Microsoft: Linux Is The Top Operating System On Azure Today
TheNewStack, Monday, July 22nd, 2024
Once, Azure was a cloud platform dedicated to Windows. These days, the company tests over 1,000 Linux distributions a month just to ensure their customer apps run smoothly on Azure.
In 2001, then-Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer complained that 'Linux is a cancer.' The future Los Angeles Clippers owner was referring to how Linux's open source license - The General Public License - necessitate all the software it is built on be transformed into open source as well.
His fears were overblown, but also prescient in a way he probably didn't realize.
Twenty years on, it is Linux - not Windows - is the most widely used operating system on Microsoft Azure. But it was customer demand, rather than Richard Stallman's stern disapproval, that brought Linus Torvalds' project to prominence in the Microsoft cloud.