Microsoft starts testing Windows "Longhorn" server

Reuters (excerpt) ^ | April 25, 2007

[HAL9000]

Excerpt -

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) released its next-generation Windows Server "Longhorn" software for public testing on Wednesday and said the product is on track for a debut in the second half of 2007.

The world's largest software maker said it expects hundreds of thousands of information technology workers to download the test, or "Beta 3," version of the next server operating system code-named Longhorn.

Longhorn, which will replace the current Windows Server 2003, is the server operating system equivalent of Microsoft's new Windows Vista PC operating system with an emphasis on many of the same features such as better security.

~ snip ~

[LibFreeOrDie]

Longhorn...is the server operating system equivalent of Microsoft's new Windows Vista PC operating system...

Uh oh.

[ShadowAce]

[rdb3]

...and said the product is on track for a debut in the second half of 2007.

Which means the second half of 2009.

[N3WBI3]

well I heard its going to be truly a great server OS. Ill grant you many of the improvements were in *nix years ago (by default an ssh shell access remotely (yes MS telnet is too damn old). When combined with the powershell and a perl implementation it might even be fun to work with.

[Not now, Not ever!]

Why after the pile that is vista, do I get the feeling that the industry will quickly nicname it “Wronghorn”

[LibFreeOrDie]

“Wronghorn”

You should copyright that name!

[doc1019]

Vista = crap personified. Of course, they said that about windows 3.0, 3.1, 95, 98 and all the others, and they were right. The only good thing about Windows is its ability to run multiple software programs at the same time (reluctant to say “multitasking”). Beats DOS, but only by a small margin.

[doc1019]

From what I understand:

Mac uses true multitasking (Unix based), Unix uses (true) multitasking, Linux uses (true) multitasking … Windows uses something akin to multitasking (not true to form). Big difference in speed and vulnerability.

Correct me if I’m wrong.

[rdb3]

Why after the pile that is vista, do I get the feeling that the industry will quickly nicname it “Wronghorn”

You have just uttered the unutterable. Contact the "Just-Us" Brothers now for protection.

But that was funny!

[KoRn]

I wonder if there will be any good reason to upgrade to the “longhorn” server from 2003. More of a reason than to go from XP to Vista? There’s no reason for a server OS to be “pretty”, so I wonder what their selling point will be.

[rdb3]

well I heard its going to be truly a great server OS. Ill grant you many of the improvements were in *nix years ago (by default an ssh shell access remotely (yes MS telnet is too damn old). When combined with the powershell and a perl implementation it might even be fun to work with.

And to think some would shell out cash for that!

[neb52]

We are just now getting some of our customers off of Server2000 to Server2003. I don’t see Longhorn being adopted that quick or soon.

[One_who_hopes_to_know]

Windows uses something akin to multitasking.

The problem is in sifting thru the terminology. The idea is to reduce the overhead of a context switch. This occurs when one task is timeliced out and another begins.

In older "multi-processing" systems this meant that the entire application was switched out of the CPU cache and the appication for the next task was brought in.

In the late 80's multitasking operating systems began to replicate only the portion of code that was dynamic or changeable. This meant that when different tasks were used by the CPU the context switch was not as large. They only had to swap out the smaller dynamic pieces of code.

Some proprietary high performance online transaction processing engines implemented multithreading at this time. What this meant was that the context for different transactions was all held in the application where it managed these contexts on its own proprietary thread pool. This eliminated almost all of the context switching by the CPU and allowed all of the application to remain in cache.

Multithreaded Unix kernels provide the same functionality by abstracting the context switch away from the CPU.

The terms multitasking and mutlithreading have now become interchangeable in some areas.

Then of course the scalability on the hardware side can also increase performance as it implements symetric multi-processing in which multiple CPUs all share the same RAM and processing task queue (a whole different discussion).

[doc1019]

Microsoft uses processor time dependent on perceived priority. True multitasking does not priorities processor time, all processes receive equal time.

[antiRepublicrat]

Microsoft uses processor time dependent on perceived priority. True multitasking does not priorities processor time, all processes receive equal time.

OS X and Linux do it too. It doesn't make sense to have your folding@home taking the same processor time as what you're currently working on.

[zeugma]

Let's see if I've got this right... It's 2007, and only now has microsoft finally implemented ssh? Wow.

[zeugma]

There’s no reason for a server OS to be “pretty”, so I wonder what their selling point will be.

They'll say it is so much more "secure".  (and then stop releasing updates for Server2003) Frankly, I don't understand why a server needs a GUI interface at all. When we install servers here, we don't even install X11. We do end up having to install some X libraries so we can export displays when necessary, but installing a window manager on a server is just asking for trouble. Not only that, but a window manager unnecessarily consumes ram and CPU cycles.

[zeugma]

OS X and Linux do it too. It doesn't make sense to have your folding@home taking the same processor time as what you're currently working on.

Yup. How nice is your process?

/. had an interesting article posted on "The Completely Fair Scheduler" a couple of days ago. Some of the comments were hilarious.

---

  LiquidCoooled said:

Can't we just give the processes weapons and let them decide which follows?

---

To which  theonetruekeebler responded:

 Okay -- Since I'm not allowed to drink beer in class I'll just have to post this from home.

Want to give each process a weapon? Fine. But they have to earn ammunition.

Every time a process gives up its slot, it's given a round of ammunition. It has the option of "shooting" a process ahead of it in the queue, thereby expending a round of ammunition. A shot process must give up its slot in the next round. Whether it loses all its ammo when it respawns remains a research question.

There are two floating point tunable parameters, "accuracy" and "rampage." "Accuracy" is the likelihood that a given shot will actually hit the process it aims at. "Rampage" is the tendency of a process to save up rounds for a while then go on a spree.

Okay, there's a third parameter, "armor," which is the odds of a hit actually becoming an injury. This is meant to protect system processes against luser jobs, and top-level processes against spawned threads.

Of course, the scheduler itself is a boss job that can't be killed, has perfect armor and has infinite ammo.

For the purpose of top and other job monitoring tools we can replace a process's "NICE" score with a "VIOLENCE" score -- an aggregate of their armor, accuracy, rampage tendencies and current ammo supply. We can rename the renice utility to medicate. The important thing about medication is that it eventually wears off, unless you specify the -l (lobotomize) option, which turns the process into a harmless drooling vegetable. Its companion utilities are aim and armor, which tune a job's accuracy and armor class, respectively.

There are two important things about this approach. First, it's probabilistic instead of purely heirarchical. Second, it should give Jack Thompson the screaming heebie jeebies. In fact, I'm going to call this the JTMS scheduler -- the Jack Thompson Murder Simulator Scheduler.

I'm sure this concept can be explored further, but the bar's about to close.

---

An Anonymous Coward added:

So you have to shoot the zombies in their head to kill them?

---

followed up by creimer:

You could use a grenade to blow up the zombie at the risk of segfaulting the kernel.

---

A long response by kcbrown: 

Of course, with such a scheduler, something like the Doom system administration tool [unm.edu] (perhaps more like Quake where you can aim vertically as well as horizontally) will become the preferred method of managing the processes on a system.

For one thing, the processes will obviously shoot back, as the process manager itself (which you see as yourself when running it) is a running process, and thus subject to being fired upon by the other processes.

Secondly, a headshot obviously gets you a "lobotomize" effect. This could pose a problem if one of the other processes hits you with a headshot...

Finally, the application of a medpack to an injured process invokes the "medicate" action.

There are a few possible problems with this, of course:

1. When you have two or more system administrators, all running the process manager, the system itself becomes a warzone with innocent processes being killed by the dozen as the administrators go on rampages in their attempts to kill each other for supreme control of the system.
2. Certain weapons, such as the BFG, are powerful enough to take out all but the most heavily armored processes, and since some of them are area effect weapons, a lot of innocent processes will bite the dust as a result of their usage.
3. Lightly-armored processes will need additional protection in the form of fast reflexes to avoid being hit.
4. Eventually the administrators will begin using aimbots and the like. One can see where the resulting arms race will go. Obviously the aimbots will have to run on a different system since otherwise they'll be potential targets.
5. "Spawn camping" takes on a whole new meaning. Newly created processes become very vulnerable compared with running under earlier versions of Linux. Normal users will have an increasingly difficult time starting tasks like OpenOffice and will start to migrate back to Windows or other OSes with clearly inferior schedulers.
6. Due to all of the above, the system will eventually become unusable by anyone but the system administrators. The sysadmins will, of course, say that this is how it should be.

In short, Linux will quickly become the must-have operating system for gamers, but at the expense of the general purpose desktop.

---

i thought it was funny anyway, but then, I'm a nerd.

[KoRn]

All so true. Whenever I setup a Linux server I don’t install X either. It’s an all around waste and the UI gets in the way of administrative tasks. We are a mixed shop here with Windows servers used for internal network/applications and all Linux on the DMZ, spam email filter, DNS, proxy, IDS, and firewall. The Linux boxes are almost forgotten about, they never need any maintenance or care at all. I may occasionally check in on them just to look around when I have some down time. Some of the Windows servers we have need to be bounced once a month because they run themselves out of memory and CPU.