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Microsoft To Run Linux On Azure
snydeq writes "After years of battling Linux as a competitive threat, Microsoft is now offering Linux-based operating systems on its Windows Azure cloud service. The Linux services will go live on Azure at 4 a.m. EDT on Thursday. At that time, the Azure portal will offer a number of Linux distributions, including Suse Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2, OpenSuse 12.01, CentOS 6.2 and Canonical Ubuntu 12.04. Azure users will be able to choose and deploy a Linux distribution from the Microsoft Windows Azure Image Gallery and be charged on an hourly pay-as-you-go basis."
Yeah but how many people honestly use Azure?
Microsoft almost always supports other platforms if it has enough marketshare and if they think they can make money off it. They even seem to be making Office for the iPad. The summary is trying to be a troll as usual. This is like WINE, more support is always good if you trying to get as many customers as possible.
They even released an Android app recently.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsofts-bing-mobile-team-introduces-new-app-first-for-android-phones/12856
This space for rent.
Microsoft doesn't care about loyalty, to customers, to vendors, to themselves, or even their own products. They simply care about profit.
The Admin and the Engineer
As a 'distributor' of Linux services will they be suing themselves for all the 'blatant' patent infringement that Linux is doing or just trap the end users with those patent fees?
until Linux is eating into their desktop business and then see them launch the Patent ICBMs. Canonical better buy some kinetic kill vehicles...
I hope someone is charging them an absolute pantload of money and giving them absolutely no support options whatsoever.
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
My understanding, back when MS first started talking about the whole 'Azure' thing, was that they were trying to distinguish themselves from Amazon(and others) 'just a bunch of VMs, but easy to buy/release programmatically' product in favor of some sort of more abstracted 'platform' that would hide both the hardware details and the OS guts, in favor of an environment that mostly resembled an application's-eye-view of Windows; but without the Windows administration, along with some similarly abstracted SQL and web-hosting things. It was always presumed that it wouldn't exactly be running on Linux; but that it didn't 'run Windows' in the sense of any 'Windows' SKU that Joe Customer could buy a box of and plunk onto a server at the office...
Was offering just-plain-boring offsite VMs always part of the plan? Did they discover somewhere partway through the execution phase that their pure-cloud application environment just wasn't quite Windows enough for their customers? Are the plain-VM offerings an integral part of the somewhat confusing alphabet soup of 'azure services', or is this a checkbox-filling thing that was tacked on because somebody wanted it and the internal cost of hyper-v licenses is small?
Ah, I haven't had a good ROTFL in a long time. Some time in the '90s I guess. Thanks.
Wait until ... Linux is eating into their desktop business...
Yes, and that will be two days after pigs grow wings and fly.
PS, I love Linux as a server, and it runs my Rails stuff very well, but "Linux on the Desktop"? Seriously? Does anyone believe in that anymore?
Microsoft makes big bucks from their server stuff. Really big money. Linux on the server is more of a threat to MS than is (an extremely theoretical) Linux on the desktop. Still they do it in Azure. Looks like you just proved that you are a clueless git (no, not the distributed kind that Torvalds did).
frozen confectioneries sighted in the Netherworld
-I'm just sayin'
I was planning to book a skiing vacation in Colorado, but it looks at if all the sweet powder will be on the mountains in hell.
Drinking habits can be dangerous. You can choke on the cloth and the nuns will wonder where their clothes are.
I heard this Charon guy it's having problems with the freeze of the styx river
Slashdot ya no es que lo era!
after which it is expected to spontaneously burst into flames
I agree that this is a positive step.
I have nearly a religious hatred towards MS, and it has nothing to do with "Microsoft's desire for profit." I work for a company that sells software for profit, so obviously that would would be hypocritical if I felt that way.
What I've always hated about Microsoft was their willingness to buck standards just to prevent their users from using other products along with MS products.
This started with early versions of Windows that required you to also buy DOS. A competitor to DOS came out (Dr. DOS), and Microsoft responded by putting a check into the Windows bootstrap that would cause it to exit out with an error if Dr. DOS was detected. Any time a company goes out of their way to make their own product not operate with 3rd party software, it generates serious rage from customers like me.
As I look back over the last few years, the last move by MS that really angered me was the whole OOXML vs Open Document war, where Microsoft refused to use the new standard, and instead made their own new standard with built in obfuscation.
There's still a lot terrible decisions that MS makes for their customers (hiding file extensions by default in Windows, modifying extensions on files downloaded with IE without informing the user, automatically removing line breaks on messages read in Outlook without telling the user), but I've seen far less pure evil come from the giant, compared to ages past.
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With so many different Linux distributions, how are you so sure one isn't named Azure?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
If you're into devops, the company I work for has today released a knife client plugin for compatibility with Azure, allowing you to spin up and manage Azure instances easily from the command line. And of course knife can bootstrap Chef onto any of the announced Azure OSs. I'll let the press release provide details, because it does a better job of it than I will ;)
http://www.opscode.com/press-releases/opscode-announces-interoperability-with-windows-azure/
If you can't beat 'em, find a way to make money while you join 'em.
Well played, Microsoft, well played.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Repent, ye sinners, as this is certain sign that the End of Days is upon us.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
OpenSUSE 12.01 doesn't exist, but 12.1 is the current version, so that's probably what was meant in the summary.
... that Microsoft is now embracing Linux and will be extending its capabilities?
you must be new here
People using html in email should be shot.
Go back to the original spec. If it's not working per the spec, that's a bug, fix it free. If they want a change to something that is working per the spec, that's a chargeable change.
It's rebranded, it's now called "Azux".
"I'm not much interested in interoperability. I want substitutability. I want to be able to throw your software out."
This started with early versions of Windows that required you to also buy DOS. A competitor to DOS came out (Dr. DOS), and Microsoft responded by putting a check into the Windows bootstrap that would cause it to exit out with an error if Dr. DOS was detected.
If you're telling old war stories, at least tell them right. This particular one is known as AARD code. It was present in a beta version of Windows 3.1. Digital Research found it a month before release, and so it was disabled there.
Maybe Red Hat declined to participate?
Isn't that the point of CentOS in the first place?
It's "supported" as in "official support".
Open-source support company OpenLogic is providing CentOS for the Azure portal. CentOS is a clone of the enterprise-focused Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution. (Red Hat did not respond to queries to comment on the Azure announcement.) OpenLogic has provided commercial support for CentOS since 2009, along with 600 other open-source programs. For Microsoft, OpenLogic will support all the running instances of CentOS, which includes providing Azure with the latest version of CentOS. Users will be able to update their CentOS virtual machines from a repository of patches that OpenLogic will maintain on Azure. Microsoft has contracted OpenLogic to provide support, initially, for a set monthly fee, said Steve Grandchamp, CEO of OpenLogic.
Otherwise you can run whatever the hell you want there:
In addition to the virtual machine images of selected distributions, users will be able to import their own Linux builds through Microsoft's Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) capability, according to the announcement posted by Microsoft.
I guess the reason why it's CentOS + paid support rather than RedHat is either because it's cheaper, or because MS doesn't want to give money to one of their major competitors in server space, or likely both.
And when will FreeBSD be coming to Azure?
So basically when people come on here and loudly brag about how they use Centos and never pay Redhat for support that's uber-cool sticking it to the man because Redhat is evil (for some undefined reason while we blindly worship Ubuntu).
However, when "evil" "M$" does the same thing it just proves they are sub-human 1%er scum (because George Soros told me to say that since he is betting against them in the derivatives market and George Soros is just a humble grass-roots community organizer).
Gotcha: No matter what M$ does is evil becuase you feel like it and the facts don't matter. Have you considered working for Assad to spread propaganda about the Syrian people?
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Any time a company goes out of their way to make their own product not operate with 3rd party software, it generates serious rage from customers like me.
Man you must fucking hate Apple then! At least MS is less anal about that sort of thing these days, Apple is still right on to artificially preventing their software from running on other hardware (be it desktop/laptops, tablets or phones) and proprietary shit like AirPlay and FaceTime (with it's Apple certificate restrictions).
And always remember to include the memo from Microsoft Senior Vice President Brad Silverberg:
"What the [user] is supposed to do is feel uncomfortable, and when he has bugs, suspect that the problem is DR-DOS and then go out to buy MS-DOS."
I don't run Windows (the only OS with kernel worse than hypervisor, so adding one does not hurt it) in enterprise setting.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
There once were two cats of Kilkenny
Each thought there was one cat too many
So they fought and they fit
And they scratched and they bit
'Til (excepting their nails
And the tips of their tails)
Instead of two cats there weren't any!
Kilkenny Cats
Microsoft and Android aren't just an "other platform" to each other. They are death itself.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"I think it's a good step towards the right direction. Evil or not, Microsoft at least tilts towards being... less evil with this move."
You think so.
Microsoft knows it has a hard time with Azure being a Microsoft-only platform. Linux is now considered a valid choice at least server-side so a number of companies, even if going with Microsoft servers, would reject Azure in the basis of "what if we want to go the Linux path tomorrow?" when other "cloud" companies are offering support for both platforms.
But "less evil?" I don't think it's just a coincidence that the supported Linux distritutions seems all to be corporate-backed ones: Microsoft knows how to deal with (or against) companies, so for them, supporting something coming from, i.e. Red Hat is one thing, supporting Debian, something completly different.
Let's have Volkswagen put this Bugatti Veyron together.... Seems just as ridiculous.
Their they're doing there hair.
First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.
So: run an unpopular OS on a monopoly business network? Depend on the monopoly to run an OS it hates, on top of an OS it loves that sucks?
That sounds like a terrible deal, the worst of both worlds.
--
make install -not war
Apparently even Microsoft can't affording Microsoft licensing on its servers, lol.
I'll comment on the OOXML vs Open Document "war". Speaking from my perspective as a former developer in the Microsoft Office team, the choice to develop OOXML wasn't about "refusing to use a new standard". It was a choice about features -- regardless of if the file formats were zipped XML or HTML with embedded other standard or non-standard things or binary blobs encoded in some hard to implement and test scheme, the ultimate choice for the file format came down to a million small choices about how to represent objects, and how to document those choices, and how to enable future extensions to those choices that we then got to implement in a time constrained manner over the course of about 2 release cycles (Office 2007 and Office 2010). Bear in mind that there were millions of lines of code that had to keep working and that internal document structures had to preserve as much of the crazy edge cases built up by billions or trillions of customer documents over decades.
That and Office designers and program managers wanted to add lots of crazy new features that had to be expressed and change structures which once were hard coded constant values in the code into user-changeable entities in the files, perhaps even add user interface elements to the surface exposing these properties in one or two more releases. If Office had chosen to adopt the Open Document format, instead of 6000 pages of OOXML standard, we'd have 7000 pages of extensions to ODF documenting how Office 2007 and then Office 2010 and then Office 2013 decided to implement hacks on top of hacks to a 3rd party standard.
But the real answer is that it's easier (and thus cheaper) to design something from scratch, implement it (with whatever bugs), and document that during the process than it is to start with someone else's format, and try to morph it into a workable solution.
Actually I'm using CentOS at some deployments and Red Hat at others. Some customers require official paid support and I don't mind recommend them paying Red Hat for this - they tend to use this money to develop better products and do release source code for most of them. Contrast this with M$ where money you pay is often used to pay off patent lawyers running their shakeout operations, BSA etc.
What I'm trying to say is that there is a significant omision in their support matrix and this is clearly political decision.
Just theoretical, Microsoft could just say it supports Linux distributions in Azure, but they will run 10% slower then any Windows Server, and are more difficult to configure. I don't think they will be that stupid anyway. Linux is demanded from their customers, and if it runs bad on their Azure it will be big news.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
Cool, then it shouldn't have been forced as an ISO standard.
Gotcha: No matter what M$ does is evil becuase you feel like it and the facts don't matter. Have you considered working for Assad to spread propaganda about the Syrian people?
No matter what Microsoft does is evil because, frankly, that's the historical record. Fool me once, and all that. When Microsoft has spent as long behaving well as they did behaving evil I'll give them the benefit of doubt. Right now, they still have two decades (give or take) of repentance left.
Thanks for bringing Assad into this. I wouldn't trust him either, even if I see him handing out free toys to kids for a few days. Would you stand there spouting some "Whatever he does, you'll call him evil!" bullshit while I back away from him and suggest that you might want to check the toys for bombs.
May we live long and die out
How does that make sense? Had Microsoft approached RH and told them that we want to buy RHEL licenses and support it on Azure, why would they say no, particularly when there is money rolling in? Seems more like what shutdown said - either it's cheaper, or more likely, MS doesn't want to buy from their competitor.
Apple is still right on to artificially preventing their software from running on other hardware (be it desktop/laptops, tablets or phones)
I'm no Apple advocate, but I have to say this is quite different. Their newest OS revision (Mountain Lion) costs $29.99, compared to Windows 7 Ultimate at $320 (plus $15 for the backup CD). It should be completely obvious to everyone that the bulk of the cost of Apple's OS is absorbed into the hardware cost. Using quality software to sell your hardware and vice-versa is actually a legitimate model, in my opinion.
and proprietary shit like AirPlay and FaceTime (with it's Apple certificate restrictions).
Not being an Apple fanboy, I've never used either of these, and I don't really know full story on them (but I'd like to!). I do know that I have multiple streaming apps on my iPhone. Slacker Radio is the one I use the most.
My complaints with Apple (speaking as an iOS device customer) is their lack of support of open document formats (my phone handles Excel files, but not any OpenDocument format!!), and the rules against any sandbox-in-a-sandbox apps (such as a flash viewer).
Free unix account: freeshell.org
They could say no because they don't want to work with MS for ideological reasons, or just plain business reasons - on either side. Who knows. I just thought it was unlikely that in a move where MS is adapting its business to explicitly offer Linux OS options on Azure that their reason for not offering RHEL was "divide and conquer" and the insinuation from the GP that MS is dishonest and evil.
Far more likely that one or other simply didn't want to work together, rather than some highly convoluted scheme whereby MS offers Linux OS choices in a Machiavellian scheme to cripple RHEL by creating more choice in the Linux cloud computing space.
Act now, and for the low, low price of $99, you too can continue to boot into your 'Other OS'!! Hurry! This UEFI promotional price will not last long!!
anyone else notice the "Windows" slashdot category icon changed from the broken window panes to just "Windows"?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I don't have experience running anything important on Windows.
Fortunately I see enough of examples of this around, without having to make all mistakes by myself.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
So, are you going to back that up with evidence, or just scream at people until they give up arguing against you?
End the Dell Blacklist of Linux NOW... "If you feel passionately about Linux support this petition to get Dell to stop the blockade and blacklisting of Linux and to stop forcing customers to buy Windows 7 and Microsoft Office if they want the latest Dell hardware. Make a difference and tell them to stop now....They have setup a petition website for the posting of new ideas and comments called Ideastorm, lets up-vote the issue and support the breaking of the Microsoft Cartel at Dell...
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"Give the user a choice of Ubuntu/Fedora/RHEL or Windows on all desktops..." Link: http://www.ideastorm.com/idea2ReadIdea?Id=087700000008iglAAA&v=1339424370822 [ideastorm.com]
Please support this effort..."