Re: Replacing Windows with FreeBSD (was: my brother is making me learn FreeBSD...)
On Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:16:35 +0800 (HKT)
Gelsema, P \(Patrick\) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I do agree that microsoft has the benefit of everything together where you
will have to install port and port and package to end up with the same
result.
the problem is that you get 'everything together' for all values of
'everything' that the MS teams in Redmond came up with. If you need something
slightly different, you either change your requirements, add other software
(MS upgrade , MS-other-product or added value tool from 3rd party) for $$ or
have to contract to a MS solution provider for a fix.
I've been working with OSS for over 13 years and I still haven't come across
something that I couldn't put together with OSS...maybe I am not original
enough..who knows.
Windows AD , policies,etc are being handled, AFAIK, by current versions of
Samba.I think they are even looking into implementing WMI.
And dont forget WINE as well :)
Nevertheless, you should use whichever tool best solves your problem. It may be
MS, no worries. It may be open source, great. It may be FreeBSD, even better :)
B
_
{Beto|Norberto|Numard} Meijome
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein
I speak for myself, not my employer. Contents may be hot. Slippery when wet.
Reading disclaimers makes you go blind. Writing them is worse. You have been
Warned.
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Re: Replacing Windows with FreeBSD (was: my brother is making me learn FreeBSD...)
Norberto Meijome writes: And dont forget WINE as well :) Respectfully, the list of things WINE will not - by its own documentation - run and has no expectation of running in the foreseeable future is immense. Seasonal example for Americans: TurboTax. Robert Huff ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Replacing Windows with FreeBSD (was: my brother is making me learn FreeBSD...)
On Mon, 24 Mar 2008 08:33:30 -0400
Robert Huff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Respectfully, the list of things WINE will not - by its own
documentation - run and has no expectation of running in the
foreseeable future is immense. Seasonal example for Americans:
TurboTax.
sure. and neither does our Australian Tax office software. which I run on a
win32 box or a win32 VM under qemu.
but wine has come a huge way from when I started to track it, back in '98 or so.
anyway, choice is the key word here , i think :)
cheers,
B
_
{Beto|Norberto|Numard} Meijome
A tree as big around as you can reach starts with a small seed; a
thousand-mile journey starts with one step.
Lao-tse
I speak for myself, not my employer. Contents may be hot. Slippery when wet.
Reading disclaimers makes you go blind. Writing them is worse. You have been
Warned.
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RE: Replacing Windows with FreeBSD (was: my brother is making me learn FreeBSD...)
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Nejc Škoberne Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 1:51 AM To: User Questions Subject: Replacing Windows with FreeBSD (was: my brother is making me learn FreeBSD...) Sorry, but OpenOffice is more featureless than MS Office 2007. There are things which you can do with MS Office so MUCH easily than with OpenOffice. For feature comparison see: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=480 Not to mention performance issues with OpenOffice: http://www.openoffice.org/product/docs/ms2007vsooo2.pdf The interface in Office 2007 is completely different than Office 2003 and most people in business that I know are not running Office 2007 and have no plans to upgrade. Even when they buy brand new systems. Office 2003 runs great on Vista so why change? Since the interface is different, any business that does change is going to suffer a huge cut in productivity for a long time while their accountants and secretaries and such all retrain. The reports of Office 2007 sales are grossly inflated because most businesses are on a yearly Microsoft site license that they pay a lot to maintain, and that license gives them free upgrades to the new software - so after MS released Office 2007 every time a business anniversary renewal came up MS counted those as sales, even though for most companies don't load the new Office. The reason a lot of companies are looking at OpenOffice right now is they are looking into dropping MS Office completely from their site licenses due to the cost savings. Since OpenOffice is compatible with all their Office 2003 Word and Excel documents it's a good time to look at switching. want to use things nicely. For example, let's look at the mail system. You could put a Postfix+amavisd-new+spamassassin+Horde+postfixadmin+ ... bla bla stuff on your FreeBSD server (I actually run this on many servers). But in that webmail, you are not able to manage your spam quarantine for example - you have to logout of Horde and login to Maia Mailguard (before you have to install that too), which is complicated for users. Not true. All you need do is install spamassassin, and have it tag mail and forward it to the user. Then setup procmail as the LDA and sort the tagged mail into a SPAM folder in the users home directory. From IMP or OpenWebmail you have access to local mail folders on the server and you just instruct your users that the SPAM folder is their quarentine. Microsoft usually (!) provides that (naturally, because it produces all those pieces). Microsoft does no more integration than most others. For an example of a really integrated product look at Lotus Notes. But, most users dislike it because it puts a huge amount of control over their work into the hands of the company. You don't walk into a Notes shop and see the adminstrative assistants working on e-mails to their boyfriends, the way that you do in a MS Office shop. Probably you use it more than I do, I really run FreeBSD servers mostly. And I have problems with providing nice-packaged, easy-to-use, all-in-one software to users who are used to that. I use FreeBSD/OS mostly because it is free of charge and because it is quite costumisable. If MS products would be free of charge, I would probably switch to them in most cases. Never gonna happen. There's a fundamental difference here between free open source and commercial software. Commercial software mostly caters to what subgroups of users within the market want. Take MS Word for example. Most people never use more than a 10th of it's features. But, most people don't all use the same 10th. In order to keep selling Word, MS has to put all these small fringe demands of the subgroups into Word. Open source mostly caters to what the majority of users agree is needed. That is why you won't ever find an open source package that is all things to all people. If your a user who has all your needs met it's a great thing. But if your a user who has one specific need that the open source packages don't have, then even though all of the rest of your needs could be met by open source, you likely will not switch over. I just don't agree with the statement, that Windows servers are completely inferior to FreeBSD and you could replace all of them with FreeBSD boxen. If that would be possible, I would do it already. I really am a FreeBSD guy, I run it for more than 6 years now and I like it a lot. But I learned to be reasonable and not to say that it is in every way superior to everything else in the world. Nothing out there is in every way superior to everything else in the world. Even Microsoft software, you said it yourself, simply has nothing to offer to people who don't have much more money than what it costs to purchase the computer hardware itself. Ted ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http
Re: Replacing Windows with FreeBSD (was: my brother is making me learn FreeBSD...)
On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 01:01:35AM +0800, Gelsema, P (Patrick) wrote: On Fri, March 21, 2008 00:39, Chad Perrin wrote: On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 10:50:34AM +0100, Nejc Å koberne wrote: So you are saying that merely setting up an OpenLDAP server with proper DNS configuration and Kerberos authentication could replace Microsoft AD controller? How about a group of controllers with all the failover features? Group policies? Are you sure you could do that just with a bit of tweaking? If there are Microsoft specific features, than FreeBSD can't do anything Windows server does and more. I am really skeptic about joining a Vista into such a domain. I would really love to see ONE guy who achieves that. To _completely_ replace Windows server with all its features with FreeBSD Anyone? Full AD parity is expected with the release of Samba 4: http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-1035-6053709.html WINS capability is already available in ports with the samba4wins port, by the way. WINS is required mostly for Browsing networks, Master browser selection and Netbios connections (the infamous 13x ports). However Microsoft is really trying to get rid of Netbios connections and only have made it available for backwards compatibility. If I aint mistaken port used for file connections is somewhere in the 400 range. It is definitely not required for a full Windows Domain and for file-sharing. True. I'm just not sure how that's particularly relevant to what I said. In addition to that, as I pointed out in another email, FreeBSD can *easily* provide all the same functionality -- though MS Windows clients may not support all the necessary protocols and client applications needed to take full advantage of that functionality in some cases. In fact, FreeBSD supports software that does a far better job of being a server or client in an MS Windows network than MS Windows does of being a server or client in a BSD Unix network. snap/snap I'm sorry . . . does that mean anything? You've lost me. The most important thing: we are talking about ordinary users not a bunch of math professors who want to run every application from a shell. And those users want to use things nicely. For example, let's look at the mail system. You could put a Postfix+amavisd-new+spamassassin+Horde+postfixadmin+ ... bla bla stuff on your FreeBSD server (I actually run this on many servers). But in that webmail, you are not able to manage your spam quarantine for example - you have to logout of Horde and login to Maia Mailguard (before you have to install that too), which is complicated for users. The problem of mail is then cut to so many little pieces that it may affect user efficiency. The problem with concatenating so many opensource products is that it is hard to make them work together like a charm. Microsoft usually (!) provides that (naturally, because it produces all those pieces). You don't have to run everything from a shell with FreeBSD. What do you think this is -- 1994? Even manpages can be accessed with a GUI application. Microsoft does *not* provide everything people need. When someone uses a piece of software that isn't produced by Microsoft, chances are good that any MS software will have been designed specifically to make it difficult to interoperate. Meanwhile, a lot of open source software interoperates very well. Sure, if you limit yourself to nothing but MS software, you might get really good integration -- but that's at the cost of reduced security (thanks to lack of privilege separation and the ubiquitous use of IE's rendering engine for pretty much every single application Microsoft produces) and refusing to use a lot of software that Microsoft doesn't offer. I find it really hard to change, finetune settings on windows. Changing default ports eg. The standard tools provided are limited and there is no default. THink about netsh and net commands. Funny . . . I don't seem to have these problems. Have you asked for help here? Also security wise. You need to give more permissions to an account to do something than you should on Freebsd. Chrooted applications for instance. Say what? . . . as opposed to MS Windows, where about 50% of what someone needs to do on a given day requires escalation to administrative permissions? I really am a FreeBSD guy, I run it for more than 6 years now and I like it a lot. But I learned to be reasonable and not to say that it is in every way superior to everything else in the world. When did anyone say that FreeBSD was in every way superior to everything else in the world? You must be reading a different discussion than the one I've been reading. My point exactly. . . . You lost me again. Still just talking, not fighting. I'm just offering a perspective and asking
Replacing Windows with FreeBSD (was: my brother is making me learn FreeBSD...)
Hey Patrick, AD is nothing more than a big database accessible over LDAP. You connect to the LDAP database, and when you are authenticated you get a kerberos token. Clients use SRV records to check for AD services. SRV Records are supported by BIND. It is possible to run AD and have your DNS/AD zones on a BIND DNS server. I believe you can even find whitepapers from Microsoft for this. Of course certain features are Microsoft specific. So you are saying that merely setting up an OpenLDAP server with proper DNS configuration and Kerberos authentication could replace Microsoft AD controller? How about a group of controllers with all the failover features? Group policies? Are you sure you could do that just with a bit of tweaking? If there are Microsoft specific features, than FreeBSD can't do anything Windows server does and more. I am really skeptic about joining a Vista into such a domain. I would really love to see ONE guy who achieves that. To _completely_ replace Windows server with all its features with FreeBSD Anyone? Xorg + openoffice? Why not? Of course the TCO will increase, training etc. It is simpler for the majority of us to stick to windows. Sorry, but OpenOffice is more featureless than MS Office 2007. There are things which you can do with MS Office so MUCH easily than with OpenOffice. For feature comparison see: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=480 Not to mention performance issues with OpenOffice: http://www.openoffice.org/product/docs/ms2007vsooo2.pdf And not to mention, that running Xorg prevents a company from running many other software (specific to some environment, for example here in Slovenia we have many small companies which develop various business software - from business directories to phone books, dictionaries, ... practically none of them can run under Windows). Being a company it is difficult to choose where you live. You could say just don't run that software but I can't say that to users. Because they need that stuff. yes. I meant that. We are talking out of the box Windows 2008. What kind of functionality are you talking about? The most important thing: we are talking about ordinary users not a bunch of math professors who want to run every application from a shell. And those users want to use things nicely. For example, let's look at the mail system. You could put a Postfix+amavisd-new+spamassassin+Horde+postfixadmin+ ... bla bla stuff on your FreeBSD server (I actually run this on many servers). But in that webmail, you are not able to manage your spam quarantine for example - you have to logout of Horde and login to Maia Mailguard (before you have to install that too), which is complicated for users. The problem of mail is then cut to so many little pieces that it may affect user efficiency. The problem with concatenating so many opensource products is that it is hard to make them work together like a charm. Microsoft usually (!) provides that (naturally, because it produces all those pieces). How about group policies? How would you do that with FreeBSD server? Group policies are THE thing you need when managing greater amount of workstations. At work I use windows a lot. Windows 2003 R2, SCCM, SQL 2005, SCOM, Exchange 2007 and all the other latest stuff from Microsoft. But for all these applications I can use also Freebsd and applications found in ports. Probably you use it more than I do, I really run FreeBSD servers mostly. And I have problems with providing nice-packaged, easy-to-use, all-in-one software to users who are used to that. I use FreeBSD/OS mostly because it is free of charge and because it is quite costumisable. If MS products would be free of charge, I would probably switch to them in most cases. I would just keep the OS scene for our math professors, because you just _can't_ use non-OS software at universities. :) Besides, the point was that the TS wanted to start using somethign else than windows to learn more about OS in general. PPl stick to Windows because they are afraid for change and a learning curve. I totally agree here. And I agree that it's good to check other things too, even if it is for learning only. Not only good, I think it is necessary for a good admin. I just don't agree with the statement, that Windows servers are completely inferior to FreeBSD and you could replace all of them with FreeBSD boxen. If that would be possible, I would do it already. I really am a FreeBSD guy, I run it for more than 6 years now and I like it a lot. But I learned to be reasonable and not to say that it is in every way superior to everything else in the world. Still just talking, not fighting. Bye, Nejc ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Replacing Windows with FreeBSD (was: my brother is making me learn FreeBSD...)
Hiya, On Thu, March 20, 2008 17:50, Nejc koberne wrote: Hey Patrick, AD is nothing more than a big database accessible over LDAP. You connect to the LDAP database, and when you are authenticated you get a kerberos token. Clients use SRV records to check for AD services. SRV Records are supported by BIND. It is possible to run AD and have your DNS/AD zones on a BIND DNS server. I believe you can even find whitepapers from Microsoft for this. Of course certain features are Microsoft specific. So you are saying that merely setting up an OpenLDAP server with proper DNS configuration and Kerberos authentication could replace Microsoft AD controller? How about a group of controllers with all the failover features? Group policies? Are you sure you could do that just with a bit of tweaking? If there are Microsoft specific features, than FreeBSD can't do anything Windows server does and more. I am really skeptic about joining a Vista into such a domain. I would really love to see ONE guy who achieves that. To _completely_ replace Windows server with all its features with FreeBSD Anyone? Failover is nothing more than multi master replication and querying a DNS server for the nearest server which contains an AD database. If the first record fails try another one, if that fails try another one. This is how locating AD servers work. Also why would you want to have a Vista machine in your Freebsd AD domain ;-) You should be running Xorg, Gnome, KDE or whatever, authenticating against the Freebsd server. Thinking about it. What about Radius, isnt that already a system that allows you to manage logons network wise? Xorg + openoffice? Why not? Of course the TCO will increase, training etc. It is simpler for the majority of us to stick to windows. Sorry, but OpenOffice is more featureless than MS Office 2007. There are things which you can do with MS Office so MUCH easily than with OpenOffice. For feature comparison see: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=480 Not to mention performance issues with OpenOffice: http://www.openoffice.org/product/docs/ms2007vsooo2.pdf And not to mention, that running Xorg prevents a company from running many other software (specific to some environment, for example here in Slovenia we have many small companies which develop various business software - from business directories to phone books, dictionaries, ... practically none of them can run under Windows). I completely agree with OpenOffice. Thing is that MIcrosoft has been defined the de facto standard. And yes to have the same features in OpenOffice as in Microsoft you will have to install more applications. Dont forget emulators. If you run a 16bit app on windows xp you run in an emulator. There is even an option telling windows xp which version of dos/windows to emulate. Being a company it is difficult to choose where you live. You could say just don't run that software but I can't say that to users. Because they need that stuff. I agree. Business comes first. But users will be used with what they get as long as it does the job, and b, if it does it fast. yes. I meant that. We are talking out of the box Windows 2008. What kind of functionality are you talking about? The most important thing: we are talking about ordinary users not a bunch of math professors who want to run every application from a shell. And those users want to use things nicely. For example, let's look at the mail system. You could put a Postfix+amavisd-new+spamassassin+Horde+postfixadmin+ ... bla bla stuff on your FreeBSD server (I actually run this on many servers). But in that webmail, you are not able to manage your spam quarantine for example - you have to logout of Horde and login to Maia Mailguard (before you have to install that too), which is complicated for users. The problem of mail is then cut to so many little pieces that it may affect user efficiency. The problem with concatenating so many opensource products is that it is hard to make them work together like a charm. Microsoft usually (!) provides that (naturally, because it produces all those pieces). Spam? What about filtering all the spam into a folder in the mailbox of a user. Microsoft calls this junk filter/mail. Then run every night a script which feeds the content of that folder into a spamassassin database. I run my mailserver onto the Mailtoaster found on www.tnpi.biz and it learns spam full automatic. Microsoft and spam? They dont have a proper spam solution. You had to buy expensive addons for exchange. I believe with forefront that his has changed but I have no personal experience with this. I do agree that microsoft has the benefit of everything together where you will have to install port and port and package to end up with the same result. How about group policies? How would you do that with FreeBSD server? Group policies are THE thing you need when managing greater amount of workstations.
Re: Replacing Windows with FreeBSD (was: my brother is making me learn FreeBSD...)
On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 10:50:34AM +0100, Nejc Škoberne wrote: So you are saying that merely setting up an OpenLDAP server with proper DNS configuration and Kerberos authentication could replace Microsoft AD controller? How about a group of controllers with all the failover features? Group policies? Are you sure you could do that just with a bit of tweaking? If there are Microsoft specific features, than FreeBSD can't do anything Windows server does and more. I am really skeptic about joining a Vista into such a domain. I would really love to see ONE guy who achieves that. To _completely_ replace Windows server with all its features with FreeBSD Anyone? Full AD parity is expected with the release of Samba 4: http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-1035-6053709.html WINS capability is already available in ports with the samba4wins port, by the way. In addition to that, as I pointed out in another email, FreeBSD can *easily* provide all the same functionality -- though MS Windows clients may not support all the necessary protocols and client applications needed to take full advantage of that functionality in some cases. In fact, FreeBSD supports software that does a far better job of being a server or client in an MS Windows network than MS Windows does of being a server or client in a BSD Unix network. Sorry, but OpenOffice is more featureless than MS Office 2007. There are things which you can do with MS Office so MUCH easily than with OpenOffice. For feature comparison see: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=480 1. George Ou is a notorious MS Windows bigot, and I've had run-ins with him before (we both write professionally for the same corporate family of websites, though each under differing circumstances from the other). You can pretty much take anything he says with a grain of salt and still have room to be amazed at some of the nonsense he spouts. 2. I, among many others, have given George Ou's poor benchmarking methodologies a pretty thorough reaming on several occasions in the past. Just looking at some of the charts he presents should make his biases and lack of ability to isolate variables pretty obvious (like the fact that, when comparing Linux and MS Windows performance, he runs different software on them for the benchmarks rather than using the same software on both when there are both MS Windows and Linux ports of the software). 3. His numbers tend to differ significantly from those of anyone else who has roughly duplicated his tests. You should look to better sources for something to back your arguments. Not to mention performance issues with OpenOffice: http://www.openoffice.org/product/docs/ms2007vsooo2.pdf The first chart is inaccurate. Last I checked, OO.o comes with Impress, for instance -- so the presentation player line is mis-marked, unless presentation player has some meaning with which I'm not familiar. Perhaps it means that OO.o doesn't come with a crippled form of Impress while MS Office comes with a crippled form of PowerPoint. The rest of that 28 page PDF pretty much looks like a tie in terms of features. Then, there are matters like hardware requirements (far more stringent for MS Windows), cost (obvious), standards compliance (clear win for OO.o), the ability to integrate with third-party applications (a less clear win for OO.o), and license restrictions. I don't know why you linked to that PDF for performance issues, though. There's nothing in there that speaks directly of performance, and the only indirect mention is the more high-performance minimum hardware requirements for MS Windows. Of course, I'm not saying everyone can just automatically do without MS Office without making some sacrifices -- but most people can do so, and are in fact making sacrifices if they *don't* live without it. The most important thing: we are talking about ordinary users not a bunch of math professors who want to run every application from a shell. And those users want to use things nicely. For example, let's look at the mail system. You could put a Postfix+amavisd-new+spamassassin+Horde+postfixadmin+ ... bla bla stuff on your FreeBSD server (I actually run this on many servers). But in that webmail, you are not able to manage your spam quarantine for example - you have to logout of Horde and login to Maia Mailguard (before you have to install that too), which is complicated for users. The problem of mail is then cut to so many little pieces that it may affect user efficiency. The problem with concatenating so many opensource products is that it is hard to make them work together like a charm. Microsoft usually (!) provides that (naturally, because it produces all those pieces). You don't have to run everything from a shell with FreeBSD. What do you think this is -- 1994? Even manpages can be accessed with a GUI application. Microsoft does *not* provide everything people need. When someone uses
Re: Replacing Windows with FreeBSD (was: my brother is making me learn FreeBSD...)
On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 06:16:35PM +0800, Gelsema, P (Patrick) wrote: If I had the time I would have tried building an network with Active Directory running on a Freebsd server. Probably would have failed due to some microsoft specific thing. Point is still that all the features are available on Freebsd. Samba 4 will provide the last pieces of the puzzle to be able to completely replace MS Windows servers in AD domains, apparently. Of course, I can't swear to it until it has been officially released, but that's the plan. Until then, FreeBSD can only *mostly* replace MS Windows server functionality in an AD domain. On the other hand, FreeBSD can not only provide equivalent functionality in a Unix network (any one of several types), but can do a whole lot more, as long as you don't specifically require an AD domain. -- CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ] Leon Festinger: A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts and figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Replacing Windows with FreeBSD (was: my brother is making me learn FreeBSD...)
On Fri, March 21, 2008 00:39, Chad Perrin wrote: On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 10:50:34AM +0100, Nejc Å koberne wrote: So you are saying that merely setting up an OpenLDAP server with proper DNS configuration and Kerberos authentication could replace Microsoft AD controller? How about a group of controllers with all the failover features? Group policies? Are you sure you could do that just with a bit of tweaking? If there are Microsoft specific features, than FreeBSD can't do anything Windows server does and more. I am really skeptic about joining a Vista into such a domain. I would really love to see ONE guy who achieves that. To _completely_ replace Windows server with all its features with FreeBSD Anyone? Full AD parity is expected with the release of Samba 4: http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-1035-6053709.html WINS capability is already available in ports with the samba4wins port, by the way. WINS is required mostly for Browsing networks, Master browser selection and Netbios connections (the infamous 13x ports). However Microsoft is really trying to get rid of Netbios connections and only have made it available for backwards compatibility. If I aint mistaken port used for file connections is somewhere in the 400 range. It is definitely not required for a full Windows Domain and for file-sharing. In addition to that, as I pointed out in another email, FreeBSD can *easily* provide all the same functionality -- though MS Windows clients may not support all the necessary protocols and client applications needed to take full advantage of that functionality in some cases. In fact, FreeBSD supports software that does a far better job of being a server or client in an MS Windows network than MS Windows does of being a server or client in a BSD Unix network. snap/snap The most important thing: we are talking about ordinary users not a bunch of math professors who want to run every application from a shell. And those users want to use things nicely. For example, let's look at the mail system. You could put a Postfix+amavisd-new+spamassassin+Horde+postfixadmin+ ... bla bla stuff on your FreeBSD server (I actually run this on many servers). But in that webmail, you are not able to manage your spam quarantine for example - you have to logout of Horde and login to Maia Mailguard (before you have to install that too), which is complicated for users. The problem of mail is then cut to so many little pieces that it may affect user efficiency. The problem with concatenating so many opensource products is that it is hard to make them work together like a charm. Microsoft usually (!) provides that (naturally, because it produces all those pieces). You don't have to run everything from a shell with FreeBSD. What do you think this is -- 1994? Even manpages can be accessed with a GUI application. Microsoft does *not* provide everything people need. When someone uses a piece of software that isn't produced by Microsoft, chances are good that any MS software will have been designed specifically to make it difficult to interoperate. Meanwhile, a lot of open source software interoperates very well. Sure, if you limit yourself to nothing but MS software, you might get really good integration -- but that's at the cost of reduced security (thanks to lack of privilege separation and the ubiquitous use of IE's rendering engine for pretty much every single application Microsoft produces) and refusing to use a lot of software that Microsoft doesn't offer. I find it really hard to change, finetune settings on windows. Changing default ports eg. The standard tools provided are limited and there is no default. THink about netsh and net commands. Also security wise. You need to give more permissions to an account to do something than you should on Freebsd. Chrooted applications for instance. How about group policies? How would you do that with FreeBSD server? Group policies are THE thing you need when managing greater amount of workstations. I'd provide such functionality using Unix tools rather than Microsoft tools. Problem solved. I just don't agree with the statement, that Windows servers are completely inferior to FreeBSD and you could replace all of them with FreeBSD boxen. If that would be possible, I would do it already. I don't think anyone said that MS Windows servers are completely inferior to FreeBSD -- and while you *could* replace all of them with FreeBSD boxen, it's probably a good idea to make that a gradual migration in many cases. Agree completely. I really am a FreeBSD guy, I run it for more than 6 years now and I like it a lot. But I learned to be reasonable and not to say that it is in every way superior to everything else in the world. When did anyone say that FreeBSD was in every way superior to everything else in the world? You must be reading a different discussion than the one
