First thing to understand about Mariner is that is not a general purpose Linux distribution like Ubuntu or Fedora, it was created by Microsoft’s Linux System Group which is the same team at Microsoft which created the Linux kernel used for Windows Subsystem for Linux version 2, or WSL2. The goal of Mariner is to be used as an internal Linux distribution for Microsoft’s engineering teams to build our cloud infrastructure and edge products and services.
Of course Mariner is open source and it has its own repo under Microsoft’s GirHub organization. No ISOs or images of Mariner are provided, however the repo has instructions to build them on Ubuntu 18.04. There are a series of prerrequistes listed in this GitHub page that roughly include Docker, RPM tools, ISO build tools and Golang, amongst others.
Not surprising, of course, but still quite interesting to poke around in.
It’s rather obvious Microsoft is heavily involved in Linux these days. Due to Microsoft Azure and other areas such as the royalties they get from Android. It’s a cash cow for them and no wonder they love Linux. I wouldn’t be surprised if at one point in not so distant future Linux becomes more important for Microsoft than Windows.
Oh, the irony :).
Nah… Windows is an exclusive franchise. Also, stop hoping for the death of win32/win64, there is already a shortage of programmers in the world and all that win32/win64 software won’t re-write itself. Ain’t gonna happen. And yes, you need Windows to have win32/win64 reliabliy.
@kurkosdr
“there is already a shortage of good programmers in the world”
FTFY. 😉
Every man and his dog wants to identify as a programmer these days lol
That’s over. People realized it’s not simple, and they’ve moved on to the get rich quick scheme de jour, cryptomining and day trading.
Also, “everyone” or “every person”.
Do you have a list of approved words that we should use? I’d hate for you to call a policeman and have me arrested…
“World and dog” is the usual phrasing. Find a sexist find a racist etcetera.
Did you just assume my gender?
If Microsoft would release Microsoft Linux 11 instead of Microsoft Windows 11. I am rather sure the world would manage just fine. Lets say a decade of support, like you usually get with Windows. That represents little issue. Application released on day 1 would still work after 10 years just fine. This is hence a moot point. Claim that you need Windows to get something like this. In my experience there is no shortage of good programmers in the world compared to previous years. More people are likely involved in programing and all of them not having such in-depth knowledge. But that is not necessarily a bad thing. As for example such people don’t code Linux kernel. But if they manage to code a web page that does the job. That is in my opinion a good thing.
Ha! No one is going to rewrite any of that.
Just because something physical goes out of maintenance or gets EOLed that doesn’t mean it magically disappears. People will keep systems running well after they should have switched or retired them. Deployed technology has a long tail.
MS puts Windows in Maintenance mode, and nothing changes about the world. It would be better for MS if they did put Windows in maintenance mode; they could charge increasingly higher premiums for Windows patches.
It would be beneficial to the Win32/64 programmers since it would become the new COBOL. The newbies would exit the market for greener fields, and prices would rise.
It would be a net gain to deprecate Windows.
There was this parody http://mslinux.org/
A few more years, and it’s reality.