Imagine, an entire city running its digital infrastructure on Linux. Beautiful, right? Now imagine the frustration of Vista users when their Microsoft OS denies them access to the Internet due to some small bug in some Microsoft code.
Frustrating indeed.
The city of Lund, Sweden has been in the digital dark as Vista OS users cannot gain Internet access through the city's Linux based communications infrastructure. The company in charge if that city wide system, Lundis Energi, had said that the problem persists because of a bug in some Vista code. Lundis Energi also said that they are in no way willing to change the configuration of their server to cope with the flaw.
Microsoft hasn't offered any statement of fix as of yet, but a local Microsoft rep had siad that the folks in Redmond could fix the problem easily enough if Lundis Energi was just a little more forth coming with the details.
Who's to blame.
Well, both actually. Lundis Energi should have been testing Vista back in its early alpha release stages to ensure compatibility with their Linux based server system. On the flip side, Microsoft has to get into gear with increased interoperability between Vista, Linux, XP, OSX, FreeBSD and every other operating system choice available on the market today.
Besides, with Apache (a Linux type web server) being the dominant web server with more than 50 percent market share world wide, Microsoft should bow down just a little and open a window or two to help let the penguin in. After all, only a third of the web servers on earth run Microsoft.
Microsoft Vista desktops don't play well with Linux servers.
The Vista users of Lund over in Sweden can't access the Internet through their Linux network.
Alternate Source: Entire city of Vista users can't access the internet
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Internet Related, OS & Software
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But for some reason, Windows just happens to be that one OS that spawns these huge news worthy stories.
Besides, as I had pointed out in the article, the onus falls upon both parties involved to work together to find an equitable solution.
This Linux admin wont give details, wont tell us the problem, and wont tell Microsoft how to fix it...But stands by his "Vista is Bugged"...Come on, this is a BS story and you know it.
TCP/IP is TCP/IP on all systems. This Linux admin is blocking packet headers that contain "Windows or NT" and trying to make it look like a Microsoft problem??
Your a noob sir.
The Internet isn't a creation of Microsoft, who other people need to work to play nice with, it's an international standard that's not going away anytime soon, whether MS lasts another 50 years or folds tomorrow.
If Ford comes out with a revolutionary new kind of engine, should each gas company be forced to buy one of the new model to see if their gas works in the car, then create a new formula if not?
Gas is a standard fuel and the Internet is a standard network. It is up to the developer of the product that uses these standards to make sure they're producing a compliant product.
While it would be nice for the city to give detailed bug reports to MS, to help explain exactly what's going on, this shouldn't be needed. MS shouldn't even need a Linux server in house to see if Vista will behave well. All MS has to do is make sure THEIR system obeys then standard. Once they do, if it still doesn't work, they can pass the blame back to the Linux server.
At this point MS needs to
a: Fix Vista (or prove it is obeying the standard and the Linux server isn't)
or
b: Declare they're not going to fix their OS, openly defy the standard and see what happens
Keep in mind, this isn't the 1st attempt of MS to talk with the Net. We've used the Internet WITH Internet Explorer in Windows 3.1 and up. MS has been working more or less reliably for years. Why would this suddenly break / change? Per the article, no mention is made of XP users being hampered.
Microsoft® Windows Vista and Windows Server® 2008 include a new implementation of the TCP/IP protocol suite known as the Next Generation TCP/IP stack. The TCP/IP protocol stack provided with Windows® XP and Windows Server 2003 was originally designed in the early 1990s and was modified and enhanced over time to meet the needs of home and enterprise users. The Next Generation TCP/IP stack in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 is a complete redesign of TCP/IP functionality for both Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) that meets the connectivity and performance needs of today's varied networking environments and technologies.
Also, the internet company shouldn't help MS debug their product. Why would they? Is MS paying them for help on fixing their issues? Network standards are known and documented, all MS has to do is follow them to fix the issue. Everyone other OS does, and that is why they work.
Communications *Standards* are put in place so that everybody is playing by the same rules. TCP/IP was a standard before Microsoft was anywhere near the size they are today, yet they take the liberty to change the protocol when they feel necessary. It seems to me that if a legitimate problem exists between the ISP and a Microsoft related product(Vista) that the ISP could donate perhaps some time in working with Microsoft to resolve the problem. Unfortunately, unless you are a large corporation or significantly sized government customer of Microsoft, getting ahold of somebody at MS who can fix a legitimate programming bug is near impossible. Additionally, if the ISP's systems are truly Internet Standards Compatible (in tech speak RFC compliant) it is not their responsibility to insure that every product on the market can communicate to the internet. It's up to the product maker to comply with standards.
Finally, I've personally experienced where patches from Microsoft that change their implementation of TCP/IP have broken Linux based networks. KB893066(a Microsoft Identifier for their update) was meant to address security problems in TCP/IP, but because it was a Microsoft-change and not an Internet-Standards change several computers that were connected over an office-to-office VPN link (read: office-to-office secure communications channel) could not function. The Linux based part here was a Watchguard-Branch-Office-VPN solution, where Watchguard products run on Linux ; Note: Watchguard is a popular international company that produces firewall and related software.
Why? Why should they waste time testing Microsoft's crap, it's up to M$ to test their stuff not everyone else!
I'm pretty sure it's the users choice to run whatever OS they want to run, and it sounds like some of them here want to run Vista. Great customer service by this Swedish SA in not helping his customers achieve what they want to achieve. Sounds like an immature little hater that can't wrap his head around a simple problem.
There are so many things wrong with this article, I'm suprised it got published. Does this really even make sense? Is there a rift in the space time continuum in this particular town that is causing this problem? Maybe the newly invented invisibility cloak is shielding all common sense from the writer and the goofy sys admin. Who knows... but this article is utter rubbish.
There's an actual, technical problem here, TCP/IP is not TCP/IP as has been claimed. But we can't easily pinpoint the issue without more technical details.
I don't know how many of you actually write software. Well I do for multiple platforms. And I can't tell you how aggravating it is when a user comes over to my cube and tells me it is broken without any details. Come on people bugs exist. How can you fix it if the admin won't at least tell you what is being broken? Any time I have run into a bug in someone else's code I at least offer them a starting point or I work with the person to figure out what has gone wrong.
Remember what I said before Bugs happen that's life. But to be hardnosed and not tell the dev what is wrong is even worse.
Just my 2 cents,
Douglas