Linux Now Dominates Azure (zdnet.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Three years ago, Mark Russinovich, CTO of Azure, Microsoft's cloud program, said, "One in four [Azure] instances are Linux." Then, in 2017, it was 40 percent Azure virtual machines (VM) were Linux. Today, Scott Guthrie, Microsoft's executive vice president of the cloud and enterprise group, said in an interview, "Slightly over half of Azure VMs are Linux. That's right. Microsoft's prize cloud, Linux, not Windows Server, is now the most popular operating system. Windows Server isn't going to be making a come back. Every month, Linux goes up," Guthrie said. And it's not just Azure users who are turning to Linux.

"Native Azure services are often running on Linux," Guthrie added. "Microsoft is building more of these services. For example, Azure's Software Defined Network (SDN) is based on Linux." It's not just on Azure that Microsoft is embracing Linux. "Look at our simultaneous release of SQL Server on Linux. All of our projects now run on Linux," Guthrie said.

Comments

Re:If only

[thegreatbob]

Primarily regarding learning, obtaining a 180 day evaluation copy is trivial:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-u...

Maybe not so if you're allergic to filling out forms, but it seems not to care very much about the information provided. It has long been possible to do this, even without MSDN or Technet. Sometimes the evaluation disks are distributed with learning material, also.

Regarding development, Windows Professional versions typically meet all of the requirements, unless you're trying to interact with stuff that simply does not exist in consumer Windows versions.

Re:If only

[Anonymous Coward]

If only Windows Server OS was free as in beer.

If only Linux on the desktop wasn't a pile of unusable shit that makes Windows 10 look good.

Says the WIndows fanboy who never learned to use Linux or is afraid to try.
(Now, tell me you tried it 20 years ago and it didn't work)