
Infoworld: "After years of battling Linux as a competitive threat,
Microsoft is now offering Linux-based operating systems on its Windows Azure cloud service. The Linux services will go live on Azure at 4 a.m. EDT on Thursday. At that time, the Azure portal will offer a number of Linux distributions, including Suse Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2, OpenSuse 12.01, CentOS 6.2 and Canonical Ubuntu 12.04. Azure users will be able to choose and deploy a Linux distribution from the Microsoft Windows Azure Image Gallery and be charged on an hourly pay-as-you-go basis." SmartGlass on iOS and Android, Office supposedly coming to iOS and Android, Linux on Azure... It's almost as if Microsoft finally got the memo that 'Windows everywhere' can't be a reality any longer.
Member since:
2005-08-18
So you're saying that they shouldn't charge anything for the service if you run Linux? That's like saying you shouldn't have to pay for your hardware if you run Linux.
The target audience for this service isn't people who wan't to test out a distro and play around with it.
It's about running servers on the (supposedly) high-availability Azure service. It's for companies that have Windows servers on Azure but their Linux servers somewhere else (like EC2) or those who have stayed away from Azure due to the lack of non-Windows support.