This thread is very insightful and meaningful than what one would expect from the subject.
I will add what I know which is not very much. On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 5:04 PM, Arun Khan <knu...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Another thing is that Network integration is veyr powerful in Windows.. > > Huh? AFAIK, Windows 95 lifted the TCP/IP stack from *BSD. OK, let's > accept it at face value; can Windows mount a NFS or for that matter > any other global file system w/o any additional software/driver? Good point. Network integration being powerful in Windows? You mean Windows shares? That is quite amazing given that it is incredibly noisy at the network level. Still its GUI is really intuitive and very useful and friendly end of the day. You can share anything and their discovery protocols work very well. I don't think UNIX NFS protocols ever attempted anything like automatic discovery. There used to be a protocol called SLP(Service Location Protocol) but I don't think it was adopted. I am talking about my Novell days. In fact Novell had an interest in it. > You mean MS-ADS? SSO (LDAP + Kerberso) was there much before MS-ADS > came out in Windows 2000. Windows NT domain controller on paper looks > like NIS concepts. MS-ADS is LDAP + Kerberos plus their > **proprietary** extensions to *open* standards which makes MS-ADS a > non standard. To implement the proprietary extensions one has to > sign a NDA with MS - which means any FOSS solution will not be able to > implement them because of it's own licensing terms. Samba4 is making > progress in implementing a clean room version of MS-ADS features but > it is not yet ready for production use. Samba4? Yeah it is slowly and surely getting stable. In fact Samba is an incredibly well funded open source initiative. It is unfortunate it is GPL. As to single sign on I am sure LDAP existed for a very long time though a good implementation is lacking. SSO never took on in the UNIX for some reason. Even NIS does not seem very popular. People love Windows shares and Samba. >> We run a >> corporate blogging site in linux, and its really a problem implementing >> single sign on.. > I agree that there are no single sign on solutions. Password syncing is a hard thing. > At the end of the day it is the corporations prerogative to choose > it's platforms but to blame FOSS for not playing well with MS-ADS .... > Well blaming is one thing. But Linux has no mandate to interoperate with Windows. >> Its really an ambiguity to predict where will Linux Move on, unless it sorts >> out desktop issues. > It is more or less a fact that Linux cannot capture the desktop market. But of late I find a lot of penetration as rightly pointed out. Thin client and cost savings. And of course the virus menace. > Please name a few issues. IMO, for task workers (limited > functionality Office, Browser) it is already there. I agree that the GNOME desktop is quite idiot friendly. Windows users will only be slightly uncomfortable with it. > I assure you > that large Indian MNCs are actively looking at Linux desktop (thin > clients) as an alternative for their aging desktop replacement. In > desktop migration, I generally suggest to keep a few windows desktops > for their power users (especially Excel) - typically they are less > than 5% of their staff. I don't hate Microsoft as some of their innovations are noteworthy and their ability to survive and sustain the market is itself quite creditable. I don't like any commercial thing be it M$ or Cisco. Even after all this days open source continues to appeal only to the intelligentsia. -Girish _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
