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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.
"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.
It's not just on Azure that Microsoft is embracing Linux.
Just make your next desktop OS (Windows XI ?) be a Linux based, MS ripped-from-somewhere GUI, and you're all set. No reason you couldn't include the usual spyware in such a system. Linux zealots would work hard to make such a desktop perform excellent across the widest choice of hardware options out there.
After that's said 'n done, Linux on Azure is just another day in the office.
I wish there was a way to prevent MS from using Linux after all the effort they put into thwarting it. (FUD, SCO lawsuit, etc.) They fact that they are making money from it now, does not seem right. Maybe now that they are adopting it (only because their customers demanded it), means this is the beginning of the end for Windows.
The reality is that even internal to MS, Windows Server was always thought of as a glorified file server, not an application server. Applications were supposed to run on the main desktop OS and link back to either files or a database, but true multi-user networked applications were anathema to Windows desktop sales and the whole .Net runtime idea. The heavy lifting was local, and the network resources were light. Now, what choice to you have with Azure? You can't run applications locally, so that "advantage" goes out the window--so to speak.