[ Thanks to Mohammad
Bahathir Hashim for this link. ]
“Your vocabulary word for the day is “heterogeneous.” When
related to computers, it means an environment where there are
multiple computing platforms instead of only one. Such as — to
take a totally random example — Windows 2000 and UNIX.”
“Okay, maybe that’s not so random an example. Especially
with the appearance of the Windows 2000 Services for UNIX package,
a set of utilities for Windows 2000 that allow a degree of
interoperability between Windows 2000 and UNIX. It’s not a free
download; it’s a commercial package of programs that will be for
sale soon at the list price of $149. From what I can tell,
however, it’s a mixed bag — and there’s some question in my mind
as to how useful some of this stuff really will be….”
“Another major feature, according to the documentation I have
here, is “over 60 UNIX command-line utilities,” including cat,
grep, ls, ps, rshsvc, and vi. Maybe I’m being dense, but don’t most
of these exist in freeware implementations already? I already have
a command-line grep utility that’s a direct port of the Linux
source, for instance. Also included is the Korn Shell, which has
nothing to do with a certain very loud and obnoxious rock band and
everything to do with an extension to the command-line interface in
UNIX that let you run elaborate command scripts. How the Korn Shell
is being retrofitted to work specifically with Windows isn’t clear:
I doubt you would be able to take an existing shell script and just
dump it in, but someone familiar with both Windows and Korn should
be able to edit or rewrite existing scripts to accomplish the same
tasks. (Most of the changes would probably be to the way paths and
volumes are enumerated.)”