Why Microsoft Will Drive Serious Linux Innovation

Megalith

Megalith

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Microsoft, while maintaining its commitment to Windows, has made the necessary steps to not merely run on Linux but to help shape the future of Linux: driving this thought is recent hires such as Jessie Frazelle, who is notable for her work on containers. While MS isn’t high up in terms of kernel contributions (yet), Frazelle notes that the company is doing a lot in terms of innovating around the open-source OS so it can be used to complement other systems.

Frazelle, remember, has a strong container pedigree. In that area, Microsoft more than earns the “innovator” label. Even seemingly pedestrian work -- like making Docker containers work for Windows, not merely Linux — is a big deal for enterprises that don’t want open source politics infesting their IT. Or how about Hyper-V containers, which marry the high density of containers to the isolation of traditional VMs? That’s a really big deal. Microsoft’s commitment to Linux has been such that over the past year the percentage of Azure VMs running Linux has jumped from 25 percent to 33 percent, according to Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich.
 
Lets talk when they release Office on linux.
 
As long as they follow the rules and licence agreements all good. The main advantage of Linux is the way it ensures companies innovation helps every company involved. Really why not... facebook designs a better scheduler it gets shared, Intel designs faster x or y, red hat designs a better FS... those things get better when everyone adopts them or picks parts out of them and adds their input.

It really is only a matter of time before MS switches to an OS running a *nix base. It only makes $ense to share development costs across the entire industry. Running a Linux base doesn't mean they have to stop charging for Office... or even licencing enterprise versions of their *nix based OS. Redhat / Suse ect enterprise level Linux isn't free... and for the home based OS even MS isn't making money on licences anymore for home/small office use licencing isn't the $ generator anymore and never will be again.

More and more MS and their systems are the odd balls... moving to a Linux powered core solves a lot of windows issues that are going to get more and more expensive for MS to fix.

The *nix core has been working for google... and I am sure MS is working on something closer to chromeos then windows 10s.
 
Wonder if they hired a bunch of people from the SCO Group. They could convince people that Microsoft is the rightful owner of Linux.
 
Megalith said:
Microsoft, while maintaining its commitment to Windows, has made the necessary steps to not merely run on Linux but to help shape the future of Linux: driving this thought is recent hires such as Jessie Frazelle, who is notable for her work on containers. While MS isn’t high up in terms of kernel contributions (yet), Frazelle notes that the company is doing a lot in terms of innovating around the open-source OS so it can be used to complement other systems.

Frazelle, remember, has a strong container pedigree. In that area, Microsoft more than earns the “innovator” label. Even seemingly pedestrian work -- like making Docker containers work for Windows, not merely Linux — is a big deal for enterprises that don’t want open source politics infesting their IT. Or how about Hyper-V containers, which marry the high density of containers to the isolation of traditional VMs? That’s a really big deal. Microsoft’s commitment to Linux has been such that over the past year the percentage of Azure VMs running Linux has jumped from 25 percent to 33 percent, according to Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich.
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The innovation part can be removed and just slated as business interest rather then anything else to be precise which is not that weird to be honest.
Everyone remembers at the time of MS blaster suddenly MS own servers did not run MS operating systems any more ;) .
 
Hiring a couple people will not turn into "Serious Innovation", when there's already thousands upon thousands of developers for the ecosystem worldwide.

Microsoft is just embracing the hype that is Linux, because they see people are migrating away.
 
They poisoned web standards progress when they got involved. Keep them out.
 
Wake me up when they stop pushing "the cloud" for everything. :D
 
Its not fully apt, but for some reason, LBJ's famous remark comes to mind.

"I would rather he were inside my tent pissing out, than outside my tent pissing in"
 
_l_ said:
$200 per copy for what used to be a free OS?
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if that included support companies would jump all over that. I don't think people understand the linux isn't free. No publicly traded company in the world can use linux without a support agreement.
 
It would be interesting to see what kind of innovation they might drive. I would argue they should be spending more time trying to innovate their own OS and start finding ways to redo the Windows kernel and get rid of the mess that is the registry. They seemed to have a plan in the past to move to a whole new FS and kernel and then they dumped it to have more of the same...
 
I don't see them innovating as much as their continued work with Linux will increase it's footprint and user base.
 
M$ will do whatever they can to either knock out the threat of Linux, OR distribute their own version full of crapware while making sure it self implodes after a certain period of time and stops working, just like windows does, to sell you (or lease to you) the NEW, shinier version, just like today. Only way to make sure their market doesn't disappear. Easy enough; simply tell vendors that they can't sell any microsoft software unless they carry Winux as well. Make it easy to install, and sell it cheap to hardware companies, OH and add some little glitch which prevents it from running the other software that runs on linux, (a la 'DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run'), and the free versions will disappear. Bingo, no more free versions of linux. Any legal problems, just pay off some legislators like last time. After all, it's just business.
 
Microsoft can see the writing on the wall, their OS sales have been gradually diminishing for almost a decade and they already make next to nothing on residential use. They have been dipping their toes in the free home software with limitations stuff for years with varying degrees of failure and they need to make a change. One day putting out a Linux distro that was free for home with no support and having business sign support contracts would maintain their same business strategy while extending their platform. It is pretty easy to see that the future is not in the OS itself but the services and features people use, Office, SQL, Dynamics, Exchange, etc ... that is where their income has gradually been increasing from and they are doing what they need to to keep relevant. On the wishful thinking side I really hope they use some of their knowledge bases and have them do some work to OpenLDAP.
 
I'd be fine with a Linux based kernel for Windows.

Get DirectX and other MS stuff working on it natively so I can continue to play games without any loss of performance. Make sure my apps work the same, the games work the same, modding works the same.

Linux is fun, it's very stable and secure, and it works great. It just doesn't run the games I want to play. Get Microsoft to support it, and it might finally be the year of the Linux Desktop... :)
 
Ur_Mom said:
I'd be fine with a Linux based kernel for Windows.

Get DirectX and other MS stuff working on it natively so I can continue to play games without any loss of performance. Make sure my apps work the same, the games work the same, modding works the same.

Linux is fun, it's very stable and secure, and it works great. It just doesn't run the games I want to play. Get Microsoft to support it, and it might finally be the year of the Linux Desktop... :)
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Honestly with the exception of Win ME, I have never really noticed windows to be unstable, the programs developed for it on the other hand .... Closing off kernel access in Vista went a long ways towards increasing both stability and security from a programming stand point. Of course that lead to the great peripheral apocalypse of 2007 but hey, live and learn I guess....
 
Lakados said:
Honestly with the exception of Win ME, I have never really noticed windows to be unstable, the programs developed for it on the other hand .... Closing off kernel access in Vista went a long ways towards increasing both stability and security from a programming stand point. Of course that lead to the great peripheral apocalypse of 2007 but hey, live and learn I guess....
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I had my first GSOD a few weeks ago with Windows 10. I rarely have stability issues with Windows. I think it's matured very well, and it's pretty secure for being such a huge OS (both in development scale and market penetration). But, Linux is great with both of those as well.

I have always preferred Windows and still do. But, I've gone through the old DOS, GUI on DOS (Win 95/98/ME), various NT kernels, so while it'd be a big move, it wouldn't be too hard to make the change from an end user perspective.
 
Ur_Mom said:
I had my first GSOD a few weeks ago with Windows 10. I rarely have stability issues with Windows. I think it's matured very well, and it's pretty secure for being such a huge OS (both in development scale and market penetration). But, Linux is great with both of those as well.

I have always preferred Windows and still do. But, I've gone through the old DOS, GUI on DOS (Win 95/98/ME), various NT kernels, so while it'd be a big move, it wouldn't be too hard to make the change from an end user perspective.
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Yeah at the end of the day its really the UI that people are interested in, everything else is just fluff. PC, Mac, Linux a desktop is a desktop and a task bar is a task bar, everything else is just dressing.
 
Wow some real delusion in here.

MS is embracing linux because it is embracing the cloud, and they need to keep azure efficient to ever make any real money on it. Additionally, they don't seem to want to bring either DB as a service or web hosting as a service into their windows/office portion of the cloud. So I suspect *nix based containerization, or windows powered containerization of *nix based applications is going to be something they need in order to offer a competitive cloud portfolio.
 
raz-0 said:
Wow some real delusion in here.

MS is embracing linux because it is embracing the cloud, and they need to keep azure efficient to ever make any real money on it. Additionally, they don't seem to want to bring either DB as a service or web hosting as a service into their windows/office portion of the cloud. So I suspect *nix based containerization, or windows powered containerization of *nix based applications is going to be something they need in order to offer a competitive cloud portfolio.
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They have had Linux VM's for a while. Their web apps as a service seems to be Windows based only for now (at least that's what I'm seeing).
 
Ur_Mom said:
They have had Linux VM's for a while. Their web apps as a service seems to be Windows based only for now (at least that's what I'm seeing).
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That wont change unless either Mono gets more of the ASP.NET api's implemented or Microsoft makes IIS available to Linux, I think the latter will happen first.
 
raz-0 said:
or windows powered containerization of *nix based applications is going to be something they need in order to offer a competitive cloud portfolio.
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I see windows based anything fading away for Azure, because if they want to compete then it's a choice between "do we want to run or containerize with Windows, or do we want to tighten up efficiency and make money".
 
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MS contributes so that it can control what features are compatible with it's ecosystems. The endgame is probably to release an MS Linux fork which will be certified/supported with Windows and Office/Exchange.
 
Linux is always free, you're just paying for enterprise grade support. Personally I think $200.00 is pretty good for that kind of support.

I paid over that for Windows 10 pro retail on release and the support I get off MS is shit house.
 
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