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Linux is Most Used OS in Microsoft Azure – over 50 percent of VM cores

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Re: Linux is Most Used OS in Microsoft Azure – over 50 percent of VM cores

#11

Post by tombert »

This is hardly surprising.

Not to crap on MS, but I do think Linux has traditionally just been a better operating system for servers, probably due to the fact that that's where most of the funding for Linux ends up going, with the desktop versions of Linux being sort of secondary.

It doesn't help that a lot of serverey software is kind of designed with POSIX-ey stuff in mind. Node.js took awhile to get Windows support and ZeroMQ's Windows support doesn't support IPC sockets. Hell, in the little bit of testing that I've done with this, .NET Core is faster on Linux than Windows.

This isn't to say Windows is "bad". I'm personally not a fan but plenty of smart people I know like Windows better than Linux. It's just to say that, for the domain that Azure fills, Linux is often a better fit, and if MS wants to compete with AWS, it would be borderline-idiotic not to support Linux.

Re: Linux is Most Used OS in Microsoft Azure – over 50 percent of VM cores

#12

Post by ch_123 »

babarock wrote: post #2

Between this and their Azure Sphere product, Microsoft may very well be the largest Linux vendor today. As someone who discovered Unix in the early 00s, this makes me chuckle. What a world!

They were possibly the largest Unix vendor in the 80s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix

Re: Linux is Most Used OS in Microsoft Azure – over 50 percent of VM cores

#13

Post by axaxs »

close04 wrote: post #4
babarock wrote: post #2

Between this and their Azure Sphere product, Microsoft may very well be the largest Linux vendor today. As someone who discovered Unix in the early 00s, this makes me chuckle. What a world!

Between Azure and WSL Microsoft might be shipping more Linux kernels than any other company out there.

GCP and the little project called 'Android' would probably make Google the leader, by far.

Re: Linux is Most Used OS in Microsoft Azure – over 50 percent of VM cores

#14

Post by enitihas »

Random_ernest wrote: post #10
babarock wrote: post #2

Between this and their Azure Sphere product, Microsoft may very well be the largest Linux vendor today. As someone who discovered Unix in the early 00s, this makes me chuckle. What a world!

AWS has roughly double the market shared. So it is very likely that they take that title. https://www.parkmycloud.com/blog/aws-vs-azure-vs-google-clou...

Yup, plus Azure had some 40-50% VMs running Windows IIRC, so unlikely to be running more linux than AWS.

Re: Linux is Most Used OS in Microsoft Azure – over 50 percent of VM cores

#15

Post by code_duck »

tombert wrote: post #11

This is hardly surprising. Not to crap on MS, but I do think Linux has traditionally just been a better operating system for servers, probably due to the fact that that's where most of the funding for Linux ends up going, with the desktop versions of Linux being sort of secondary. It doesn't help that a lot of serverey software is kind of designed with POSIX-ey stuff in mind. Node.js took awhile to get Windows suppor…

It just makes sense to run a server OS that works well and is full-featured when there is no GUI.

Re: Linux is Most Used OS in Microsoft Azure – over 50 percent of VM cores

#16

Post by ogre_codes »

Is this surprising to anyone? Microsoft has been competing head-to-head with AWS as a VM/ cloud provider for quite a while now and Linux is by far the largest platform people deploy to.

I know there is some demand for Windows VMs in the enterprise, but even that seems to be shrinking.

Re: Linux is Most Used OS in Microsoft Azure – over 50 percent of VM cores

#17

Post by whoisjuan »

I found it funny when in Azure you create a resource and you can pick between Windows and Linux for the host and Windows is the default option... like bro, I’m not gonna run my shit on Windows walled and heavily licensed garden. What if tomorrow I have to migrate my stuff somewhere else. Are you crazy?

P.S: I know there are legitimate reasons for running something on Windows but for any generic project that shouldn’t be the default at all. Linux is the de facto cloud OS.

Re: Linux is Most Used OS in Microsoft Azure – over 50 percent of VM cores

#18

Post by azinman2 »

whoisjuan wrote: post #17

I found it funny when in Azure you create a resource and you can pick between Windows and Linux for the host and Windows is the default option... like bro, I’m not gonna run my shit on Windows walled and heavily licensed garden. What if tomorrow I have to migrate my stuff somewhere else. Are you crazy? P.S: I know there are legitimate reasons for running something on Windows but for any generic project that shouldn’t…

You know you’re suggesting it’s crazy that Microsoft would suggest their own OS as the default, right?

Re: Linux is Most Used OS in Microsoft Azure – over 50 percent of VM cores

#19

Post by rhacker »

tombert wrote: post #11

This is hardly surprising. Not to crap on MS, but I do think Linux has traditionally just been a better operating system for servers, probably due to the fact that that's where most of the funding for Linux ends up going, with the desktop versions of Linux being sort of secondary. It doesn't help that a lot of serverey software is kind of designed with POSIX-ey stuff in mind. Node.js took awhile to get Windows suppor…

I've always got the feeling that MS specific developers are highly visual studio oriented. They have their connection string built into the IDE. In fact, if you asked them to make something that builds from the command line, and runs, they would probably be scratching their head for a while.

It wouldn't surprise me at all to find some windows based companies that have classic windows VMs in the cloud, running Visual Studio, and production deployments are: RDP in, stopping with the little red button, updating the codebase (with a copy over a network share), and then re-running the code on the production server with the little green play button. Database changes are done by hand in SQL Server Manager.

I know this isn't at all related to the post here - but it's just an interesting phenomenon - the fact that Azure is about 50 percent windows means it's mostly running things like Office backend products, crazy running copies of Visual Studio. It is probably a total mess if half of Azure goes down for 5 minutes. Linux servers would come back up and continue running whatever. All the Windows companies get a call, have to RDP in and do shit.

Re: Linux is Most Used OS in Microsoft Azure – over 50 percent of VM cores

#20

Post by whoisjuan »

azinman2 wrote: post #18
whoisjuan wrote: post #17

I found it funny when in Azure you create a resource and you can pick between Windows and Linux for the host and Windows is the default option... like bro, I’m not gonna run my shit on Windows walled and heavily licensed garden. What if tomorrow I have to migrate my stuff somewhere else. Are you crazy? P.S: I know there are legitimate reasons for running something on Windows but for any generic project that shouldn’t…

You know you’re suggesting it’s crazy that Microsoft would suggest their own OS as the default, right?

Wouldn’t be crazy if Windows wasn’t a licensed closed source OS, but that’s exactly what it is. That’s the definition of vendor lock.
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