[astrodust]

Windows is still Windows. SSH support is a step in the right direction, but they've got a mountain to climb:

* The Registry. * Drive letters and associated anachronisms. * A sane service manager. * The Windows API in general.

[jodrellblank]

Aah, the registry. Isn't it nice not having everything in a MySQL database with a PHP interface which regenerates configure files over your hand edited hanged? Or GUIs like network manager that make config files that can't be edited because they can't track manual edits?

A registry which gives a central place for configuration and enables group policies and central management?

A registry which allows ACLs on individual keys and sub trees, not just at the level of files.

A registry which has some notion of types.

Isn't it also nice that MS moved on a bit from the notion of drive letters with powershell providers, allowing you to console edit registry locations, active directory OUs, certificate service paths, and whatever you want in a FUSE style pluggable way, while keeping the usefulness of drive letters and unc paths and not trying to pretend a network drive is a subset of / on a local computer.

Linux environments don't even have a stable place to put SSL certificates or a stable format for them. Packages might use individual files, or a single concatenated file, or a Mozilla NSS database, might look in somewhere in /etc or need their own path configuring.

It's a mess, even if it was standard and all the files were base64 text versions, it would still be useless for human editing with text tools because humans can't process big chunks of base64 usefully. A certificate store and a PSdrive provider for it. Neat.

[astrodust]

There are some things that have better standardization in Windows, but for every thing they get right, there's a half dozen that are horribly, horribly wrong.

They need to start setting fire to legacy "features" and moving into the future. Windows is great because of backwards compatibility, but it's also hobbled because of it.

Unless they want to be an OS for organizations that fear change and upgrade slowly, reluctantly, then they'll need to start cutting some of that baggage loose.