smr’s blog

provides a range of cross-platform network services that help to integrate Windows and UNIX-based environments. It provides seamless access to information stored in multiple platforms, consolidates network management across platforms, and reuses UNIX applications and scripts on Windows. It provides NFS server and client, POSIX subsystem which provides UNIX layer on NT and Server for NIS and password mapping. It allows you to run your Windows machine through a Unix shell by mapping directly to Active Directory (AD).

A talk at IIIT by Rajesh Jalan, Microsoft Research.

Well, M$ is trying hard to enter the Server business. Okey atleast they realized that they have to “integrate Windows with UNIX-based environments”. Trying to learn NFS, claim to run POSIX executables, and S-NIS. U know what it means. More bugs.

I appreciate the work. S-NIS sounds good to me. A good way of centralizing the information in a big network. But what is wrong is Windows. A millions of lines of code, with dont know how many bugs. I double click and it says “You have performed an illegal operation. Do you want to send the report”.

Why can’t things be as simple as gnu. A kernel, init and then other processes. Mean i can understand the structure. Well they too claim to have a kernel, but i never understood which part of it is kernel, which is GUI and which are applications. The GUI, and the applications looks like an integral part of the OS, maybe the kernel.

Okey, I’m not too good at these things, but i believe that M$ has lots of brain (purchased), and they can make a great OS, if they start something from scratch, and stop fighting with a million code lines virus.

Before I started writing this post, I didnot actually wanted to write all this. I just wanted to mention my dream project some 2 yrs back.
To write a Linux like kernel, which runs on top of windows, and use the space of installed gnu as root, and run like you are running the actual gnu. Its like implementing basic functions of Linux like IPC, signalling, file system, etc on top of windows. Should not be very difficult. I see it as simple as providing system calls to any program working on top of it, and as soon as the system calls are provied i should be able to run any gnu application on it. If any OS guru happens to read it, pls let me know some inherit difficulties in doing so.
Anyway i am no more interested in the project. Who cares. I dont want to be one to contribute to the bugs database of windows.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 3rd, 2005 at 10:18 pm and is filed under linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.