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Microsoft developer reveals Linux is now more used on Azure than Windows Server

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Re: Microsoft developer reveals Linux is now more used on Azure than Windows Server

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IT made them do it for good reasons though. Managing a large number of users and workstations in an enterprise environment is one of the things that Microsoft stack stands out.

Pull the boundaries in. Provide all of the enterprise services through the web. Provide hardened VMs for those services that can't be migrated. Suddenly your workstations are thin clients, and it doesn't really matter anymore if someone decides they want BYOD. Now you can get after the actual interesting problem of intellectual property theft and corporate espionage. Things which the firewalls of old did nothing to p…

It's naive to think that just because your production critical software is web based, you can just have everyone BYOD. That is asking for rampant malware on the company network, and targeted attacks that steals company secrets.

Re: Microsoft developer reveals Linux is now more used on Azure than Windows Server

#62
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an entire parallel community of business IT, basically unknown and unintelligible to the Silicon Valley community, where the Microsoft server-side stack is as obvious a choice as Linux is in our world. You may even have some of it in your company. It's really amusing (and dysfunctional) when our projects require "Eng" and "Corp IT" to cooperate. We're both ostensibly computer professionals who select, write,…

Like 10 years ago, I thought it was great when we garnered a client which was one those "Microsoft only" type shops, because I like C#/NET. But the only justification for using it was really "IT made us do it". And I saw how the IT leadership in these places were older people perhaps maybe fighting older political battles. In any case its been many years since I've stumbled across a pure Microsoft shop. I think Azure…

I work in a 99% MS shop, basically (well, apart from our SAP installations). Most of this was indeed setup like this due to homogenization (all our admins know everything, it all works together, no weird stuff on some servers, etc), but it has actually created a weird situation where we have some smaller services running on old unix servers and no real admin in the org... we actually have on older guy coming in once a week to check on these servers. If it wasn't so sad it was hilarious. I mean, I used to do some unix server stuff en years ago, but here I am an SAP dude, so while I do have some auths on one of those servers, I can probably basically restart some daemons and that's it.

Oh yeah, and iPhones. We have those - not complaining, really, but those were sold internally as "it looks better if we have those premium phones and not old junk". Ah well...

Re: Microsoft developer reveals Linux is now more used on Azure than Windows Server

#64

On Azure, a Windows VM instance tends to cost about 50% more than the equivalent instance running Linux,so it is a no brainer to use Linux if your application is operation system independent.

If I encounter an issue on Linux (that I can reproduce), I can investigate it to its root (sometimes in the kernel driver) and fix it (or find someone who has fixed it). On windows, I have only seen issues fixed either by reinstalling applications (mostly randomly) and praying or by using annoying work arounds. IMHO, the cost is higher in Windows.

Re: Microsoft developer reveals Linux is now more used on Azure than Windows Server

#65
post #25
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t WSL depend on a Windows host though? Can WSL be used as an independent OS?

W is for Windows in WSL, so no.

If I were implementing it, I would definitely want to be able to test it using qemu without Windows.

Re: Microsoft developer reveals Linux is now more used on Azure than Windows Server

#66
post #59
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you underestimate how slowly things move in some places. There are still shops running COBOL on mainframes. Windows is going to have a place on servers for decades to come.

News flash, there is more COBOL being written today that in any prior year. It's a small part of the total output, but is not decreasing in absolute terms.

What is the source?

Re: Microsoft developer reveals Linux is now more used on Azure than Windows Server

#67
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone uses Active Directory because its basically the only functional solution for its problem space.

Which problem space is that? For group policy part cfengine, salt, puppet are far better (group policy is just modifying windows registry and manipulating files although at first it seemes a bit like magic). For authentication we have kerberos, which Microsoft pulled in from the free world beginning with Windows 2000. Kerberos does not fly in the Cloud world though.

And Dropbox is just sshfs, ftp-mount etc. There is a huge advantage to having an all-in-one, it just works, solution. Active directory is such a solution and does really well. Login to a different mschine and things are just setup. Push programs, setting, updates. Change security. It's great.

Re: Microsoft developer reveals Linux is now more used on Azure than Windows Server

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pull the boundaries in. Provide all of the enterprise services through the web. Provide hardened VMs for those services that can't be migrated. Suddenly your workstations are thin clients, and it doesn't really matter anymore if someone decides they want BYOD. Now you can get after the actual interesting problem of intellectual property theft and corporate espionage. Things which the firewalls of old did nothing to p…

It's naive to think that just because your production critical software is web based, you can just have everyone BYOD. That is asking for rampant malware on the company network, and targeted attacks that steals company secrets.

From the lens of a programmer it's definitely possible to do BYOD without any real danger to the domain.

They need access to a few webfrontends and be able to use their SCM server...

But in order to do that, they'll have to be able to test locally or have a really hardened access to their servers. Significantly harder than just forcing everyone on company hardware without root/admin access

Re: Microsoft developer reveals Linux is now more used on Azure than Windows Server

#69
post #5

This is great, IMO. The sooner MS abandons Windows on Azure the better for everybody. You could argue that "monoculture" is not good, but, TBH, from a purely pragmatic standpoint, I struggle to name a single use case where I'd _not_ choose Linux over anything else when the use case is not desktop-oriented (cloud, edge, embedded).

seems to me that windows is still where you are going to find better (or even a driver) drivers for hardware. is this still true? if new cutting edge hardware released does it now have good linux drivers? (sorry i was scarred by the printing experience on linux)

Re: Microsoft developer reveals Linux is now more used on Azure than Windows Server

#70
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's naive to think that just because your production critical software is web based, you can just have everyone BYOD. That is asking for rampant malware on the company network, and targeted attacks that steals company secrets.

From the lens of a programmer it's definitely possible to do BYOD without any real danger to the domain. They need access to a few webfrontends and be able to use their SCM server... But in order to do that, they'll have to be able to test locally or have a really hardened access to their servers. Significantly harder than just forcing everyone on company hardware without root/admin access

Developers get special treatment, because the nature of their work often require them to have local admin access. But the majority of people do not need that, and if I'm in charge of company network and security, I would not allow anything but approved machines on the internal network.
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