "data security" (although the fact they sacked their ISO when he wouldn't back that up speaks volumes).

I did some quite thorough sums, and worked out you could easily halve the IT budget *and* have enterprise security and resilience at least as good as in-house.

Instead, they'd rather hand out the P45s, having closed one office last year and eyeing another before Q4, as they've been told to shave 20% of costs (except IT infrastructure).

Meanwhile competitors have been steadily reducing their costs and can reflect this in their pricing.

AC *obviously*

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Larger companies are going to want to run their own database servers regardless.

" Ostensibly for "data security" (although the fact they sacked their ISO when he wouldn't back that up speaks volumes)."

I'd have sacked the idiot too. The last thing ANY company with HIGHLY SENSITIVE data should do is bung it on some cloud infrastructure run by a 3rd party. I don't care how secure they say it is, we all know what cloud providers say and what they do don't always dovetail. Using cloud adds another layer of personel and infrastructure plus a VPN that can all potentially be compromised and if you think its safer than an in house system run by an experienced team then you're a fool.

If I found out my insurance company (or bank) DID use 3rd party infrastructure to store my data they'd lose my custom PDQ.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get the target audience for this.

If you have an application that requires SQL server, it will run on Windows so you have Windows infrastructure already.

If you're writing a new application, you'd choose one suitable for your platform ( eg: web will be mysql or postgres ).

For the other cases, why not just run it on Windows if you require it?

[Chz]

Target audience is a company that's mostly Oracle on Linux and is so fed up with Oracle's shit that they're willing to try MS. At the moment, we have a few Windows servers about for running SQL but the admin team isn't really well-trained for Windows (and it seems silly to hire an MCSE to run a half dozen servers). Migrating that to RHEL (or whatever) would make things that much simpler.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its silly to hire an MCSE at all.

FIFY

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually we have a use case

We have an existing customer deployed Java application that uses SQL Server heavily. I'd love to move the entire stack to Linux however we do need to do a good bit of work to port to Hibernate.

SQL Server on Linux would allow us to test and deploy completely on Linux with little work.

[Anonymous Coward]

why not just run Ubuntu and put Windows in the virtual machine? Part of me thinks this move was – in addition to a PR play – mostly aimed at Microsoft's own developers.

I can't tell what MS exactly had in mind when they decided to add Linux support to Windows 10, but as a developer the only reason I have to support Windows is because we can hardly afford to tell our customers (who often don't even have IT staff) "sorry our product is Linux-only, you have to install a Linux server". For me, that means cross-platform code, quite a few headaches, and of course more development time.

I have not tried Linux on Windows 10 yet but I can see the possible benefits: develop only for Linux, and run on both. I guess whether or not we end up working that way will mostly depend on the usability for the end-users but this is definitely worth exploring.

[Anonymous Coward]

"sorry our product is Linux-only, you have to install a Linux server"

Why not? If they have no IT staff anything you use is probably alien to them.

Also, couldn't you use the lice se savings as an argument to increase your support package?

Sounds like poor business sense to me.

I put out Linux based solutions all the time and because of the various savings elsewhere im able to offer better support (due to substantially more cash remaining in their company IT budget).

In the rare event that I put out something Windows based, I only offer basic support because theres usually peanuts left in the budget for me to provide anything more.

Ergo, businesses have a tendency to pick my Linux based stuff due to it being cheaper and better supported.

Microsoft knows this which is why they're branching out. They've eroded engineer earnings for a long time with their extreme licensing model and now they're feeling us bite back.

Businesses won't buy products that IT guys refuse to support. Support is the backbone of any tech setup.

Those of us that build things cross platform know how to price things in our favour and we know which languages and technologies to use to make our products portable. Microsoft is simply trying to catch up as usual.

The only instance in which I use MS products is if the client won't budge which is becoming very rare.

On the server side, as long as what you build is accessible from the laptops / PCs the client wants to use and is backed up properly they don't care. Its YOU they expect to understand it not them. Thats what they pay you for.

[Mage]

SQL vs Linux on Win

Having option of MS SQL on Linux for people migrating to Linux servers from Windows is good.

Unless you are forced by "management" why bother with Win10 at all to run Linux applications? Win 10 is the worst windows so far and even Linux Mint with Mate Desktop and WINE (Redmond Theme) runs more old windows apps than 64 bit win7! A VM with XP and no internet works fine on Linux.

Linux update FAR more user friendly than Win7 / Win8 and especially Win10 nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: SQL vs Linux on Win

>Win 10 is the worst windows so far

Windows ME was worse.

[Paul Crawford]

Re: Windows ME was worse

Tricky, we have:

1) ME was a steaming pile of unreliable crap without any form of security or application isolation that mattered.

2) Win10 whores you to advertisers and any three-letter agency who asks.

[Jonathan 27]

Re: Windows ME was worse

I predict you'll be running Windows 10, or a later version of Windows within 5 years and complaining about how bad the next version of Windows is. This is a repeating cycle.

[TheVogon]

Re: Windows ME was worse

"2) Win10 whores you to advertisers"

Nope - it "whores" you to Microsoft - not so much to advertisers - that's Slurp's Chrome OS / browser you must be thinking of. The corporate versions of Windows 10 also have most of the telemetry disabled.

"and any three-letter agency who asks."

Just like all other corporate software / service vendors then...

[Mage]

Re: Windows ME was worse

I regarded Win9x and ME as game consoles. Never sold or installed them for business. We stuck with WFWG3.11 with Win32s till NT4.0 came out for workstations and NT3.x for servers.

Win9x and ME were hardly more than GUI shells, not real OS like NT3.1, NT3.51, NT4.0 and Win2K, so I didn't include it. I agree, the Win98 SE was far superior to Win ME.

[toughluck]

Re: Windows ME was worse

I disagree that 98 SE was superior to Me. It was more or less equal. Windows Me was basically Windows 98 SE with all patches included, some extra bundled software and disabled DOS prompt (which could be restored). For me, it was more stable than 98 was.

There are a few reasons why Me is so badly remembered:

- It didn't fix any underlying issues with older consumer Windows versions, Microsoft was already focusing on marketing 2000 to desktop users and making XP

- Windows 2000 was so far ahead of 98, Me and NT that people tend to compare everything to it

- When XP was released, it instantly obsoleted everything

[Updraft102]

Re: Windows ME was worse

ME also booted faster than 98 SE and had the more customizable Win 2k-style Windows Explorer UI. It came on a laptop I bought all those years ago. It was never unstable or crashy for me. I liked it more than 98 SE too.

[Hans 1]

Re: Windows ME was worse

>- When XP was released, it instantly obsoleted everything

Yes, including hw that was, at the time, not even ready to ship ... a resource hog like Vista.

[Mark Dempster]

Re: Windows ME was worse

There was a lot of software that either didn't work on ME, or needed a lot of messing about to get working. I remember Sage Line 100 being something I had to do a lot of work with at the time, as well as the Swan ERP system that was based on it.

Strangely it worked better on the NT-based kernels, although the users had to have local admin rights (same was true for a LOT of Windows software back then)

[Boothy]

Re: Windows ME was worse

I found that some of the 'Admin' rights issues could be fixed worked around by installing apps to a non standard folder, like C:/Apps rather than to 'Program Files' (which of course is a special location for Windows).

Still works now for some legacy XP era apps running on newer Windows.

Didn't work for everything of course though.

[toughluck]

Re: a lot of software that didn't work on Me

That software would typically fail to work in Windows 98 as well, as Me was not NT-based.

Microsoft made developers aware in advance that DOS-based Windows will be abandoned and that all development should proceed on NT.

Those that listened, moved to NT, and didn't give a hoot about supporting 9x in any meaningful manner.

There is one thing that Microsoft screwed up totally with Millennium Edition. It was released half a year after Windows 2000, and a lot of people expected it would be newer and better and incorporating NT/2000 technology.

Around late nineties, was Sage 100 actually supported on anything but NT?

[Sandtitz]

Re: Windows ME was worse

"I regarded Win9x and ME as game consoles. Never sold or installed them for business."

Clearly your clients didn't use laptops then. Win3.1 or NT4 had zero power saving features, they didn't support PCMCIA removals nor USB, and the driver selection for the laptop hardware was also rather poor. NT4 also required more resources (RAM) than Win9x.

Many small companies opted for the less expensive Windows 9x purely because the usage was email, browsing and printing which works even in game consoles.

Until Windows 2000 came around and laptops started to have >64 MB of mem your only reasonable PC laptop OS was Windows 9x, preferably that 98SE.

[Diodelogic]

Re: Windows ME was worse

"I regarded Win9x and ME as game consoles. Never sold or installed them for business."

All I have to say about it is this: Back in the 90's I was a support tech for Windows at Microsoft, first-line support as it's called. I "graduated" to the Premier Support group after awhile, meaning that my team provided phone support for customers paying for it. Fortune 500 companies, smaller-but-still-quite-large companies, occasionally a rich person who was showing-off. I took thousands of calls from businesses. I supported Windows 95, 98, 98SE, and ME. All business, all the time. And I will just mention that the vast majority of calls were exactly the same kind as for free support, and most of the rest were just barely more challenging.

[Cheesenough]

Re: SQL vs Linux on Win

>Win 10 is the worst windows so far

Worse than Vista?

[Mage]

Re: Worse than Vista

Oh, yes especially as Win7 is a service pack for Vista and you could turn junk off in Vista. Also no-one was forced to "upgrade" to Vista from XP. It was easy to wait for the Vista SP, known as Win 7 (Windows NT 6.0 and 6.1?)

[toughluck]

Re: Worse than Vista

Sigh. Windows 7 is not just a service pack for Vista. It had a new kernel and a significantly upgraded security model. It also lowered system requirements compared to Vista.

[Hans 1]

Re: SQL vs Linux on Win

>Win 10 is the worst windows so far

Worse than NT4?

Worse than XP?

Worse than Vista?

Worse than 7?

Worse than 8?

Worse than 8.1?

TFTFY

NB: I intentionally left 2k out, ok?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: SQL vs Linux on Win

@cheesenough

Windows 10 has Vista in its DNA so through the cumulitive effect of years inbreeding and retard offspring yes, yes its worse than Vista.

I view the Windows family of products as being a bit like the Bush dynasty.

George Bush Jnr - Windows Vista - Slow, unusuable, doesnt respond to serious incidents in a timely fashion.

Jeb Bush - Windows 8.1 - Superficially looks better than Vista but is related to Vista and therefore must have some similarities. Ultimately nobody wanted it, because of and ironjcallybdespite its new look.

??? - Windows 10 - ???

[joeldillon]

'at least now I can use the basic set of Bash tools I'm used to without running a virtual machine'

Umm how the hell have you never heard of Cygwin?

[druck]

CYGWIN

Sorry, needed to repeat your point and give it a title, so people can see it.

I'd have never kept my sanity all these years without cygwin to run bash, find, grep etc instead of the hopeless Windows tools.

[Mage]

Re: CYGWIN

Or the bought in Unix for Windows tools (MS Services for Unix?) distributed for years, that however lacked a X server.

[Denarius]

Re: CYGWIN

also a pity UWIN tanked. Was great to have a decent shell ksh93 and standard unix toolset. Better than Cygwin but cost $ for commercial use. Now David Korn works for the new Beast little seems to have happened on updating sources if one can still find them

[Alistair]

Re: CYGWIN

@ druck:

Cygwin has its place. And we've used it in quite a few of our window boxen as it allows SSH, without heady costs. However its a right royal pain to get it to (both) play nice with AD and keep it properly secured.

[Pirate Dave]

Re: CYGWIN

I remember looking at Microsoft's NFS client several years ago as a way to shuttle files from Windows servers to Linux backup targets. I soon realized I'd rather shoot myself in the nuts than try to get it working. If memory serves, it was heavily reliant on Active Directory, which we didn't have at the time as we were a Novell shop. And I don't recall ever finding a way to get it to use "local" (non-AD) accounts.

Cygwin saved the day for me. I ended up using Rsync to copy the files, and didn't have to worry about mounting or mapping the Linux drives. To this day, that's still how I get the backup files from my Windows boxes to the Linux boxes. It has proven to be very, very robust over the 7 or 8 years I've been using it.

[david 12]

Re: CYGWIN

I remember looking at NFS several years ago, and deciding I'd rather shoot myself in the nuts than try to get it working, because it's unsuitable for anything more demanding than running rsync backups.

But apart from that, SFU NFS name mapping was not relient on Active Directory in any way, shape or form.

[Pirate Dave]

Re: CYGWIN

I admit, my memories on this are fuzzy after 7 years, so you may be right about requirements for AD. I do remember that permissions were a big factor in getting NFS to run, so perhaps I have confused "permissions" with a requirement for AD. However, I do remember thinking at the time that it seemed byzantine and horribly complicated the way Microsoft needed things setup, compared to how it "just worked" on Linux with a minumum of fuss. I never could find a simple way to just mount a NFS share without jumping through what seemed to be an inordinate amount of hoops.

(oh, and the downvote was not from me.)

[Dwarf]

My bet is this is a long term investment strategy for Microsoft to try and stay alive.

Looks to me like they are trying to contaminate Linux distros with SQL server as nobody really wants Windows (in any of its forms) these days. I'm guessing they will also be pushing the "Windows is better" line for the things they decided to leave out on Linux, again to try and retain some market share.

Who knows, they may even try and do some form of patent thing about Linux using their IP - even though they put it there - a bit like the old Prenda stuff.

Like many others, I used to live and breathe DOS/Windows/NT/Technet, but then I took the red pill and woke up and saw how bad things actually are in Redmond. Why do I have to keep re-learning the UI each release ? How does that in any way benefit the users ?

Now I am happy in my nature reserve surrounded mostly by penguins and a few dinosaurs that we are waiting to die out. I'n not liking the ideas of cross-breeding dinosaurs and penguins, so the electric fence will stay on until its no longer needed.

[Updraft102]

"Why do I have to keep re-learning the UI each release ? How does that in any way benefit the users ?"

The MS executive heard the question, but he didn't react immediately. He turned to face Dwarf and extended a hand in a gesture that suggested he was about to say something important, but the look of puzzlement on his face seemed to contradict that. He put his hand down, appearing to think for a moment, then admitted, "I'm sorry. I don't understand the question."

[TheVogon]

"as nobody really wants Windows (in any of its forms) these days"

Windows is apparently still growing market share on server and is stable at ~ 90% on the desktop. Can't see how you can say that is the case in anything but maybe mobile.

[phuzz]

Sod being able to run a bash shell on Windows, I can just spin up a linux VM if I want that. No, what I want is an ssh server for Windows, that will drop me into Powershell when I login.

Oops, I forgot to slag off Microsoft, let the downvotes commence!

[Alistair]

@phuzz:

SSH server dropping you to a (powershell) or (bash) is apparently on the plate with the 'linux on windows' tools that are coming out. At least, I've read as much elsewhere on *here*.

[TheVogon]

"No, what I want is an ssh server for Windows, that will drop me into Powershell when I login."

Why would you want to use such an archaic and complex method to get to Powershell? Just use Powershell Remoting - no need to worry about client certificates, etc.

See https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff700227.aspx

[phuzz]

Because sometimes I'm going from my Windows desktop, to a linux box (via Putty), and then to another Windows box (with no chance of a direct connection).

Also, can you imagine how many toys will be thrown out of prams when you post a screen capture that looks like:

Last login: Thu Feb 14 19:15:52 2017 from 10.0.0.1

phuzz@linux-proxy:~$ ssh phuzz@windowsbox

phuzz@windowsbox's password:

Windows PowerShell

Copyright (C) 2016 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

PS C:\Users\phuzz>

[Your alien overlord - fear me]

If a company is a *nix only company, chances of them forking out for a Microsoft program are remote to say the least. The main reaon is cost. Yes, some companies pay for *nix support (and MySQL etc) but alot more don't. Why would these companies suddenly open their wallets?

Smacks of 3D telly - lots of hype, lots of people saying it's the next big thing but when it come down to it, no one wants to pay for it.

[Doctor Syntax]

If a company is a Unix only company

FTFY - and no thunderbolts descended on me.

[Anonymous Coward]

>> If a company is a *nix only company, chances of them forking out for a Microsoft program are remote to say the least. The main reason is cost."

Microsoft has one of the lowest TCOs for many common IT services when you look at the full ownership costs.

>> *nix support (and MySQL etc) but alot more don't. Why would these companies suddenly open their wallets?

Because they can get consistent global enterprise grade support that doesn't rely on a post to a forum? And often Microsoft licensing + support is cheaper than the equivalent enterprise grade open source supported software. For instance look at the cost of say RHEL Server!

[HmmmYes]

Asuze is nice at the moment.

How long it stays nice is another matter.

As far as linux tools and the like ... well, can MS make Powershell run faster, so I can use it for interactive tasks. At the moment using command completion takes 2s!

[Boris the Cockroach]

Well

maybe microsoft are coming round to "theres money to be made from linux"

Which could mean (stand by for the 2 minute hate) M$ office on Linux.....

Imagine that.... no more insecure wondering about if staff open a mal-ware email....

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Well

"M$ office on Linux.....

Imagine that.... no more insecure wondering about if staff open a mal-ware email"

I'm not sure. It's more likely to be "Office on Linux ain't done till malware on Linux will run".

[Anonymous Coward]

Jumping to conclusions much?

"That quick pace says at least some aspects of the enterprise are itching to get their hands on SQL Server without giving up their Linux infrastructure."

Interesting theory, but I think this one is more likely: "It says that Microsoft is itching to sell their SQL server to customers who don't want to give up their Linux infrastructure".

Because since when does Microsoft actually listen to what their customers want? I think Windows 10 has clearly demonstrated just how much Microsoft cares. They do care, but not about their customers but their own revenue, and will go literally out of their ways to try and secure it.

That's all this is in my opinion: the search for more revenue.

[naive]

Re: Jumping to conclusions much?

MS did a very smart move with this. The SQL server implementation for Linux lacks all the enterprise features like HA and replication, also .NET compatibility and certain types of stored procedures are not supported on Linux, causing it to be unusable for many existing Windows software packages.

It just means that: MS protects Windows server environments with legacy .NET software and those in need of a database with high availability. High end sqlserver users still have only a windows only option.

This sqlserver implementation resembles a stripped down version of slqserver express, intended to compete in a grey area between Oracle and MySQL (Mariadb).

So well done MS, undermine Oracle without risking to lose high end Windows server revenues.

And for openness, it is just another example that MS only adheres for 95% to open standards, if they claim something is "open".

[TheVogon]

Re: Jumping to conclusions much?

MS did a very smart move with this. The SQL server implementation for Linux lacks all the enterprise features like HA and replication, also .NET compatibility and certain types of stored procedures are not supported on Linux,"

Yep, this is just a fob to keep developers that prefer to use Open Source tools / environments happy and stop them playing with other database options in development. When you want security / availability / performance features suitable for production, you will have to put it on Windows Server - and production systems are where the money is...

[Adam 52]

Re: Jumping to conclusions much?

"SQL server implementation for Linux lacks "

Thank you for pointing this out. So many people, including the author, see entirely unaware of what SQL Server (on Windows) is.

[Lars]

Re: Jumping to conclusions much?

"That's all this is in my opinion: the search for more revenue.".

So name me a company, open source or closed, US or China .... not in search for more revenue.

[theOtherJT]

bash on Windows...

is actually kinda useless at the moment. The problem is that as soon as you start bash on Windows, you're in a totally different environment. You even have to create a separate user for it, making it a completely disconnected experience.

You can't do a lot of things either. Windows tools to manage the OS like ipconfig don't exist there... and neither do their Linux counterparts. I'm not entirely sure what it's meant to be for.

[Alistair]

Re: bash on Windows...

@ theOtherJT:

Most folks that want bash on linux are mostly needing scriptable tools like awk and grep that work correctly and can be called from an ssh session. Expect would be an excellent addition and would resolve things that many admins need.

I've not seen it deployed in the Server farm but the two times I've dropped a vm to play with I've not had 'separate user' issues with the bash shell; but I've only seen the technet release that was labelled beta. Security team on our side wont let it out to the servers yet as there are certain things it can do that do *not* log the way they'd like to see.

[Pirate Dave]

Back-asswards

"actually building tools that run Linux in Windows"

If they'd do it the other way, they might be on to something. Get the Windows GUI to run directly on Linux. Let Linux be the "O/S" that does the heavy lifting of memory and I/O management, network stacks, etc, with Windows being just a GUI that sits on top and gives us pretty icons to click on. THAT is something that might be interesting.

[Lars]

Re: Back-asswards

That would be Windows with a Linux kernel. I think Torvalds was asked about it more than 15 years ago and said something like - "Yes, that would be nice". There is nothing preventing MS to do it. But then if they did it the same way as Windows is done, mixing the kernel with the GUI they would have to fork the Linux kernel too.

I cannot see much sense in that. And if they did a GUI on top of the kernel then it would become a competitor to Gnome and KDE and all the rest. The question is, is there anything in the Win 10 GUI that is so superior that it's worth it. Then again why not, they have all the channels to sell it and charge for it as before. Perhaps they should have done it 15 years ago and the amount of landfill Windows would be smaller.

[Pirate Dave]

Re: Back-asswards

"That would be Windows with a Linux kernel."

I've always thought of it as Linux with a Windows GUI. I admit, I've never been a fan of X, so this always had a special appeal to me, and might even convince me to give up my CLI lifestyle and use a GUI on my Linux boxes. Microsoft would just have to limit themselves to only putting graphics on the screen, and I don't foresee them ever putting on such a tight straight-jacket. OTOH, doing so would greatly free-up internal personnel resources - with no further need to maintain Cutler's kernel, they could re-focus their resources on the GUI and speed-up their upgrade treadmill release schedule to match Firefox.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Back-asswards

>> That would be Windows with a Linux kernel.

Never going to happen unless the Linux kernel is updated to a more modern micro kernel / modular architecture. Lots of core functionality of Windows is reliant on low level kernel support. You would have to shim the Linux kernel to emulate that and it would be a significant performance hit. Commonly users want Windows because of it's significant performance advantages for gaming, IO, etc. so Microsoft are not going to want to loose that edge in a hurry.

[Lars]

Re: Back-asswards

"Commonly users want Windows because of it's significant performance advantages for gaming, IO, etc.".

That's probably true as those games are made for Windows. But if the Windows kernel was in any way better/faster than the Linux kernel you would find a lot of Windows among the top500 supercomputers but you don't and as I remember the last stock exchange there was running Windows had to go to Linux because more speed was needed. Don't get mixed up with the word "micro" kernel, Linus discarded that idea because it makes the kernel slower with all that internal "pushing stuff around". For some reason "micro" sounds more modern but that is all there is to it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Back-asswards

"But if the Windows kernel was in any way better/faster than the Linux kernel you would find a lot of Windows among the top500 supercomputers"

I think you will find that's got a lot more to do with the tools preferred and historic UNIX use in the places that use Super Computers than the OS performance. Windows is actually somewhat better setup out-of-the-box for low latency work / compute farm work - for instanced a layered network driver model with inbuilt provision for hardware offload, SMB Direct and Packet Direct, RDMA with Storage Spaces Direct, built in NV-DIMM support, etc. etc.

[Doctor Syntax]

" Perhaps the best things about SQL Server is the plethora of tools around it, particularly tools that allow those with little to no SQL knowledge to build powerful databases and run queries without learning how to do table joins."

Just enough rope...

[Anonymous Coward]

Removed linux from windows because MS now put everything in appdata, and appdata is on the c: drive and the c: drive is a small ssd. Fucking retards.

[Hans 1]

>Removed linux from windows because MS now put everything in appdata, and appdata is on the c: drive and the c: drive is a small ssd. Fucking retards.

Upvoted, though you can move your home directory on Windows, a little more complicated than on Linux, where it is DEAD SIMPLE ... I upvoted because AppData is a mess:

1. it is hidden -> YOUR DATA IN A HIDDEN FOLDER???? No problem for us techs, right, but Joe Public?

2. it is full of junctions/symbolic links or whatever pointing to itself(!) and, no, I don't care about the exact technical details of the implementation

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't move appdata at least not easily, I tried - windows shits itself even after updating all the registry entries. I think you may be able to if you move it all before you ever use it, of course one doesn't realize the pos is going to do this until you notice your C: drive is very low on space.

[david 12]

WTF are your programs putting in appdata? It's a local cache. Yes, I agree you should be able to move the local cache, but that is the thing about local caches: programs expect to find the local cache in the place they left it.

Anyway, joking aside, if your local cache is too big, it's probably (1) Outlook local email cache or (2) Crash dumps. Delete the crash dumps, and move the mail cache to a different drive.

[Anonymous Coward]

MS office click to run installs in app data, so all of ms office.

and microsoft put all of ubuntu in there. I could go and look to see what else has gone in there...

Amazon music has half a gig, itunes 200meg, 1gb in "apps"

1.34gb in "microsoft"

atom has about a gb

gamemaker studio has a gig

it goes on and on.

I think we can basically say it's mostly crap that should be stored elsewhere.

[disgruntled yank]

"Perhaps the best things about SQL Server is the plethora of tools around it, particularly tools that allow those with little to no SQL knowledge to build powerful databases and run queries without learning how to do table joins. The level of abstraction that SQL Server offers makes it more accessible than many similar tools."

Well, maybe. Excel allows those with little or no knowledge of relational principles to create sorta-kinda databases in a workbook. This is great, until it isn't, when nobody can figure out how a particular answer is derived, or whether it is correct.

"Without learning to do table joins." I have met the occasional database programmer who hasn't quite learned that. Was it Flann O'Brien who had the joke about putting Descartes before the horse?

[AndyD 8-)&#8377;]

".... tools that allow those with little to no SQL knowledge to build powerful databases and run queries without learning how to do table joins"

yes, I've worked with some of them; not only didn't know how to do table joins (why should they, that's my job - writing user-friendly views) but didn't fully understand their own data, didn't know why they got so much output, and didn't know what to do with the results even when someone had 'sanitised' their queries for them.

[cantankerous swineherd]

"I can use the basic set of Bash tools I'm used to without running a virtual machine"

I've been doing this for years with xp and win7 - gnuwin32 and msys.

[pyite]

What was wrong with cygwin?

It has been awhile since I had to use Windows, but I remember having a great experience with Cygwin.

[david 12]

Re: What was wrong with cygwin?

And you can/could install bash on Interix/SFU (which came with ksh by default). Now it's the work of minutes to do so, but I supose if we're talking about the pre-internet era you would have had to find some to show you.

[Daggerchild]

Mutexion

Do the MS filesystem syscall primitives below the ported bash support the same level of mutexing, atomicity, locking, guaranteed-minimum contiguous file-append stuff and all the other stuff my shellscripts are expecting to exist? Can you still do shared I/O on open handles to deleted files and move open files etc?

Have they really fixed all those MSDOS design decisions that have haunted them for years?

[TheVogon]

Re: Mutexion

"Have they really fixed all those MSDOS design decisions that have haunted them for years?"

Depends on the file system you choose to use - and has done for at least a decade. NTFS is fully POSIX compliant.

[cdegroot]

Choice is better...

...and now everyone can choose whether to run Linux-on-Windows or Windows-on-Linux. I myself am opting for the former, as I want to run games, not have hassle around device drivers, virtual machines, and whatnot. For me, it works so well I'm considering asking my company to take my Macbook and give me a decent (32G RAM anyone?) Windows laptop. It looks like everything I want to do is already working, and with the next WSL release supporting Xenial and fixing a ton of bugs, I should be in business.

[aussie-alan]

POSIX subsystem

When NT was first announced, one of the most interesting features was the OS/2 subsystem. If Microsoft had built a good POSIX subsystem back then, then Linux may never have gained a foothold.

BTW, I'm an OS X user, and do development and deployment into Linux using Docker. It's a very comfortable environment, as there's no mental context-switching for me between the two. Windows should be able to do this very easily too.

A.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: POSIX subsystem

" If Microsoft had built a good POSIX subsystem back then"

Can't recall anything ever wrong with it? It outperformed Linux as an NFS Server last time I tested it!

It was a bit fiddly IF you needed to integrate both Windows granular ACLs and UNIX's more limited capabilities, but it worked.

[Roo]

Re: POSIX subsystem

"Can't recall anything ever wrong with it? It outperformed Linux as an NFS Server last time I tested it!"

Quite the reverse in my experience - a 486DX2-66 with an IDE drive running a 1.2.x kernel spanked the NT 3.51 and NT 4.0 installs on a Pentium Pro with 8x the memory, 4x the clock speed and 4 way striped UltraSCSI drives (Adaptec 3940UW). NT had some serious flaws with respect to file system performance back then.

In fairness I can accept that your mileage varied, we had some fairly extreme use cases - zillions of little files and lots of massive (for the time) files, nothing "average". :)

The POSIX subsystem was a huge disappointment, mainly because the performance conform to a typical POSIX/UNIX coder's experience. Processes were slow to start, context switching was very slow in NT, UNIX apps tend to presume the opposite, Paging & Memory mapped I/O was cripplingly expensive too.

MS have moved NT along over time - but it's been rare that NT has been the quickest or most efficient option. YMMV

[Maventi]

Re: POSIX subsystem

"Can't recall anything ever wrong with it? It outperformed Linux as an NFS Server last time I tested it!"

Seriously? Mate, if you are going to tout MS as being all greatness, at least pick something they are good at (along with a more believable quote about 'testing it').

Microsoft added an NFS server with two goals: POSIX compliance for contracts that required it and the hope of using it as a migration service for existing 'nix kit. Both of those reasons are nothing more than box-checking exercises. Microsoft already has SMB/CIFS, so NFS would seem to be little more than an afterthought.

Now the anecdote to reinforce that. A couple of years ago one of my colleagues bought a NAS box for using in our lab. This was a pretty typical vanilla 2U rack server from either Dell or HP (I forget which) running Windows Storage Server 2012 R2. I don't recall it being particularly cheap either, but we found it to be a reasonably capable iSCSI and SMB server, both of which were pretty straightforward to get going.

One day I needed some NFS shares for a project I was working on. We spent hours battling with NTFS permissions and the confusing NFS UI (not helped by the use of non-standard terminology) and eventually managed to get it working. The performance was pretty average at best, but sufficient to at least get on with things. Then we tried netbooting a box using an NFS share as the root filesystem, which simply refused to work.

After a few more hours not getting anywhere with that, we ended up wiping the entire OS and installing FreeNAS instead. Less than an hour later we had everything working perfectly (including SMB and iSCSI, plus much faster NFS) and simply got on with the rest of the project.

Microsoft has virtually no use case for NFS except to provide shares to 'nix boxes, and like you stated yourself the compatibility between the two isn't great so it's much less work to use a proper NFS implementation instead. I'm struggling to think of what possible use case it serves at all?

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: POSIX subsystem

"If Microsoft had built a good POSIX subsystem back then, then Linux may never have gained a foothold."

If SCO had realised they had to compete on price back then Linux may never have gained a foothold. We're talking way before the Litigation-as-a-Service lot took over.

[Anonymous Coward]

if you want to run an open source OS ...

Why are you going to want to run an expensive proprietary DB like MS SQL ?

Postgres or maybe MySQL are much more likely candidates.

and if I understand it correctly MS SQL on Linux is a bit lobotomised as compared to running it on Windows.

I'm hypothesising that Microsoft possibly think its a "gateway drug" to getting devs to use Windows.

Alternatively it could be a "gateway drug" for devs going from Windows to Linux.

Personally I'll stick to Linux / Postgres combo ...

[W. Anderson]

purely propaganda push for Microsoft SQLServer

Scott Gilbertson obviously does noy perform any high level database programming, since he would be well aware that SQL Server has strict limitations on transaction throughput, reliability and flexibility that is mandatory for most Linux/BSD deployments, as compared to SQLServer used primarily in Windows corporate departmental scenarios.

Can anyone image SQLServer running NY or NASDAQ Stock exchange? The results would be an absolute disaster.

SQLServer does NOT work fluently with ZFS file system of choice in several GNU/Linux and BSD UNIX-like operating systems (OS) infrastructure systems, and the article author (purposely) omitted to mention that SQLServer does not "natively" on Linux - a major impediment for many administration functions.

Is Mr. Gilbertson a "paid" or voluntary shill for Microsoft, as he writing would surely indicate as much?

[Adam 52]

Re: purely propaganda push for Microsoft SQLServer

I suggest a quick hop over to the TPC benchmark results page if you think SQL Server has a unusually low limit on transaction rate.

[Stites]

re: why not just run Ubuntu and put Windows in the virtual machine?

Linux Mint works just fine on my laptop, a Fujitsu Notebook. Linux Mint even supports the light pen right from the install. I don't put Windows anywhere since I have not used Windows in 17 years.

--------------------------------

Steve Stites