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I have always thought that in the case of Microsoft's server operating systems that they were created with the idea that the end-user of those servers would use Windows. I also thought the same for Red-Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora.

Was this actually true though? Were servers OS ever really created with a specific OS for the terminal in mind or were they generally agnostic to what OS that the end-user used?

Does it help to keep the OSs under the same general roof ie keep the Linux servers working with some flavor of desktop Linux and the same for the Microsoft side of things or is it a non-issue at this stage of development?

I'm interested more in the enterprise side of things, clearly, a web server has to work with everything.

Neil Meyer
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    Huh? Windows is pretty much the same code base for workstation and server. Server has a few more programs, and different defaults for tuning parameters. What do you mean by the "end user"? Windows Server has a GUI, you don't need a separate Windows system to manage it. And the point about server operating systems is that the clients don't in general deal with interactive UIs that run on the server (application servers being a possible exception). – dave Nov 15 '21 at 16:03
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    If I'm operating under a misapprehension please feel free to correct me in an answer. This question is to get clarity on the truth of one of my notions – Neil Meyer Nov 15 '21 at 16:06
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    Microsoft really likes selling Windows licenses. Exchange and its calendar function is probably the product resulting in most Outlook licenses sold which in turn required Windows. The embracement of web and other platforms is a very late development after Exchange got marked dominance. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Nov 15 '21 at 16:11
  • Quite a lot of work on the linux kernel is to make it server proof (like 256-core processorss and other esoteric needs) way beyond the workstation use. In the Windows case it started of as PC os (CP/m based) went through some steps towards Workstation, When NT came along it was intended for servers, but that the code based consolidated largely. Windows wasn't intended as a server OS, Linux more likely so. – theking2 Nov 15 '21 at 16:54
  • Well Microsoft always made the standard communications between server and client one of its own protocols that nobody else would touch. I always assumed this was deliberately to stop anyone else making clients. – Chenmunka Nov 15 '21 at 17:56
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    @theking2 - NT was definitely intended as a server and I'm not sure what you mean by "the code based consolidated largely" but the core of NT - what Linus would call the "kernel" and much more - was new code specified, designed, and managed by people from the server OS groups at Digital. In fact, the "client" part of NT - the GUI - was segregated into being only a part of the "WIN32 Subsystem" which was itself separate from the kernel. (Originally it was much more segregated than it is now.) – davidbak Nov 15 '21 at 18:29
  • Ditto what @another-dave asked. Who is the "end user?" Is it somebody sitting at the console of the box on which Windows Server runs? or is it somebody using their iPhone or their Android tablet to look at a web page that is hosted by IIS running on a Windows Server box? etc. – Solomon Slow Nov 15 '21 at 22:29
  • @Dai - yes, of course it was a server-class OS that could be used on desktops/laptops as well. Though, at first shipment, it implemented a bit less functionality of the shipping Windows 9x at that time. If you used it at that time that was acceptable - it's price was such you were probably using it for business purposes (and it was deployed by your company for its security and other strengths) and you weren't playing games, etc. – davidbak Nov 16 '21 at 02:29
  • @Dai - NT Workstation was available from V3.1 (i.e., the first release) onwards. I'm sure of that, since I ran it. Though in fact the names were just Windows NT for the desktop version, and Windows NT Advanced Server for the server version. Wikipedia claims the "workstation" designation came with V3.5. – dave Nov 16 '21 at 03:11
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    @another-dave Thank you for the correction, I've deleted my incorrect comments. – Dai Nov 16 '21 at 03:19
  • @Dai - no problem, we're all here to share info. – dave Nov 16 '21 at 03:30
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    I'm sorry but how is a question on the history of server operating systems not on topic here? I know RHEL / Fedora part may be a tangent into recent tech but this question is actually interested in the historical perspective of how servers and clients have traditionally interacted – Neil Meyer Nov 16 '21 at 09:42
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    @davidbak NT 3.1 had FreeCell for people who wanted to play serious games ;-). – Stephen Kitt Nov 16 '21 at 19:31
  • I found WinDbg to be a move involved game. – dave Nov 16 '21 at 23:39

2 Answers2

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For context, I imagine this question is a follow-on to What exactly has the windows OS relationship been towards MS server offerings?

In the Windows world, yes, server editions of the platform were always intended at least in part to manage computers running non-server editions of Windows, going back to Windows NT 3.1 Advanced Server which could serve as a domain controller for other Windows systems. Many features in Windows domain controllers are only useful with Windows clients, so at least those features were presumably created “with a specific OS for the terminal in mind”.

In other operating system families there isn’t such a distinction between “server” and “regular” editions, and server/client control is typically delineated by protocol rather than operating system — for example, Kerberos. But some operating system families did work better with other computers running the same operating system; see for example NeXTstep’s network configuration.

RHEL isn’t designed to manage other systems running Fedora; various products piggy-back on top of RHEL to provide management features across a variety of operating systems, but they aren’t RHEL.

(Note that “terminal” is perhaps a misnomer here: Windows servers are self-sufficient, and connected systems typically don’t act as terminals in the retro-computing sense.)

Stephen Kitt
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  • I'd say the central part here, which does answer the question is, that client/server relations are not about OSes but protocols. He who follows the protocol is a client, or a server, depending on what side it speaks (if not both). Thus follows that the questions premise in itself is faulty. – Raffzahn Nov 15 '21 at 20:39
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To answer this part:

Were servers OS ever really created with a specific OS for the terminal in mind or were they generally agnostic to what OS that the end-user used?

Novell Netware was made with CP/M and MS DOS as its "terminal" OSes in mind (later extended to MS Windows and OS/2, but depending on what you mean by "terminal", these might not count). No real consideration was given to other OSes as clients; those were primarily 3rd party based.

Radovan Garabík
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