Microsoft offering Linux virtual machines on Azure • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft offering Linux virtual machines on Azure

#111

Post by __float » Fri, Jun 08, 2012, 5:37 AM UTC

facorreia wrote: post #106

duaneb wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows 8 won't even run Silverlight. They don't want their tablet users to use Netflix?

I should clarify that it's Internet Explorer _on Metro_ that won't run Silverlight (as far as is known). And, in consequence, ARM tablets won't either (because there will be no desktop mode, just Metro). On the other hand, the new XAML-based API will be a somewhat easy upgrade path from Silverlight app to native app.

No no no! Windows on ARM does have a desktop. But traditional x86[-64] compiled apps will obviously not work. The desktop does still exist though.

Re: Microsoft offering Linux virtual machines on Azure

#112

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Jun 08, 2012, 9:15 AM UTC

jmspring wrote: post #105

dredmorbius wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the Microsoft of 2012 does release a fair amount of code under Free Software licenses. It's even contributing directly to the Linux kernel. That said, substantial members of senior executive management, including specifically Steve Ballmer, were key in leading the dirty tricks campaigns against all competitors, from DR DOS to Novell to WordPerfect to Linux to Netscape to Sun to Google. Some of us have long memor…

"Some of us have long memories", but some of us have also moved on. I say this as someone that has been through the System 5 days, PC Dos 1.0, CPM, DR DOS, Novell, Borland, Word Perfect, etc. In mobile, gaming, and SAAS/PAAS, Microsoft has been open and experimenting. As others have mentioned, they've contributed to the Linux kernel, after some stumbles on Kinnect they embraced the hacker community, etc. Microsoft, f…

It's the lack of the cathartic rebirth mentioned.

Among the more interesting articles I've seen on the company and its practices was in the short-lived Brill's Content magazine of the late 1990s, titled "Making Bill". As I said above: there are very profound reasons to distrust Microsoft, and they haven't changed.

I certainly don't trust IBM in all things. What's significant for it in terms of its relationship with Open Source and Linux is that IBM has determined that its fundamental business interests are inextricably aligned with Open Source and Linux systems.

Microsoft have shown themselves to be adaptable over time, but it also frequently acts in limited ways that are clearly in its interests. And while, yes, Microsoft are contributing directly to the Linux kernel, the contributions are largely drivers related to Microsoft technologies -- mostly the Hyper-V virtualization system, where the enhancements allow Linux to run within Windows Server instances. Hardly generalized kernel code improvements, though still useful to some (notably, Microsoft). (http://techie-buzz.com/foss/microsoft-linux-3-0.html).

I don't have a source tree handy to check myself, but I suspect that this is still the case.

Rather more telling is the ongoing drama in the UEFI boot management which may restrict future X86 systems from being able to boot anything but Windows: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/microsoft%E2%80%99s-take...

Re: Microsoft offering Linux virtual machines on Azure

#113

Post by pliu » Fri, Jun 08, 2012, 9:30 AM UTC

runn1ng wrote: post #33

facorreia wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows Azure is a collection of services managed by Microsoft that, together with software development tools and SDKs (for popular languages such as C#, Java, Ruby, Python, Node.js, or over plain REST), comprise a computing platform. It includes services for on-demand computing, storage (in No-SQL form and Blob form), message queueing, service bus, secure connection, identity management, horizontably-scalable relati…

Well.... I wont pretend I understand all of it, but it seems their offering is pretty big. So it doesn't have to do much with "Windows" OS in any sense, it's just a little confusing name for their SaaS. Thanks!

The virtualization platform they are using for all this stuff is Hyper-V which runs on Windows, so the name is still relevant.

Re: Microsoft offering Linux virtual machines on Azure

#114

Post by robinduckett » Fri, Jun 08, 2012, 9:41 AM UTC

facorreia wrote: post #37

robinduckett wrote: post #23

This is great, but you can't actually configure virtual machines unless you're one of the "select members of the community". So, if you sign up today, on the three month trial, you can't just configure a linux machine and test it. If you even manage to get to the correct place, which is a Silverlight powered management console - when HTML5 / AJAX would do. Lots of bloat and lots of cruft and no actual functionality.…

They made a new portal in HTML5 and JavaScript. When you access the former one (that was in Silverlight), there's a link at the bottom inviting you to change. IE9 was optimized for rich HTML5 and JavaScript applications and IE10 on Windows 8 won't even run Silverlight.

    
    
        if (!window.document.documentMode || window.document.documentMode

Re: Microsoft offering Linux virtual machines on Azure

#115

Post by SideburnsOfDoom » Fri, Jun 08, 2012, 10:54 AM UTC

mcantelon wrote: post #53

brudgers wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought a lot about this over the past few years. I believe there are a couple of cultural factors which contribute to it. On the large scale, Apple's "I'm a Mac. I'm a PC," made Microsoft bashing socially acceptable in the general culture. The second is more subtle, but more applicable to HN. Microsoft is not a Silicon Valley company and it never was. One source of animosity that this has created is that it has…

Microsoft also doesn't do much that is interesting. They tend to imitate and their imitations are seldom better, and are often worse, than the originals. The only moderately recent exception I can think of offhand is Kinect. Are there other innovations they've brought to market over recent years? Microsoft's research division does amazing things, of course, but I'm talking about products.

Can you make the case that C# - the Microsoft imitation of Java - is worse than the original?

Can you make the case that SQL server is worse than similar SQL DBMSs?

F# is a variant of ML and therefore not original, but is it uninteresting?

Re: Microsoft offering Linux virtual machines on Azure

#116

Post by locusm » Fri, Jun 08, 2012, 1:11 PM UTC

I just ran the Phoronix iozone benchmark on a newly spun Ubuntu 12.04 Azure VM - it aint looking good... Comparison against a local VPS provider here in Australia. http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1206086-BY-1103157IV31

Re: Microsoft offering Linux virtual machines on Azure

#117

Post by facorreia » Fri, Jun 08, 2012, 1:27 PM UTC

__float wrote: post #111

facorreia wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should clarify that it's Internet Explorer _on Metro_ that won't run Silverlight (as far as is known). And, in consequence, ARM tablets won't either (because there will be no desktop mode, just Metro). On the other hand, the new XAML-based API will be a somewhat easy upgrade path from Silverlight app to native app.

No no no! Windows on ARM does have a desktop. But traditional x86[-64] compiled apps will obviously not work. The desktop does still exist though.

Thank you for the clarification. So current x86 desktop apps won't run, but some might be retargeted and they would work.

Re: Microsoft offering Linux virtual machines on Azure

#118

Post by lmm » Sat, Jun 09, 2012, 10:36 AM UTC

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #115

mcantelon wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft also doesn't do much that is interesting. They tend to imitate and their imitations are seldom better, and are often worse, than the originals. The only moderately recent exception I can think of offhand is Kinect. Are there other innovations they've brought to market over recent years? Microsoft's research division does amazing things, of course, but I'm talking about products.

Can you make the case that C# - the Microsoft imitation of Java - is worse than the original? Can you make the case that SQL server is worse than similar SQL DBMSs? F# is a variant of ML and therefore not original, but is it uninteresting?

On a pure technical level C# is better than Java, and F# is one of the most interesting languages in recent years. (SQL server really does have nothing going for it).

But the pure technical level isn't all that matters for a programming language. There's not the same library community around .net, because it came five years later and not enough better than java. And there's no migration path, because - which is worse - none of the MS stack interoperates with anything else.

I would, quite genuinely, like to do parts of my current job in F#. But there's no eclipse support for it. Even if I wanted to use visual studio, which I don't, it doesn't run on linux (and that's to say nothing of deployment - our ops team has been burned enough times trying to run windows servers). If I'm going to write things in F# there has to be a way for the rest of my code to use it, but F# doesn't run on the JVM so I can't write a library in it (or call JVM libraries), and when I looked for protocol buffers support all I can see is some third-party google code project.

I wouldn't want MS to give up on .net as it's actually a really good VM, so I guess that part makes sense, but windows is useless on the workstation and the server - and it seems like all the cool MS technology only runs on windows.