On Sat, Jun 16, 2012 at 6:59 PM, Michael Mol <mike...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 16, 2012 at 6:42 PM, Matthew Finkel > <matthew.fin...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Sat, Jun 16, 2012 at 5:30 PM, Michael Mol <mike...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> > >> On Sat, Jun 16, 2012 at 5:10 PM, Matthew Finkel > >> <matthew.fin...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> > On Sat, Jun 16, 2012 at 5:00 PM, Nikos Chantziaras <rea...@gmail.com> > >> > wrote: > >> >> > >> >> On 16/06/12 21:27, walt wrote: > >> >>> > >> >>> I guess they figure the desktop will be extinct relatively soon > >> >>> and their customer base will vanish unless they capture the > >> >>> smartphone market. > >> >> > >> >> > >> >> Ah yes, the death of the desktop PC, which is happening for 15 years > >> >> now. > >> >> > >> >> Are we dead yet? > >> > > >> > > >> > I'm not holding my breath. There will always be a divide for the power > >> > users. A single, under-powered interface isn't going to cut it for a > lot > >> > of > >> > us. X provides us with the flexibility that isn't available with the > >> > mobile > >> > interface. > >> > >> Even in the Microsoft world, I can't easily imagine them ditching the > >> old UI paradigm for their Windows Server products. They've come a long > >> way in making Windows CLI-friendly (see PowerShell), but they haven't > >> yet (AFAIK) provided a good mechanism for remote CLI access. > > > > > > True, and they've been working "hard" to get it to the state it is in > now. > > In many cases, sys admins have had to unlearn relying on their mouse > > for complete power. The CLI provides options that are, obviously, very > > difficult > > to express in a simple GUI (I know I'm preaching to the choir). > Powershell > > has > > made huge progress in this respect, but it still has a long way to go in > > order to > > compete with what we have. And I doubt the server environment would ever > > become stripped down to the state we're talking about. > > Actually, they're there as of Windows Server 2008. It's called > "Windows Server 2008 Core". According to "Windows Server 2008: The > Definitive Guide", you log into one of these systems and all you get > (by default) is a terminal window with an instance of cmd.exe. It goes > on to list seven server roles this configuration supports: > > * Active Directory and Active Directory Lightweight Domain Services (LDS) > * DHCP Server > * DNS Server > * File Services (including DFSR and NFS) > * Print Services > * Streaming Media Services > * Windows Server Virtualization > > (Curiously, one of the things you _can't_ do is run Managed Code.) > Huh, I didn't know about this. It's still too limited, though. At least they've duplicated a lot of the core gui elements on cli. > > > > >> > >> Not that they won't be able to bolt one in easily enough; CSRSS means > >> they should be able to provide, e.g. an SSH daemon, give the > >> connecting user a PowerShell login session[1], and give it equal > >> privileges and security controls as they have for any other login > >> session. > > > > How many years have they had? I'd given up on this years ago. > > SFU is available in the "Server Core" configuration. I imagine you > could run OpenSSH under there. Or some commercial entity could come > along and provide an SSH+screen(ish) component to snap into the CSRSS > framework. > I'd actually forgotten about that, I would never trust their implement though. Apparently there's a binary available of OpenSSH that runs on SFU (so says wiki [1]). I've been out of the Windows Server environment for a few years now, so I guess I've missed out on some of the progress MS has made in this area. It's good they are pushing the CLI now. Perhaps in a few releases they'll implement their own of encrypting telnet sessions with a screen/tmux lookalike. Microsoft never ceases to amaze me - with the good and the bad. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX
