The partnership we are announcing today with Red Hat extends our commitment to offer unmatched choice and flexibility in an enterprise-grade cloud experience across the hybrid cloud. With more than 80 percent of the Fortune 500 using Microsoft’s cloud, for us to team with the leader in enterprise Linux allows even more businesses to move to the cloud on their terms. By working with Red Hat, we will address common enterprise, ISV and developer needs for building, deploying and managing applications on Red Hat software across private and public clouds, including the following.
Only fourteen short years ago:
Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.
What a time to be alive.
VMware has SUSE as it’s favoured linux distro, so MS now has RH.
Makes sense as RH’s the most sophisticated big business-y linux vendor around (ie, closest to MS as a company)
MS needs to show Linux supported on their cloud offering. Windows is a decent server OS but the mass market is going to need a solid supported Linux option too.
Thanks. I needed a laugh. Windows and decent in the same sentence. lol
Edited 2015-11-05 03:32 UTC
Indeed
Seriously though – Windows is used a lot, even in the server space. If it wasn’t then MS wouldn’t be the company they are. This is just about locking in RH as the approved linux option in their cloud offering.
I mean, the kind of people who run a windows infrastructure are often going to be the kind of people who’d want a RH license and support agreement for their linux vms.
Using RH support license can easily be a way to contribute back to the Linux ecosystem, because Red Hat does a lot of actual Linux development.
Sure. But look at it from the point of view of business, where it’s just handy to (a) have someone to call and (b) have someone to sue. For that crowd the “giving back” benefit/argument is meaningless.
And that’s why I really have come around on redhat. It was kind of an insult back in the day to call Redhat the Microsoft of linux distros. But they’re able to take money from people who care about the support and not any of the freedom stuff and use it to support everyone else who does but doesn’t care about support.
Its also why I’m anti cannonical. They take support money, and well they don’t end up doing that much for the wider linux ecosystem.
Edited 2015-11-05 16:42 UTC
The license allowed them to do what they do, if you mean contributing less to the Linux kernel is lacking then it is your problem actually, not Canonical’s.
I think your vision and expectation for a Linux company is different than Canonical. The way I see is Canonical is *not* a Linux company. It happened that they use Linux in almost all of their products to give for free and sell services for those who need it. I see nothing wrong with it.
That’s such a bizarre response. Do you work for Canonical? I understand that many, many people spent a lot of time creating a nice OS that I can use. I appreciate those that financially support them, and look down upon those that don’t. There are people who don’t violate the law, and those that go above what is required of them.
I see nothing wrong about Canonical for their use of Linux. I think the trouble is because of license policies, or code contribution policy, their choice of technology (MIR over Wayland). I really can’t see why Canonical was hated, may out of envy? I am not sure.
if you consider that bringing larger user and software vendors awareness (and actual software&users) to the linux ecosystem is nothing, then there’s not much that can be done.
Pretty much every single piece of user-level software that has come to Linux on the last 5 years, has come to, and because of, Ubuntu. I think that’s pretty much…
I’m not sure what software packages you are thinking of, or what a “user level application” is?
Could you be more specific? Are you talking about, like Steam, maybe? I don’t think having steam on linux really helps me as much as having a better OS itself. In any case the linux port was just a stepping stone to the steam machine, which is not ubuntu based. The apps I need, are basically already there and their continued development is not being supported by canonical.
I think the trend now is most commercial software vendors will release first for Ubuntu then the rest will follow if there is a demand. As a matter of fact, I will never install other Linux distro but Ubuntu desktop all alone for business computers. I have CentOS installed, but then I change my new install of servers to Ubuntu because applications I need are now supported under Ubuntu.
Huh? What software are you referring to? All the software projects that Ubuntu starts eventually die and are replaced by something better. Unity, Mir, Upstart are all projects that are dying or dead and have better alternatives.
This is basically about VMs in Azure or Windows virtualization. They already had a partnership with Canonical (Ubuntu). Supposedly, Ubuntu is most used on AWS and obviously Azure. Not RedHat.
As you know emulating hardware isn’t all that efficient, so better integration between the virtualization platfor and the OS running inside the VM does help a lot.
Edited 2015-11-05 07:22 UTC
Ubuntu has a different target audience than RHEL. So having both on the “menu” is handy.
Unfortunately MS is stuck with hardware level virtualization as long as they want to host *nix style workloads on a windows based platform. Especially since they’ve given up on the Interix/SFU approach to things.
Ironically the Interix/SFU approach could have been handy for the application cloud hosting world – running *nix designed workloads on Interix + Windows Containers natively on a windows host would likely be faster than hardware virtualization + linux distro.
SFU has nothing to do with virtualization, it does not even remotely look like it (no security framework, no resource management, no isolation in any way).
I’m not fully versed on the guts of the windows containers infrastructure, but I meant that if it extends to the point where the sfu/interix subsystem could be containerized (were it bought up to date) then the same windows kernel could be used multitenanted to run both windows based .NET type applications and linux style applications instead of needing to seperately virtualize them.
SFU/Interix obviously is about as (un)related to virtualization as win32 is but if you could containerize both on the same kernel you’d have a powerful tool.
MSFT already had a partnership on Azure with Ubuntu. I don’t see how the second partner added becomes the preferred one but that’s just my perspective on it.
Unfortunately there are too many here unfortunately that have binged on the Microsoft haterade for far too long which has undermined their ability to think rationally. Microsoft’s server software is pretty damn impressive particularly when you have a look at their cloud offerings. Long term Microsoft’s future will be in the enterprise and backend infrastructure and it is great that their new CEO has realised that and are allocating resources in such a direction.
Thanks, I needed a good laugh.
That doesn’t mean they’re using it for anything serious. Most of those cases are probably “some pointy-haired boss pulled rank and got their dinky little pet project hosted on Microsoft’s cloud”.
Hell, I’m surprised so many companies (eg. NetFlix) depend on the uptime of Amazon’s cloud as it is.
Edited 2015-11-05 02:09 UTC
—————-
I guess something’s happening in your blind spot, because Microsoft stock price is trending up on the back of its cloud efforts, pet projects they may be or not…
Edited 2015-11-05 07:01 UTC
Do you really think stock prices in anyway when talking about these things ?
The number of test setups that get summarily promoted to production as-is is terrifying but real.
Point.
Yes, I think “the cloud” is becoming more important than the desktop. It used to be that all data was stored and manipulated on your computer, and you needed the OS that ran the programs to access the data. Controlling the desktop was key. Now devices are increasingly always connected to the Internet, data is being shifted to “the cloud”, and the desktop is becoming a thin client. Controlling “the cloud” is becoming the key.
It’s not that Microsoft is admitting defeat, it’s that the game is changing.
That might be true
For example a private Office-365 cloud for an organization.
Yes I know that it is selling your soul to the devil… (and to the NSA)
but it seems that MS is offering a lot of very sweet deals to get people onto it. My company has just been sucked/suckered into it.
we arnt one of the 500 but we are thinking of moving to Office 365 which would make us part of the MS Cloud. Even though most of our “actual servers” are in AWS
I didn’t really count using office 360 as being a MS cloud user. That’s like saying I’m an AWS cloud user because I listen to Spotify.
Not quite the same thing.
Spotify and NetFlix are non-Amazon services that happen to have outsourced their hosting to AWS. Office 360 is a “cloud service” that’s run by Microsoft. Hence, part of “the Microsoft cloud” in the mind of Fortune 500 respondents, should they be surveyed.
Well, they’re wrong. Using Office 360 does not make me a MS cloud user any more than going to a website written in ASP makes me a Windows user.
if that will mean using onedrive for business software, i pity your pour soul… As a ‘office/professional user’, Worst. Experience. EVER!
Office is great on a professional environment, but onedrive for business should be taken behind the shed and shot.
we are currently using Lotus Notes… count you’re blessings
Come now. Fourteen years is a long fucking time in the tech industry, especially with anything having anything to do with the Internet.
Sure, but not mentality. MS has to change their CEO to get a new start. And it is indeed working. Beside the telemetry mess.
We’ll see…Nadella still has an ear to Bill Gates, who is still on the board and an advisor to Nadella.
It’s not that Nadella isn’t bringing massive changes to Microsoft – he is – but it is still yet to be seen how big a change towards Open Source, Linux, etc it will be and remain.
Its Ok for Microsoft to support Linux all the way, Bill Gates can’t do anything in that direction, it is too risky to go against what the customer is needed. Microsoft customers want some Linux instances.
The only thing we can never see in the future is an open source version of the Windows desktop and server, even if one Microsoft executive stated that we may see an open source Windows version.
However, it would be fun if Microsoft will contribute to ReactOS.
Edited 2015-11-06 04:24 UTC
That would likely be an extra cold day in hell before that happens. Microsoft tolerates ReactOS, but it has a hard time going against it since ReactOS is developed by ReactOS Foundation, a Russian non-profit – so beyond the legal abilities of a US Corporation to shut down.
Given what happens to companies that distribute Linux or any other non-Microsoft OS, I guess we can look forward to Red Hat being thrown under the bus and eventually dying as a result of allying themselves with Microsoft.
MS was by far the largest AT&T Unix (Xenix) vendor at one stage.
Wrong analysis. It is not like IE vs. Nescape era, regardless of what Microsoft is trying to do, Redhat is using Linux, not some kind of proprietary software like Netscape in its time.
Not quite. Even today, it is known that you do not want to be a partner with Microsoft as they will eventually bite you.
Red Hat is essentially a service company. It doesn’t have anything proprietary that MS can copy or steal.
Ms used SCO to sue IBM and other “linux friendly” companies in the past. Linux enterprise adoption was heavily delayed because of all that SCO bullshit.
I think Ms can do the same with Red Hat, or even worst, they can buy Red Hat and end with the only successful 100% open source company in the world.
Windows is one of the most important assets for Ms, even today in the world of “the cloud” and open source, they keep doing nasty things to protect it and maintain the vendor lock-in at any cost.
Yes, Nadella is a cool guy, but he’s just an employee of the board. They will do anything to protect their product… and the only real competitor to Windows in the x86 enterprise world is Linux.
Red Hat is being naive if they think Ms don’t see Linux as a treat anymore.
No. It will be a waste of money if MS will buy Redhat that way its like MS is throwing money if their motive is to end Redhat Linux development? It doesn’t make any sense. Redhat hired employees to develop/maintain the Linux kernel and the required software packages. Oracle, CentOS and other developers are also copying Redhat’s source code. So if MS’ intention is to disrupt Redhat and take those Redhat employees as Microsoft employees and slowly extinguishing Redhat’s Linux product is moronic.
I said above, this is not like IE vs. Netscape. The thing is, you cannot buy, control and own free software, you can’t control the free software by suspending its development. Someone from the community will just pick up the source code left by now Microsoft’s Redhat and continue to support Redhat customers.
What is possible is for Microsoft to buy a company that runs Linux such as Redhat or Canonical. Then MS will have a linux customer base overnight by just buying a stake at Redhat/Canonical, then MS must continue to develop Linux in the same as it was with Redhat.
A complete waste of time and money. It would be a matter of weeks before a new Red Hat clone appeared. MS would be totally powerless to do anything about it.
Microsoft wants to make Azure big(ger). They also want .net to compete with Java.
Linux is not the enemy, as Linux already lost the desktop space (it’s now MS vs. Apple) and won the server space (AWS and the rest of the cloud).
Developments like this one, and as well them joining the open codecs effort are big and positive changes.
But they still have a long way to go to redeem themselves from their dark empire past. For example they still didn’t to join Vulkan working group.
Edited 2015-11-05 06:47 UTC
I still think it might end up with some kind of embrace and extend.
Maybe I’m just seeing ghosts.
Microsoft and .net on Linux ? How long do they intend to support that properly, how complete is that runtime and the additional libraries ?
Edited 2015-11-05 07:40 UTC
They cant embrace and extend anything to do with Linux, its a case of if you cant beat them join them.
They have been trying to embrace technologies like Docker which is becoming big on Linux, but how can they embrace and extend something like docker when windows itself didn’t even have technologies like lxc (does windows now even have jails / containers?), its at least 10 years behind and will forever play catch up, because windows is crap and has always been crap.
I used to work for a certain big cloud company many years ago they were switching from xen (open source) on Debian to Citrix Xen. I was told by one of the main engineers working on the switch that Microsoft Azure also used citrix xen, which frankly is not surprising since Citrix and Microsoft have been in bed together for a very long time.
If true it means Azure has a major Linux server presence, which is maybe why they have ported .net to Linux, it might be necessary for what they are doing in the background and if true it proves they cant even eat their own dog food.
I’m pretty sure Azure is Hyper-V. For one thing, Microsoft has always been good about eating their own dog food, and second, one can directly migrate Hyper-V VMs on your Windows workstation to Azure.
Beyond that, FreeBSD used to not work (reliably) on Azure or in Hyper-V, but the same patches that allowed it to run well on Hyper-V also allowed it to run on Azure.
Wikipedia also says that Azure is a modified Hyper-V running on Server 2008, so, there’s that.
Wrong, Windows is actually good as far as what I’ve read from Kernel experts’ articles. Microsoft can build something like LXC/jail on Windows, like http://www.winquota.com/wj/
Integrating existing apps to become Windows jail compatible might be the biggest hurdle for Microsoft in my opinion.
Haha gimme a break… Windows Server could be good in the articles but It’s PURE SHIT in the real world 15 years behind major Unix flavors in all the important technical aspects.
Just trying to imagine something similar to ZFS or btrfs in the Windows world is pure fantasy. I work with Windows admins and what We do with Solaris’ Live Updates or even with Red Hat transactional updates it’s like black magic to them. They couldn’t believe something like that were even possible!!
Windows could be good for my mom’s laptop (well I’m not sure about that neither) but running that pile of shit in a critical Enterprise server is crazy. I admire Windows admins, cause you must have “cojones” to do that job. Just crazy.
PS: I love Ms Office, Xbox and a ton of Ms products, they are a great end user company… but their Enterprise OS is a joke (and hyper-v a bad joke).
Edited 2015-11-07 05:02 UTC