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Journal salimma's Journal: SFU download frustration^Wannoyance 7

Journal by salimma

Most people interested in Windows-UNIX interoperability (yes, if you still dual-boot *n*x with Windows, you are included) should have heard of the big news of last week (since I was told the week starts on Sunday). Microsoft's Services for Unix (which some people rightly commented should have been called Unix Services for Windows is now available as a free download, at a healthy 200 MB reminiscent of a full Service Pack.

Which is as should be; this is a complete replacement of the anemic POSIX subsystem MS put into NT 3.1 for buzzword compliance, and comes with lots of neat features - NFS browsing from Windows Explorer, compilers and userland tools from BSD, etc. as you could read from the linked articles (hint: the Slashdot article is actually more instructive).

Now, I don't mind having to log in to Passport to be able to download, but when even trusty Getright fails to grab the download link from IE, things are getting just a *bit* out of hand. Presumably the need for profiling outweights the need for efficient download speeds.

Which is where my plug for Mozilla Firebird comes in. It gives you the full URL of the link in the prompt window that asks whether you want to Open or Save a hyperlink. You just need to highlight the visible part of the download URL and it will automatically scroll, which is actually... kind of neat.

No, I am not disclosing the URL here. Might break some EULA, though I don't see it written anywhere. If you need SFU, why don't you... install Firebird first? It's a small 7MB download, after all...

How ironic.

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SFU download frustration^Wannoyance

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  • +10 nerd points!!!

    I still use Getright even though I use cable; even though there's no chance of losing connection, the download speeds are much better and it is nice to keep a log of all the junk I downloaded in the last n days.

    Of course, I, like you, use Firebird and could never stomach going back to IE. The happy thing about Firebird is that it doesn't need to be "installed"; it can live in any directory, so I can still use it when working at companies with stupid IT departments that prohibit installing

    • so I can still use it when working at companies with stupid IT departments that prohibit installing stuff.

      Not at my alma mater, at least, not in the public computing labs (not the departmental ones). They use NetWare for sharing home directories, and those seemed to be mounted non-executable.

      Annoyingly, it seems MS' download sites are swamped right now. Download's been stuck at 83 MB for a day now... why they do not use Akamai like everybody [apple.com] else [ximian.com], I have no idea.

      Anyway, MS website reliability is a good r

      • ~ advise against using IIS. MS SQL Server, too, for that matter ~.

        I like Apache because it is rock solid and as simple or complicated/powerful as I need. It doesn't run ASP out of the box, but I don't use that junk (or COM objects... >:^<) anymore, so it is not a problem.

        As for DBs, if the client wants inexpensive, then I load up with Postgresql; if they're going for expensive then it is Oracle. pgPL/SQL and PL/SQL blow the panties off T/SQL any day of the week. I don't find the "speed" of mySql su

        • I don't find the "speed" of mySql sufficient incentive to offset its kludgy SQL or table structure/limitations.

          Indeed. I did one mySQL deployment - a patient management system for dad's practice - my first and last. Having different backends, some with more features than others, and no stored procedure support, made programming hell. I only used it for flexibility - MySQL has a Windows build, while pgSQL's is still in development, and I am the only admin around.

          Heard pgPL is almost 100% compatible with Or

  • The last question in their survey, required in order to download SFU:

    I am interested in Microsoft Services for UNIX because (check as many as possible)
    [X] My company is running both UNIX and Windows servers
    [ ] My company currently runs UNIX but is adding Windows servers
    [ ] My company currently runs UNIX but is planning to replace those systems with Windows servers
    [ ] My company delivers services to organizations running both UNIX and Windows servers
    [ ] I develop, manage or maintain systems for the UNIX pl
    • You noticed that too, eh. I guess they did not want to lose face when announcing their survey result :)

      This way they could say 'xx% of our customer base are migrating from mixed environments to Windows!' whereas those moving in the opposite way are not counted, and those adding both UNIX and Windows servers are counted as migrating to Windows too.

      Anyway, I do not run UNIX. I run Unix, or a Unix-like OS, but certainly not UNIX(R). Though I have Solaris 9/x86 ready to try under VMware...

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