Microsoft Has Created Its Own FreeBSD (microsoft.com) 247
Simon Sharwood, writing for The Register: Microsoft has published its own distribution of FreeBSD 10.3 in order to make the OS available and supported in Azure. Jason Anderson, principal PM manager at Microsoft's Open Source Technology Center says Redmond "took on the work of building, testing, releasing and maintaining the image" so it could "ensure our customers have an enterprise SLA for their FreeBSD VMs running in Azure". Microsoft did so "to remove that burden" from the FreeBSD Foundation, which relies on community contributions. Redmond is not keeping its work on FreeBSD to itself: Anderson says "the majority of the investments we make at the kernel level to enable network and storage performance were up-streamed into the FreeBSD 10.3 release, so anyone who downloads a FreeBSD 10.3 image from the FreeBSD Foundation will get those investments from Microsoft built in to the OS."
GBSD (Score:5, Funny)
does this mean they will replace GWX with a Get FreeBSD button?
I might give that a try.
I have run a bsd in a while.
Re:GBSD (Score:4, Funny)
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I have run a bsd in a while.
I could care less what you have run.
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I could care less what you have run.
Attempting To Suppress.... Grammar... Nazi... Impulses...
Norman, Correlate!
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Read the context of what I was replying to before you consider my sentence grammatically incorrect :-)
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It's only GetFreeBSD until July, then it will be GetBSD.
Investments from Microsoft built in to the OS (Score:5, Funny)
...so anyone who downloads a FreeBSD 10.3 image from the FreeBSD Foundation will get those investments from Microsoft built in to the OS.
Clippy: I see you're running FreeBSD. Would you like to upgrade to Windows 10 now or reschedule for later?
Linux users should be getting worried. (Score:4, Interesting)
Although you joke, those who use Linux, especially those who use it seriously and for the long term, should be getting worried right about now.
We're seeing turmoil within the wider Linux community, mainly thanks to systemd. Regardless of your take on systemd, it has been very divisive.
Systemd has been a total disaster for many users, resulting in Linux installations that don't boot properly.
Even those who don't dislike it completely do realize that it represents a dangerous consolidation within the Linux ecosystem.
It goes beyond systemd, including problematic software like GNOME 3, PulseAudio, and even newer versions of Firefox.
A monoculture is developing, where all of the major Linux distros are becoming very much alike.
Linux users who don't want to be part of this monoculture are told to use obscure niche distros, which is a polite way of telling them to "fuck off and die".
So many have looked elsewhere. The *BSDs are an obvious choice for many refugees from Linux, and OS X for others.
We're seeing a resurgence of interest in FreeBSD and OpenBSD, and it won't be good for Linux.
There is now a whole generation of young developers and sysadmins who missed out on the FreeBSD glory years of the 1990s, but who are now rediscovering what we knew then: that the BSDs provide the best open source UNIX-like experience available.
So while we're seeing the Linux ecosystem disintegrate, we're seeing the FreeBSD and OpenBSD ecosystems becoming even stronger.
Linux users should be very concerned about the long term viability of Linux. Those who have enough foresight to see what's happening to the Linux ecosystem are already moving to FreeBSD or OpenBSD, and they will be glad that they got out before things got really bad.
Re:Linux users should be getting worried. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't know why you're getting the downvotes.
I agree with you on systemd. Linux did need full process management. I do like how systemd standardized the init system and it'd be nice if there could be a simple drop-in replacement for it. Uselessd development has stopped and no one has the time to contribute anymore. The big projects are all funded by the big for-profit companies.
I use Gentoo and still love it. I don't use systemd, but it is an optional choice (like it should be). I haven't touched FreeBSD in years, but I can understand people moving that route. I might load it up at some point. I just don't have the time to invest these days and Gentoo still works great for me at work and at home.
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I suspect I am going to be shouted down for this, but there is also Solaris, which IMO is a very good system as well. Some of the best ideas in unix came from SunOS. I've never really had the chance to work with the BSDs, so I don't know how they compare.
Re:Linux users should be getting worried. (Score:4, Insightful)
Programming skill is distributed on a power curve. SystemD's design is below average, but well above median, so I guess it's an overall win.
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So ? Has ANY distro used sysv in ten years anyway ?
We've had numerous alternatives for two decades now. Slashdot has had BSD-style inits since 1993. Richard Gooch had a parallel init system based on make's approach to dependencies as early as 2001. Gentoo has defaulted to OpenRC for many years, Ubuntu had upstart (which was actually a very nice init system) for almost as long.
Comparing systemd to sysv is a strawman fallacy. Compare it to the OTHER contemporary init systems that ALL managed to solve the issu
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What was on them looked like SysV but wasn't. And yes, I had intended to write slackware. Upstart however was absolutely fantastic compared to systemd - it was just atrocious compared to the best alternatives like OpenRC or simpleinit.
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The proof is in the pudding. When you start to see parts of SystemD being used in other systems and other systems replacing parts of SystemD, that is when you know it is good.
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of course you should if you don't like the software choices of your preferred distro. its their work hence their decisions and they are entitled to do what they like with it.
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> You have no problem to apt-get remove all the systemd packages
Not so easy, since a total linux noob like Knopper takes one hour to attempt [youtube.com].
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You are likely getting downvotes for spitting the vitriol the troll feeds on. You may have even helped them climax.
If I had anymore mod points I'd downvote both of you for those reasons. Instead I'll just leave this here and hope others agree.
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Don't spell it "systemd".
Spell it "SystemD"
That way it looks like an ASCII penis.
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Although you joke, those who use Linux, especially those who use it seriously and for the long term, should be getting worried right about now.
It goes beyond systemd, including problematic software like GNOME 3, PulseAudio, and even newer versions of Firefox.
Worried? You bet, Linux Mint is getting sloppy, and I plan (had) on running Mint KDE long term and seriously.
Install Opera 12.16 (12.16.1860-1linuxmint) (this is the best Windows version, and browser).
Left click far left Opera tab > Settings > Preferences > Advanced
There are 5 boxes for selected options (4 selected) with no indication of what they are for or do, and it continues through out the settings.
I won't use it.
This is a verified realible release from Synaptic Package Manager no PPA's; main
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I noticed all the things you did notice, plus one, the freebsd offered as an alternative to the systemd linux.
Leaving a GPLd distro for one that lets corporations fork freely is leaving the trenches to hide beyond cardboard boxes.
Captcha, distill.
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Although you joke, those who use Linux, especially those who use it seriously and for the long term, should be getting worried right about now.
We're seeing turmoil within the wider Linux community, mainly thanks to systemd. Regardless of your take on systemd, it has been very divisive.
It's been very divisive only because of people spreading FUD like yourself.
It goes beyond systemd, including problematic software like GNOME 3, PulseAudio, and even newer versions of Firefox. ... Linux users who don't want to be part of this monoculture are told to use obscure niche distros, which is a polite way of telling them to "fuck off and die".
Pick one:
1. I want a niche distro to accommodate my specific need (i.e. to boycott software maintained by people who work for Red Hat and Mozilla).
2. I want a mainstream distro that uses technologies that the majority is OK with.
3. I will roll/maintain/fund my own distro that is a preferential combination of 1 & 2.
So while we're seeing the Linux ecosystem disintegrate, we're seeing the FreeBSD and OpenBSD ecosystems becoming even stronger.
I am just curious if you have a single stat to back that up with. Because the financials of Red Hat, SUSE, Oracl
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the changes were pushed back upstream
Most of the changes were pushed upstream, but not all. If they were all pushed, and accepted, then there would be no reason for Microsoft to have their own version.
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Anderson says "the majority of the investments we make at the kernel level to enable network and storage performance were up-streamed into the FreeBSD 10.3 release"
I glance over the "majority" part on first read. I'm now curious about what exactly got held out of their commit to the upstream.
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The wording is not quite clear whether Microsoft withheld those parts or whether FreeBSD simply didn't pull them. Likely it was a bunch of cloud stuff that doesn't make sense to use outside of Azure.
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Windows Architecture Upgrade to UNIX (Score:3, Insightful)
Having watched Windows grow from MSDOS, to Windows 3.1, to NT and beyond, and having observed the architectural stability through those stages (e.g. the registry), I have become convinced that the only way Windows will become truly stable and easy to maintain will be for it to adopt a UNIX architecture. This is not an absurd suggestion. Apple did it. It adopted a UNIX kernel, and managed to support legacy programs using virtualization. The process was in fact relatively benign from a user point of view.
Not going to happen (Score:2)
Not going to happen.
It's not a bug, it's a feature.
Microsoft needs lock-in to maintain their monopoly, and lock-in needs incompatibility.
An OS is its architecture.
If Windows adopts a Unix architecture, then Windows becomes Unix.
If Windows becomes Unix, then customers have their choice: Windows, Linux, BSD, whatever.
No more lock-in,
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"You might be a neckbeard, if..."
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Funny you should mention that, I hear he's just been booked into the GNU/Comedy Store in Cambridge. (His contract called for the venue to change their name rather than simply omit the brown M&Ms [npr.org].)
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The funniest segment in Wait Wait Don't Tell Me (NPR) was when they were making Clippy jokes, then Paula Poundstone pipes up and say "um... who's Clippy?"
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The funniest segment in Wait Wait Don't Tell Me (NPR) was when they were making Clippy jokes, then Paula Poundstone pipes up and say "um... who's Clippy?"
That's kinda amazing.I always figured she was kind of a geek.
Oh, nevermind [wikipedia.org]...
Smart (Score:5, Insightful)
The interesting thing is that you would never see this happen under previous leadership. Forget the Windows 10 mess, even forget Microsoft selling one-off software at all. They are absolutely committed to using Azure to become the next IBM. The reason why IBM is still alive is because they draw massive monthly revenue from the mainframe business. You don't just buy a mainframe and a z/OS license as a one-time thing. You buy the hardware, the licenses, plus a huge monthly maintenance charge, _plus_ a pay-by-the-MIPS charge to use the hardware. IBM maintains the system for you, sends minions to replace parts, gives you access to upgrades, etc. for this fee. In an environment like this, it makes perfect sense to allow customers to run whatever they want as long as they run it on Azure. Microsoft will be the toll collector for anything their customers choose to migrate there. I'm working on a big Azure migration/rebuild project, and it's so obvious that Microsoft is done pushing their own software...as long as you rent their infrastructure.
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IBM maintains the system for you
That is the way of IBM. There was a small period where they did not have this going on very well. But they are back into it heavy duty. There was a time when you rented particular instructions from them. This goes all the way back to the 1930s. It is the Ma-Bell way of computing. You rent everything and own nothing. It is why the micro computer revolution destroyed IBM.
Now that everything is 'the cloud' the old ways are coming back into fashion.
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It is why the micro computer revolution destroyed IBM.
Ironic, considering IBM's role in creating a massively popular microcomputing platform.
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It really wasn't terribly popular until someone cloned it and took it out of the hands of IBM.
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It is why the micro computer revolution destroyed IBM.
Ironic, considering IBM's role in creating a massively popular microcomputing platform.
But they didn't. Microcomputing was doing just fine before IBM entered the market. What IBM did was put the stamp of "business respectability" on microcomputing. Because back then a Data Processing PHB could have a complete lobotomy and still prosper because IBM would tell him what to do.
Destroyed? (Score:2)
I don't think you are using that word correctly. IBM dumped the PC division because the market is saturated and the margin is thin.
Re:Smart (Score:5, Insightful)
The history of computing has been a fight between centralized control versus user control.
Mainframes with a priesthood (mortals are not allowed to touch the big blue iron box).
Mortal users start buying minicomputers for their own department use. A local priesthood is set up to manage access to them.
Company says that multiple department priesthoods is clumsy, so central priesthood is put in charge of all departmental minis.
Mortal users start buying microcomputers for their own office or lab use. Interns are hired to maintain and dust them.
Central priesthood sets up a standardized software licensing group, to verify that no one is using unapproved software.
PCs become more ubiquitous, even in the offices of computer illiterates.
Central priesthood demands that no one can connect to the internet unless the priesthood managers their computers.
Users start getting email on their mobile phones
Priesthood demands that monitoring services be put onto all of the phones.
The big blue iron box is no longer present but the priesthood remains.
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So, Microsoft is headed full circle, with the cloud as the new mainframe? In the day, they nearly wiped out the IBM model (and IBM with it); now they're aiming to be the next IBM.
Amazing.
IBM wasn't too good at the consumer end, because they figured out which side of the bread got buttered. Will Microsoft do better? or is the X-Box doomed and desktop Windows 10 going to more and more resemble a thin-client X terminal [wikipedia.org] (and Scott McNealy goes, "dammit, that was my idea!")
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The original IBM was a trap too. The difference was that everyone knew it and IBM wasn't trying very hard to hide it, and there was no significant competition doing the same thing. With Microsoft they are constantly trying to hide their trap, and the competition does things better much of the time. The embrace and extend comes from seeing potential customers (that MS thinks are rightfully theirs) going off and doing their own thing, so Microsoft tries to get their foot in the door and then pull the custo
Mickeysoft had used BSD before (Score:5, Informative)
Originally, the first TCP/IP stack and some command line TCP/IP tools (ftp.exe) were from BSD. Eventually Microsoft wrote it's own stack and tools.
Re:Mickeysoft had used BSD before (Score:5, Interesting)
This explains why they have a hosts file in an etc directory in %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\drivers.
Re:Mickeysoft had used BSD before (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason the hosts file is there is for POSIX compatibility which was a requirement for some US gov contracts, IIRC.
Re:Mickeysoft had used BSD before (Score:5, Interesting)
There's been similar code from Microsoft in the Linux kernel for years now.
Welcome to 2009. Enjoy your stay!
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Are you saying no one uses BSD or no one uses BSD on Azure?
If you mean the former, think of all the iOS, OSX (err, macOS), tvOS, and watchOS devices? If having billions of devices is a failure, not sure what you'd call success. If you think the latter, well, I can also say that there's no Linux running on iOS. Any new proprietary platform may not run all apps or tools at first.
FreeBSD had a couple things happen to it that didn't happen to Linux. It got sued by AT&T. The F.U.D. of that slowed things
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think of all the iOS, OSX (err, macOS), tvOS, and watchOS devices?
Not to mention the tens of millions of playstation 4s.
The singularity..... (Score:2)
It's beautiful.
Great news (Score:2)
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There's at least one pfsense appliance in the AWS image inventory from a third party vendor.
Next week's headline (Score:3)
"Due to a Windows Update server misconfiguration, users who clicked "yes" to upgrade to Windows 10 after 10 June 2016 found themselves running BSD."
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and they consider it the best upgrade MS has ever released
Any trust is LONG gone... (Score:2)
I used/supported MS products for nearly 20 years, but when I retired I decided I was done with MS' and other proprietary software. After seeing the bullshit MS is pulling with Windows 10, I would trust MS about as far as I could throw them. At least with their FreeBSD, I assume you can audit the source code, to be sure they haven't sprinkled little "telemetry" surprises in it.. *IF* I was going to run FreeBSD on a cloud-based virtual host, I'd stay the hell away from Azure, and it would be an actual FreeBSD
Hyperbole (Score:5, Insightful)
Hi folks,
Disclaimer: I'm a FreeBSD committer.
MS has been committing various Hyper-V drivers for months. Just like VMWare does for its hypervisor.
This is less
and more
You know, like every other cloud vendor's VM images. Nothing to see here, move along.
So, stop Hyper-Ventilating! ;-)
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Thanks, I was about to say the same thing.
MS just did what every other cloud vendor can and should do.
Re:Hyperbole (Score:4, Insightful)
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Can't rally expect anything better from MICROS~1.
Why not? It sounds like Microsoft agrees with your assessment and has decided to rewrite the Hyper-V drivers.
Xenix (Score:2)
If you don't know what Microsoft Xenix is get off my lawn.
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Netcraft confirms, Microsoft is dying... um...
Ah! Netcraft confirms, Xenix is dying!
What's this I see? (Score:2)
pigs with wings? devils in uggs?
With blackjack, and hookers? (Score:2)
In fact, screw the FreeBSD.
I joked (Score:2)
I've joked about "MS Linux" for years, and now it looks like my worst fears have come true.
BSD (Score:2)
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So that means a totally free and legit Windows 10 install for those of us who never used Windows before?
I'll take it!
The worst Microsoft could do is spy on which games I play.
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... and then sells all your data to the highest bidder.
Why does Android get away with this?
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You take your phone with you when you shit ? Remind me to never, ever call you.
Re:This bothers me (Score:4, Insightful)
You know how I know that you have no real understanding of IT?
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"It barely takes any business acumen and barely any understanding of IT..."
Yes: with barely any business and IT acumen and understanding comes Microsoft to be the biggest software company in the world after few decades. With deep business and IT acumen and understanding, on the other hand, things would have been completely different.
"Competent *nix admins are not a dime a dozen and they are not as cheap as competent Windows admins"
See? there you have an insight about "deep" business acumen: putting costs a
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Yes: with barely any business and IT acumen and understanding comes Microsoft to be the biggest software company in the world after few decades. With deep business and IT acumen and understanding, on the other hand, things would have been completely different.
These statements seem silly. Why do offices run on Microsoft networking and Active Directory when Novell's product line predated both? How did Microsoft become the #1 word processor vendor when everybody already had WordPerfect? When both those companies went out of business, were their execs grumbling that they could never seem to find any customers with "deep business and IT acumen"? What do you suppose their boards of directors would think of an excuse like that?
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"Why do offices run on Microsoft networking and Active Directory when Novell's product line predated both? How did Microsoft become the #1 word processor vendor when everybody already had WordPerfect?"
Because Novell was overly complex for the personal computer environment of the time (but, alas, the very moment Novell was an enemy no more, Microsoft launched the very same product Novell had for years: AD) and because Microsoft , while being an awful software company, has been a magnificent marketing company
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I don't want to teach the receptionist how to use Debian
Why not? A receptionist needs to be able to use an address book and calendar, possibly a word processor, and email. These things are basically the same on all major operating systems. There are lots of people that it would be difficult to migrate to a different OS, but the receptionist ought to be one of the easiest.
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" You know how I know that you have no real understanding of IT?"
There are A LOT of business using Microsoft products left and right.
Still, the parent poster has nailed it: "No one with any real understanding of IT would be using Microsoft products for anything serious anyway." (I would say "at all" instead).
The fact that it is the biggest software company in the world says a lot about the dismaying state of IT in general.
Re:This bothers me (Score:5, Insightful)
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Of course they did. Microsoft wants Linux to work better on Azure, so any improvements they make which allows it to work better with Hyper-V, you can bet they want those improvements adopted. Otherwise, someone will simply decide to use AWS due to AWS working better with older drivers that were made to work well with Zen, but not Hyper-V.
Re:This bothers me (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft wants Linux to work better on Azure
I'm not sure I'm following. Microsoft made some changes to FBSD, so it will work better on Azure and Hyper-V. They submitted those changes back to the main FBSD project. What does any of that have to do with Linux?
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I'm not sure I'm following. Microsoft made some changes to FBSD, so it will work better on Azure and Hyper-V. They submitted those changes back to the main FBSD project. What does any of that have to do with Linux?
The GP probably made a slip of the (virtual) tongue. But Microsoft already made all these changes to the Linux kernel. It submitted them, too. There was one year when Microsoft was one of the top Linux kernel contributors, owing to all the Hyper-V related changes it submitted.
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Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt... and not coming from Microsoft.
I demand proof, not FUD.
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Their version of FreeBSD has some subtle tweaks that makes it optimized for Azure
Well to work on Hyper-V, yes. Much like their contributions to the Linux kernel.
and also some tweaks that "de-optimize" it for Xen/KVM and other virtualization schemes
I can't see such a thing in the FreeBSD tree anywhere, can you point to where these "tweaks" are?
Say it with me... Embrace/Extend/Extinguish....
Seems to me that "Embrace/Extend/Extinguish" actually means "Will become hugely popular", the phrase has only ever come up with Java and the result is that Java is the key language for the most prevalent mobile OS and can also be used on Windows, Linux and OSX among other platforms. Some people have tried to pretend they applied to H
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I'd be polishing the ole re-zu-me, If I were you... That company is going down the toilet...
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coking the books to make it look like it was a large money saver
You have no idea what a decent SLA on a service support contract costs on REL do you?
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We may be old (66 here), but we're just realistic.. MS can kiss my ass.. (somebody had to say it, many of us are thinking it..)
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Guess you don't remember a little something called Spyglass Mosaic ? The browser microsoft basically stole, rebranded and called Internet Explorer which then turned this product of a now bankrupted company into a flagship microsoft product that dominated the web for nearly two decades, destroyed the original netscape and for a very long time made large parts of the web entirely inaccesible to anybody who didn't use windows.
But that history goes back much further. They did the exact same thing with 86-DOS -
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> Microsoft at one point was the #1 vendor of Unix systems, selling TRS-80 Unix systems at Radio Shack.
They might have been the largest corporation pushing it but they likely were not the biggest vendor ever.
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"Best selling" on Unix/Linux, however, is deceptive. These days a lot of the most popular programs for those platforms are free and open-source. Libre/OpenOffice, for example.
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Considering the libreoffice runs on a whole bunch of operating systems - including Mac and Windows as well as Linux, I sincerely doubt that.
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Or not [slashdot.org]. It apparently means that there are subsequent developments that don't appear in 10.3. It also says nothing about whether those developments, or any others, were not upstreamed but are still available under a BSD license.
When you assume you make an ass out of you. Me, I chose to use my brain.
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Add sugary additive features that make certain things become super easy. And particularly if they can somehow tie you in to Microsoft's prison camp, or "walled garden" in other ways.
Then, the marketing . . .
Use new Microsoft FreeBSD which has been fully EMBRACED by Microsoft. Unlike all those other inferior FreeBSD's, Microsoft's FreeBSD has been EXTENDED with super duper extra addictively delicious features. Our product is so good and so popular that it will EXTINGUISH the competitio
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Unlike Linux folks, FreeBSD users are encouraged to build their own kernel and user-space.
That's a pretty broad statement. What's Gentoo, then?
And I would certainly hope that anyone who considers themselves serious about Linux has at least compiled a kernel and ran 'make' a few times.