Linux is Most Used OS in Microsoft Azure – over 50 percent of VM cores • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by GordonS » Tue, May 12, 2020, 6:49 PM UTC

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 used Windows on desktop since 3.1, and nowadays Windows 10 is my daily driver - IMO it's the best desktop OS, and always has been.

But for servers, I much prefer Linux. It uses less resources, and it's so much easier to get it into a known and consistent state that Windows.

Also, something about having a GUI for servers has always felt... wrong somehow!

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

#32

Post by duskwuff » Tue, May 12, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

outside1234 wrote: post #8

rbanffy wrote: post #6

50%?! That's surprisingly low.

It is more that the percentage of workloads that are running Windows that are hosted on Azure (vs. GCP or Amazon) is very high.

Which is, in turn, because Azure provides an unusually good deal for Windows users -- free Windows licenses for VM guests, Active Directory integration...

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

#33

Post by NicoJuicy » Tue, May 12, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

rhacker wrote: post #19

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…

I'm one "visual studio Dev"

I have also build in Go, nodejs, Php, RoR.

But VS is truelly the best IDE experience I have witnessed.

Database changes are automatically migrated and deployed using entity framework fyi.

The big deployment button changes the connection string per deployment, deploys with feature flags directly and automatically migrates the db to the latest version

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

#34

Post by GordonS » Tue, May 12, 2020, 6:53 PM UTC

rhacker wrote: post #19

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…

> 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.

That might have been true once, but I think Microsoft-stack devs are a lot more command line savvy these days.

The move towards DevOps and scripting makes the command line much more necessary, and makes the benefits of the command line clear. The move towards cloud has introduced Linux to a lot more organisations, yes, even Microsoft shops.

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

#35

Post by stinos » Tue, May 12, 2020, 6:53 PM UTC

rhacker wrote: post #19

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…

I've always got the feeling that MS specific developers are highly visual studio oriented

This and the rest of your post is about one specific kind of developer, and I honestly wonder how you can think that's it.. Lack of experience or just bad luck and only ever met this kind perhaps? Anyway while I know for a fact these exist, your feeling is sort of wrong in that there are also developers who just use VS as the IDE it is (to write code and debug; it's good at that) and for the rest automate build environment setup, deployment and whatnot just like you'd do on another OS. I just don't know the numbers, i.e. which share of developers using VS act like you describe. It's not like using VS somehow makes people blind for concepts like CI. Data point: we have a bunch of scripts (combination of PowerShell/Python/MSbuild) which will install and setup the complete build environment from scratch (VS/Miniconda3/Vcpkg/...) checkout all code (yes from git, not from a network share), build a myriad of different flavors of the product, package it; all in one commandline command.

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

#36

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Tue, May 12, 2020, 6:55 PM UTC

freefriedrice wrote: post #28

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…

Windows came from the single-user domain. Unix came from server space. It is literally two different evolutionary paths. From day-1, Unix was built for shared file systems, multi-user accounts, and distributed computing. Networking on Microsoft was an afterthought until the mid-90's. Sure there were token ring and banyan vines drivers in the late 80's early 90's, but that was to share a drive letter. The entire idea…

> "Windows came from the single-user domain. Unix came from server space."

Windows 9x came from the single-user domain but is long dead except for compatibility stuff left over in modern Windows. Windows NT and its successors came from server space from its VMS lineage.

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

#37

Post by eitland » Tue, May 12, 2020, 6:55 PM UTC

jfkebwjsbx wrote: post #29

eitland wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in the little bit of testing that I've done with this, .NET Core is faster on Linux than Windows. My experience as well. In fact it was extremely much faster. - Hello world took something like 5 seconds to run on Windows - on Linux (a VM on the exact same laptop, with the same Windows running underneath in fact) it was so fast I had to use the time command to figure out how many milliseconds it took :-) FTR: while…

That does not make sense at all. The files were probably cached in the Linux case.

Believe me I tried a number of things. It was like that from the first run and every time.

Well, technically it might have used 700ms the first time and 400ms later, I didn't measure the first run, but it was still way faster than on Windows which was why I started measuring using time after all.

Also on Windows it kept being slow on subsequent runs, and in my world that matters too.

I don't have recordings, but I recommend you try for yourself. I compiled both from the same source, and as far as I can remember I used standalone compilation for both (I don't have perfect memory but I have a history of being careful.)

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

#38

Post by shawxe » Tue, May 12, 2020, 6:56 PM UTC

rhacker wrote: post #19

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…

Obviously anecdotal, but in my personal experience this is pretty close to the truth.

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

#39

Post by cameronbrown » Tue, May 12, 2020, 6:56 PM UTC

jamieweb wrote: post #23

I'm interested to know what the majority of the Windows machines are used for. I can't think it'd be anything other than 'big enterprise' applications, where there seems to be a lot of bespoke stuff built specifically for Windows Server (e.g. finance software, healthcare systems, marriage registration, taxi licensing, nursing home management, etc). Unfortunately this sort of stuff is fairly rare to be available in th…

Virtual desktops or straight up on-prem to cloud migration might be my guess. If big companies can avoid it, why pay the cost of a rewrite?

> Crematorium Management System

Genuine question: why can't you use Microsoft Access or G Suite for this? Seems like the canonical data entry use case these products are designed for.

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

#40

Post by tomc1985 » Tue, May 12, 2020, 6:56 PM UTC

rhacker wrote: post #19

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…

Is it any better than SSH'ing into a server and "services stop mybusinessapp; update.sh; services start mybusinessapp"?

I'm detecting a bit of disdain for the VS world