Microsoft Services For Unix

Microsoft has cancelled this experimental product as of Sept 1 2005, see e.g. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1855274,00.asp

Microsoft has decided against enhancing its Services for Unix (SFU) product and will not release any new versions of it going forward, according to company officials.

MicrosoftServicesForUnix (SFU) is a free and highly linux compatible toolkit that is supposedly high performance as well. see http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu/default.asp

There has been some MicrosoftExtensions applied, including native support for Active Directory.

Originally designed for easing migration hurdles from Risc based Unix systems to MS environments, in the v3.5 release of Feb2004 it has matured to be able to run the bulk of Linux applications. This release also removed the support for the WindowsNt os.

It is an x86 based implementation like Linux (tested with RedHatLinux V8) and is "free" of charge. It will require a minimum WindowsXp (Pro edition) to host it. It is, however, not OpenSource software, but is said to be compatible with a few common Unix distributions.

This software uses Interix technology from Interop Systems and implements a full application execution subsystem and allows the execution of Unix programs in native mode. A MS document listed below compared this to CygWin which uses emulation to service requests.

the SFU subsystem is tacked on to the WindowsOperatingSystems as a process, with its own subprocesses.

It was said Unix applications can be packaged into ComComponents and interoperate with DotNet applications through this product.

The product won a systems integration award in 2003 for an earlier version. See http://www.vnunet.com/news/1138313

(moved from TheAdjunct)

Previously I suggested that it "was" a successful product before MS purchased it. And it got "industry award".

Recently, in Sep05, I read that after attending PDC, a few sources interpret that this particular product is going to be "restructured" - some goes into the core WindowsServerTwoThousandThree R2 (and even W2003SP1 users will need a paid upgrade), and some becomes components that can be downloaded. See more at WindowsServerTwoThousandThree QuickDiff if it has not yet been defaced.

Now my opinion. I think this reads to me that this product is "really successful". It would explain to me why Microsoft want to "restructure" it this way.

Later, on 21Sep05, I checked that this SFU is still downloadable from MS site at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/sfu/downloads/default.mspx. But may not be for long, given fast developing events.

Resources

Microsoft homebase http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu/

Download link (the link on the download page points to a non-existent DNS name) http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/1/c/a1ca7af1-a6e3-46e7-874a-4c5d8c0fb3b7/SFU35SEL_EN.exe

Features in release 3.5 released early 2004 http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/d/8/6d8210f1-49b9-457e-816b-860242f2d5ef/sfu35new.doc

Additional tools for download from http://interopsystems.com/tools/warehouse.htm

interesting stuff includes Apache 2.0.50, Awk version 20040207, Grep, gSOAP, libXml2, OpenSsl?, Perl 5.8.3, PHP 4.3.6, PostgreSQL, Python 2.3.3, Tcl 8.4.6, vim 6.3, etc

Newsgroup: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/microsoft.public.servicesforunix.general

Early experiences

Hefty 217MB download. Not sure whether there is a proper uninstall that comes with it

Hearsay information

comes with Korn and C shells, but a download for Bash shell is available
has Perl but no PythonLanguage
no root user and FIFO speed is 10 times slower than Linux
- check out source at http://wiki.tcl.tk/11329

Hmm.. how does this compare to CoLinux?

have you used CygWin or any linux in windows yourself? I searched for links to the CoLinux and not much found. I would therefore tend to think you would use CoLinux if you want to help the development of that product, and avoid it if you want to use the product yourself.
CoLinux works quite well but lacks an easy reliable way to transport files quickly. Samba works fine, but is a bit slow.