With an article that covers "From Cancer to Cloud" and beyond, Techrepublic asks: What is Microsoft Doing With Linux? Everything You Need to Know About its Plans for Open Source
'Microsoft and Linux' should be a phrase we're used to hearing by now. Microsoft is a member of not only the Linux Foundation but also the Linux kernel security mailing list... Microsoft is submitting patches to the Linux kernel... And when Microsoft wanted to add container support to Windows, it picked an open-source specification designed originally for [Linux].
Now Azure customers get the same hybrid benefits for Linux support contracts as they do for Windows Server licences; Windows runs Linux binaries; some key Microsoft applications are available on Linux; and new services might be built with Linux.
[...] At the recent Azure Open Day, Kubernetes co-founder and Microsoft corporate vice-president Brendan Burns talked about Microsoft having a deep understanding of Linux and contributing to existing open-source projects based on Linux as well as founding new ones like Dapr (Distributed Application Runtime).
[...] In short, Microsoft 'hearts' Linux.
But forget the idea of throwing away the Windows kernel and replacing it with a Linux kernel, because Microsoft's approach to Linux is far more pragmatic and comprehensive. Although the company is now thoroughly cross-platform, not every application will move to or take advantage of Linux. Instead, Microsoft adopts or supports Linux when the customers are there, or when it wants to take advantage of the ecosystem with open-source projects.
With GNU/Linux increasingly a part of both Windows 10 and Microsoft's cloud offerings, do you prefer to get your Linux from Microsoft, or from a more traditional source?
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Monday December 28 2020, @01:24PM (3 children)
Kafkaesque surrealism of the situation resembles absurd theater style of the past century, actually positioning Linux users spectators at place of tragedy victims.
Fork the kernel project now before it's too late.
Split it by platforms and ISAs, the divergence in hardware is dragging kernel mechanics down already, for years.
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 2) by https on Monday December 28 2020, @02:47PM
If you're so fucking concerned about hardware divergence, just use NetBSD.
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday December 28 2020, @03:15PM (1 child)
Well, Linux is a monolithic kernel, with all support for hardware contained within it. Has been since its beginning. I don't know how much of the kernel source code is devoted to the thousands of devices that Linux supports, but it's well over 50%.
Forking won't change that. Got to move to a different system, perhaps a microkernel architecture such as Minix 3. Microkernels haven't gotten the love, and as far as I'm aware, none of them are anywhere near Linux's level of development. One of the most developed may be a commercial, proprietary one, QNX.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Monday December 28 2020, @06:54PM
Microkernel Linux [mklinux.org] (Last updated: Saturday, 12-Jan-2008 12:21:05 PST)
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].