Musings on Windows-Linux Interoperability

I like to distill technologies down to their essence.  I view most technologies with sceptism – do I really need this? is a question I ask myself all the time.  And I’m now in plumb in the center of interoperability business. After all, what could be more core to interoperability that making Windows and non-Windows systems speak to one another in a totally seamless fashion?

Interoperability today spans a wide universe of technologies. Authentication, databases, management infrastructure, web standards: the list goes on and on. Novell and Microsoft made an announcement last year that they would interoperate on directory standards, XML formats and virtualization efforts. All goodness.

But here’s my question:  I want the vanilla Windows client and server boxes to interoperate seamlessly with the Linux and UNIX client and server  boxes.  Let’s drill down even further.

I don’t want to buy a management solution to do this

I’d like to see the following

1) Linux clients can access files on Windows server seamlessly.  Windows clients can access files on Linux server seamlessly

2)Linux web browsers can browse Windows web server pages in a corporate intranet seamlessly. Likewise Windows web clients can browse Linux web servers in a corporate intranet seamlessly.

Today, you simply cannot do this. Let say you are a large F1000 company and you have several thousand Windows desktops and several thousand Windows servers, it is near impossible for you to want to introduce Linux or Mac desktops into this environment and  similarly it is near impossible for you to introduce Linux or Unix servers into this Windows centric environment.

Why is this so? This is because Windows environments are built around Active Directory. Every single Windows desktop or Windows server is “joined” to an Active Directory domain and the seamless highly integrated feel that you have when you’re on a Windows desktop to connect to resources is all because of this Active Directory integration. In my next post, I’ll talk about Active Directory being the new “unfair advantage” for Microsoft.