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Windows Server 2016 RTM available on TechNet Evaluation Center. Not yet available on Dreamspark.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-2016Has anyone tried it yet? If so any impressions? Is it faster/slower then Server 2012 R2 running general applications, 3D render applications and games? Also my Dreamspark access expired, are there any other Microsoft programs that would get you longer term access to Server 2016 then the trial?
My Dreamspark account expires on December 31, so I shall take it when it will be available. Well, it has glitches, yet. As I said, Windows Store and Store (Metro) apps are gone, the GUI of Edge is gone, only the engine is present. So, there out of the box you have only Internet Explorer. It is reshaped after Windows 10 Enterprise ltsb. Flash Player is gone, so no Flash on Internet Explorer or Edge (if you find a way to use edgehtml.dll in IE or some other way), but I assume it can be used in Chrome or Firefox (I have not tried, I do not like using Flash anymore.). I could not use the iso burning function, neither on the standard account or the Administrator build-in account, due to a glitch. System Restore, available on Technical Preview 5, it also gone. Overall, I say I have a mostly good impression. I consider the absence of Windows Store, the Store apps and Flash as a positive aspects, but I dislike the absence of Edge as full fledged browser. At 2 gb of ram, is moving pretty fast.
And, of course, I do not like that the trial iso does not fit either on a DVD, or a USB drive, it is more then 5 gb of size. For UEFI boot, you need to use Fat32, not NTFS, on the USB drive, and the install.wim is larger then 4 gb, maximum for fat32 in file size. This happens due to the fact that install.wim has both the standard and the datacenter images in it. Maybe the iso available on Dreamspark will have only one of them, so we will be able to use it on a DVD or USB drive. For now, I can reinstall Windows only by mounting the iso on an already installed Windows copy on the machine and access the setup.exe file, preferable in the Sources folder. For now, I will be satisfied if I could find a way to use the Edge engine (edgehtml.dll) instead of Trident engine (mshtml.dll) in Internet Explorer 11. I have already posted about this on the other thread; I hope someone will be able to help me do that.Running the RTM @ my home rig since Day One.
I’m VERY SATISFIED with it so far.
I have to emphasize this:
I don’t target ANY Metro/UWP apps functionality in my environment – so I don’t miss Store apps (maybe with a single exception of Weather;) or Edge – I use Firefox for past >10yrs and I have used FF on former OS (W10) anyway.Been using WS instead of regular since W2K3 (instead of XP). I went from 2012 R2 to W10 because of curiosity and some (UI) improvements that made sense to me, and I’m very happy I’ve been able to switch to regular WS now. It’s definitely snappier than 2012 R2, and (perhaps due to absence of all the UWP sh!t) it’s much more comfortable to use than W10 Home/Pro, at least for me.
Just an example: apart from W10 Pro/Home, I’m not encountering any problems with default apps anymore! In W10, it always happens to me that some data types are being ‘raped’ back to native Metro apps – with WS2016, this NEVER happens 🙂
I’ve been using data deduplication on former systems; I did use dedup even with W10 (doesn’t have native support – modules have to be imported from WS). The problem was whenever there was a new W10 build, you’d have to import dedup modules from the corresponding WS build, or your data would be inaccessible.
So the dedup feature alone (quite important for me, the stats below are for a 6TB volume):
and its guaranteed integrity in upcoming OS updates, is a big motivation for me to run WS instead of W10.
I guess I could gain almost the same positive experience with W10 Enterprise LTSB, but I do enjoy WS more due to its minimalistic footprint – I have to add everything I need myself, including drivers, OneDrive etc.. for a conservative, obsolete control freak like me, it’s just the perfect OS 😉
Absolutely no HW/SW problems encountered – if it works in W10, then it most probably will work in WS2016 – if the software provider doesn’t indeed limit their stuff to non-server Windows editions, like Raxco PerfectDisk etc.
I like WS 2016 as it is, with one exception: the lack of Edge. The rest of the user experience is as good as it gets.
@Lotusisrael wrote:
I like WS 2016 as it is, with one exception: the lack of Edge. The rest of the user experience is as good as it gets.
I guess there is a way to get Edge working in WS2016
but I doubt it will work (as a Metro app) for the Administrator account, unless you allow UAC for it.
In here we do not accept things like taking pieces from proprietary OSs like Windows 10 Enterprise and paste them into WS 2016. It is piracy. I really like this policy. I have discussed this issues on My Digital Life forums, I was suggested to do that, I refused. Tried some PowerShell Commands, they did not work. Besides, I have discovered that the engine of Edge, edgehtml.dll, present in System32 or Syswow64 is, actually, mshtml.dll, the engine of Internet Explorer 11, the version of the file in the details tab and mounting it in the GUI of Internet Explorer through symlinks shows it clearly. It was mounted in WS 2016 RTM using a symlink and the browser was detected as Internet Explorer 11. As I said, it is a phantom dll. So, even if you found a way to install Edge using dism, this means, probably, that it will not work or that it will be Internet Explorer 11 in the GUI of Edge. Edgehtml.dll will need to be replaced manualy, taken from Windows 10. First of all, that means piracy. Second of all, Windows Update might screw things up badly, if it does not meet the dll it expects to find there. Anyway, if you manage to find a way to install Edge on WS 2016, a legal way, I would really like to see it.
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