Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

zdnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 184 posts

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

#11

Post by TallGuyShort »

jtdev wrote: post #6

I wish MS would just create a Linux or BSD distro like Amazon Linux, ClearLinux, Darwin etc. to replace Windows Server outright...

They could probably partner with Red Hat. I would've laughed at the idea 10 years ago, but these days, I wouldn't be that surprised. When they've had OS-ish integrations needed for things like machine-based authentication, RHEL has been treated like a first class citizen. I'm not sure how much Amazon Linux really changes other than branding and some baked-in tuning - unless you're really going to commit to maintaining the OS, just providing a minimal RHEL-based image makes a lot of sense.

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

#13

Post by Spooky23 »

mr_toad wrote: post #2

I see a lot of government shops picking Azure because nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft. But once they open up to the cloud I see a lot of people installing stuff like Shiney servers, Jupytr notebooks and other open source software on Linux servers that would never have been a starter in an enterprise environment.

Government does it because Microsoft was genius in sneaking cloud service terms back in 2011/2012 beyond the scope of O365 into the Microsoft EA product use rights before government lawyers and procurement people figured it out. O365 had ROI so it just rolled through.

They have a leg up because they have been available to every government entity for almost a decade. AWS and others are still hard to buy for many government entities.

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

#14

Post by kyllo »

bhouston wrote: post #3
mr_toad wrote: post #2

I see a lot of government shops picking Azure because nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft. But once they open up to the cloud I see a lot of people installing stuff like Shiney servers, Jupytr notebooks and other open source software on Linux servers that would never have been a starter in an enterprise environment.

The government department standardizes on Azure but all the young devs push for Linux servers so all their shiny toys work great. Windows is truly dead on the cloud and has been for a decade. The only thing people use it for is self hosted exchange, and file servers and active domains - legacy stuff.

Hosting SQL Server has been another common use case for Windows Server for a long time, though it can run on Linux too now.

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

#15

Post by closeparen »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #11
jtdev wrote: post #6

I wish MS would just create a Linux or BSD distro like Amazon Linux, ClearLinux, Darwin etc. to replace Windows Server outright...

They could probably partner with Red Hat. I would've laughed at the idea 10 years ago, but these days, I wouldn't be that surprised. When they've had OS-ish integrations needed for things like machine-based authentication, RHEL has been treated like a first class citizen. I'm not sure how much Amazon Linux really changes other than branding and some baked-in tuning - unless you're really going to commit to maintainin…

Why would IBM undermine its own cloud like that though?

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

#17

Post by cbluth »

kyllo wrote: post #14
bhouston wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government department standardizes on Azure but all the young devs push for Linux servers so all their shiny toys work great. Windows is truly dead on the cloud and has been for a decade. The only thing people use it for is self hosted exchange, and file servers and active domains - legacy stuff.

Hosting SQL Server has been another common use case for Windows Server for a long time, though it can run on Linux too now.

The last time I installed sql server was on Linux

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

#18

Post by flomo »

closeparen wrote: post #10
bhouston wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government department standardizes on Azure but all the young devs push for Linux servers so all their shiny toys work great. Windows is truly dead on the cloud and has been for a decade. The only thing people use it for is self hosted exchange, and file servers and active domains - legacy stuff.

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 means they know they lost, but also have legacy business to support.

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

#19

Post by jtdev »

mushufasa wrote: post #9
jtdev wrote: post #6

I wish MS would just create a Linux or BSD distro like Amazon Linux, ClearLinux, Darwin etc. to replace Windows Server outright...

check out their kernel for WSL: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel .

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

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

#20

Post by paxys »

I'm surprised it took this long. With Linux support for .NET and SQL Server, there is zero reason to host anything new on Windows now (of course legacy enterprise software is another story). I wouldn't be surprised if Windows Server is fully EOL'd in a few years.
Post reply on HN