Microsoft Built Its Own Linux Operating System

While many seem quick to sensationalize this and suggest that hell has frozen over, this is probably just a logical move by Microsoft in adopting the right tool for the job.

Microsoft has indeed released a Linux-based operating system. Don’t get too excited about trying it out, though. This isn’t some kind of attempt by Microsoft to steal desktop Linux share from the likes of Ubuntu, Mint, and Fedora. It’s not an OS that’s built for computers. It’s “a cross-platform modular operating system for data center networking,” and it’s made to run in Microsoft’s Azure cloud environment. Fittingly enough, it’s called Azure Cloud Switch.

Very interesting, but it's not surprising.

Old news. This was known about a year ago.

Further, who cares? My cat has it's own linux distro.

Embrace-Compile-Extinguish

I'm in the middle of trying out virtualization through PCIe Passthrough. I'm trying to copy what Tek Syndicate guys did by getting GTAV running on Linux full speed. On Linux I can probably get 90% of my activities done within it or through Wine. The remaining 10% will be through Windows in a virtual machine under my control.

Where is it? Can I see it?

AndreRio said:

Where is it? Can I see it?

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This is nothing more than Microsoft quietly admitting to the limitations of its own kernel. The datacenter space is dominated by Linux. Windows kernel just doesn't scale as well in this application. If they want Azure to remain competitive, they had to go Linux.

Am I the only one that thinks they should have called it Xenix 2 or something like that?

This is shocking why can't the masters of reinventing the wheel keep it on the windows platform?
Wasn't windows the better Operating System to start with ?

DPI said:

This is nothing more than Microsoft quietly admitting to the limitations of its own kernel. The datacenter space is dominated by Linux. Windows kernel just doesn't scale as well in this application. If they want Azure to remain competitive, they had to go Linux.

Click to expand...

No.

Hyper V is as competivite (if not more) than its competition, but they are not talking about that. Maybe you should read the article before rambling about something you have no clue about.

Microsofts Linux OS is simply being used for switch management. Sure they could have done the same thing with a windows application but there is no need for the overhead of the OS when its something so simple.

Pieter3dnow said:

This is shocking why can't the masters of reinventing the wheel keep it on the windows platform?
Wasn't windows the better Operating System to start with ?

Click to expand...

Linux is already widely used as the operating system of network devices, so I've got to imagine there is a mature codebase built around it as well as existing expertise and a knowledgebase.
Microsoft has done a lot of work with MinWin, in refactoring and componentizing the Windows kernel, and bringing that work back into Windows. Windows Server can be used for networking functions, so Microsoft should have enough to work with without having to use Linux.
On the other hand, Linux is available and running in production on a much much wider variety of platforms, making it ideal for promoting hardware independence and abstraction from the switch hardware. I don't know how difficult it is to produce HALs for Windows, but Windows NT has been available for 7 platforms, 4 currently (I'm counting IA64 as well as x86, x86-46/AMD64, and ARM).
If I had to guess, I would imagine that Microsoft is much more comfortable sharing work and redistributing code through ONF on SDN (Open Networking Foundation and Software-Defined Network) on a Linux based system than if it were Windows.
But what better way to demonstrate abstraction than to be able to use different hardware and both MinWin kernel and Linux with the same Standardized Switch Abstraction Interface and run the same Applications.
It's tempting to say Linux is leaner, but I think it may just be that Linux has a "vibrant ecosystem" existing that Windows just doesn't have as Windows is closed/shared source under Microsoft's control where someone can do just about anything they want with Linux as long as it complies with GPLv2 (or until found to be out of compliance with GPL).

Im sure MS have had self built Linux OS's for years used internally