Microsoft Linux?

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Microsoft Linux?

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© March 2005 Tony Lawrence

~~(dead link)~~ thinks that Microsoft has bigger plans for its Services for Unix. They suggested that this might have been part of the reason Microsoft paid licensing fees to SCO ( not that they wouldn't have done so for darker reasons also, but this could have been another part of it).

Comments point out some of the reality: SFU is not a Unix or Linux kernel, it's just a bunch of tacked on glue to give you something sorta kinda Unixy. However, I would argue that is enough for some folks. While the Linux crowd has religious fervor, there's a good pile of folks who just like the Unix environment and don't care about the kernel, or even open source. Those people might like a strong SFU a lot.

I have strong political opinions about the value of open source and the dangers of large monopolistic companies like Microsoft, but I'm halfway in that camp of "just give me a decent shell". I use a Mac for my main desktop, and am very happy to do so. And Mac is an excellent choice for less techy folks too: As Christopher Browne said at a news group post

I'm getting _way_ increasingly convinced that MacOS is the
solution to suggest to computer novices.  They'll have _enough_
of the apps they need, run them atop a reasonably stable form
of Unix, and be able to avoid the massive Windows(tm) troubles.

Microsoft could avoid some of its problems with a strong Unix component. A real shell could make some maintenance much easier and of course they are hoping that Longhorn rids them of the general security/design problems that have plagued them since day one.

As most of us have to deal with some Microsoft whether we like it or not, adding a strong SFU would make us happier too - or at least we wouldn't groan quite as much when one of their boxes needs attention.

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