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:I'm surprised they're using outside product

[goose-incarnated]

Yeah. To expand on that:-

For little itty-bitty microprocessors, Linux is better than anything Microsoft has.

For appliance type devices (Home automation, etc), Linux is better than anything Microsoft has.

For embedded uses (cars, machinery, etc), Linux is better than anything Microsoft has.

For powerful hand-held computing devices, Linux is better than anything Microsoft has.

For services, Linux is better than anything Microsoft has.

For large horizontally-scaled services, Linux is better than anything Microsoft has.

For scientific computing, Linux is better than anything Microsoft has.

For supercomputing, Linux is better than anything Microsoft has.

The only holdout of Windows is the desktop and gaming market, and god help them if they ever manage to kill off Windows as a viable gaming choice in the hope that it would boost their XBox division: consoles spend much less time dominating in each generation.

Even if they manage to make XBox the number one console in a single generation they are never going to hold on to that crown in succeeding generations.

Re:I'm surprised they're using outside product

[drinkypoo]

I always read that Microsoft had a policy of using its Own software, so the staff could easily identify bugs & bad user interfaces (and improve them). Maybe they've abandoned that philosophy.

The problem is that Windows' networking is poop. Linux, on the other hand, has AFAICT the fastest and most capable networking stack of any full-fledged OS on the planet outside of FreeBSD... and have you ever dealt with BSD users? I'd rather take a performance hit.