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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

#71

Post by cosmotic »

z3t4 wrote: post #46
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…

I was on the Windows platform for 15 years and moved over to Linux about 6 years ago. One thing I miss from Windows Server is that it was very stable, updates never broke anything. If you got any updates that is. I think most people use Windows server because they are locked into Microsoft technology. I switched to Linux, and most importantly open source technology - in order to get out of the Windows ecosystem. I sw…

Similarly, I ran away from the Microsoft world because everyone was just 'drinking the koolaid'. I got out, into Python and django, and the problem was similar: everyone was drinking just a different koolaid.

ASP.NET MVC C# with EF has got to be one of the most solid web frameworks I've ever used. Open-source fanatics refuse to listen about why it's great... even though it's open source now.

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

#72

Post by mavhc »

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…

Unix was originally a single tasking OS, that's what the U is for

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

#73

Post by mschuster91 »

dmw_ng wrote: post #55
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…

You don't see it on HN much but the Windows world is still massive, and there are still plenty of ASP.NET folk around. I'd suppose you only have to take half a footstep outside the "pure Internet services" sphere to start bumping into lots of Windows, in pretty much any direction you happen to step. There are also whole industries where Windows has a particularly strong influence, e.g. (from experience) some parts of…

> and I imagine things like render farms or other specialist graphics work that might have grown out of a once Windows-only desktop software cottage industry

Much render farm/graphics work was once Mac territory but given Apple's ridiculous pricing and lack of server options besides stacked Mac Minis or support for NVidia stuff many have shifted away. Truly sad...

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

#74

Post by tonyedgecombe »

GordonS wrote: post #34
rhacker wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 towar…

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

I don't think it's ever been that true. It's just a handy stick for some people to bash their perceived out-group.

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

#75

Post by pdeuchler »

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…

> I'm interested to know what the majority of the Windows machines are used for.

Willing to bet it's SQL Server and Azure AD

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

#76

Post by input_sh »

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…

As a sysadmin, I support way more Windows servers than I'd like, mostly because they run some .NET CMS (Content Management System in this case): Umbraco, Kentico, SiteCore etc.

Most mind-blowing use case of a Windows server I've encountered was a server running nothing but nginx.

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

#77

Post by tonyedgecombe »

mmcconnell1618 wrote: post #61
tombert wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, I was thinking this, but honestly how much overhead is the Windows GUI when no one is logged into it? I know it's not nothing, but I suspect it's not that much, is it?

Windows Server is available in a "core" edition without a GUI.

Not only that but pretty much everything on Windows Server is exposed to PowerShell and has been for some time.

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

#78

Post by icelancer »

dmw_ng wrote: post #55
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…

You don't see it on HN much but the Windows world is still massive, and there are still plenty of ASP.NET folk around. I'd suppose you only have to take half a footstep outside the "pure Internet services" sphere to start bumping into lots of Windows, in pretty much any direction you happen to step. There are also whole industries where Windows has a particularly strong influence, e.g. (from experience) some parts of…

Yeah it's huge. My industry is 95% .NET. Lot of [LARGECO] use Outlook, which means the entire Office stack is dragged into use, which makes LDAP the logical choice, and Windows management of it, and then the rest of the tooling because why not...

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

#79

Post by fortran77 »

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…

Our old office was across the street from a crematorium and we had a public wi-fi named "xxxxxx Family Funeral Home" with a landing page with a link to a (fake) crematorium web control panel, complete with a fake live view of the cremation (it was actually just looped gif) You could adjust the temperature, the speed of the exhaust fans, etc.

Anyway, we have Windows servers running in Azure because we do a lot of GPGPU work, and the NVIDIA/CUDA drivers work best in Windows.

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

#80

Post by stinos »

tombert wrote: post #63
freefriedrice wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree that networking stuff feels pretty frustrating on Windows compared to POSIXey stuff; for the most part using a good networking library like (as mentioned above) ZeroMQ or even some of the built-in JVM socketing stuff will help abstract it, but Unix sockets are simply better out of the box. Even a simpler example though; the fact that there wasn't really a built-in analog for the "pipe" until PowerShell sort o…

socketing stuff will help abstract it, but Unix sockets are simply better out of the box

Can you elaborate? Do you mean performance? Because the on the C level both use (apart from some minor differences, which aren't enough to call one 'simply better' than the other) the same berkeley socket API.

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