Windows Services for UNIX
Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX (SFU) is a package which provides a Unix compliant environment on Microsoft Windows computers. It provides both a subsystem, named Interix and a set of tools. Microsoft does not intend to produce any further versions of the product and plans to discontinue support for it [1] because it is being integrated as part of the regular OS distribution [2].
Interix is not an emulation of a Unix kernel, but rather an implementation of an environment subsystem running within the Windows kernel. This improves performance compared with the emulation used by Cygwin.
SFU contains:
- Over 350 Unix utilities such as vi, ksh, csh, ls, cat, awk, grep, kill, etc.
- GCC 3.3 compiler, includes and libraries
- A cc-like wrapper for Microsoft Visual Studio command-line C/C++ compiler
- GDB debugger
- NFS server and client
- A pcnfsd daemon
- X11 tools and libraries
- Tools for making NFS mountpoints appear as Windows shares, and vice-versa (gateway services)
- An NIS server capability linked with Active Directory (AD)
- Some Windows/Unix authentication information synchronization tools
SFU does not contain (but binaries are available for a separate installation[3]):
- bash, OpenSSH, sudo, CVS, ClamAV, bzip2, gmake, curl, emacs, Apache, XView, ruby, Tcl, Python
Although X Window System client libraries and applications are provided, SFU does not contain a native X server. Microsoft recommends [4] X-Win32 LX, a freeware X server that only accepts client connections from the local machine. Any third-party X server for Windows can also be used, and you could even not use the recommended one (see the history for the list that got chopped out!).
Released versions
Current release is version 3.5 on January, 2004.
Windows Server 2003 R2 contains some SFU components, namely Microsoft Services for Network File System (NFS), Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications, and Identity Management for UNIX. [5]
Previous version 3.0 released 2002.
Supported Operating Systems
Microsoft Windows Services is targeted to Server and Professional editions and it is not supported nor available for Windows home editions.
- Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003
- Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 1
- Windows 2000 Server with Service Pack 3 or later
- Windows 2000 Professional with Service Pack 3 or later