Wintel part deux? Microsoft Azure first for Intel Clear Linux

An alliance that dominated the PC industry is entering the world of fluffy white stuff and open source: Microsoft Azure is the first public cloud to include an Intel initiated and container-oriented Clear Linux OS. The Wintel union loosened with the rise of Linux - runing on x86 - and the fall of the PC as peoples' primary …

[Hans 1]

All nice and good but .... what is the point of all this ?

I explain:

To run a Linux binary on a computer you now have three options:

Run it on a Linux kernel

Run it on a emulation layer above a monolithic bloated schizophrenic spying monstrosity which is MS Windows 10

Run it on a FreeBSD kernel

I dunno why, but, I prefer Linux kernel, lets keep stuff native. Mind, it would be handing the Windows lusers a pint of ice water which, considering they are in hell, would be the most humane thing to do ... apart from installing Linux on their boxes...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's empty like a tin can.

This will sound biased (and I am), but the point is to run the things you want on Windows 10, which has nothing you want. Microsoft has gutted out so much over time that you can't even change the colors to something you want. So now, Microsoft is starting to depend on Linux to bring things to Wintin you can use, while hoping you don't notice that they now have almost nothing. You should be happy.

I run Wintin for 10bit color in Photoshop, if Photoshop ports to GNU/Linux, or a VM starts supporting 10bit color, I'll have finally lost any reason to run Windows at all. Their shit had a way to go after WinXP, but after XP, they just kept making the wrong decisions. I for one applaud their failure.

[Mikel]

Shakes head

Intel still doesn't get it.

[Mage]

Intel Strategy

An x86 only Linux?

ARM must be doing better than I thought!

[Anonymous Coward]

An adage

"First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you." - Nicholas Klein

Linux was always a good idea, it just took a while for the old guard to get off their high horses.

[Lars]

If you cannot beat them

Join them, the result, we shall see. MS was the first to understand that Linux was a contender, and for real, and reacted accordingly. I would claim that both Gates and Ballmer took it "personally". I doubt Nadella has any such personal problems regarding Linux. Linux has become just too big to kill by FUD or by ignoring it. I have no problems with that, business is business. Personally I try to stay away from anything Microsoft because I can, and I don't trust the quality of their software, I have been able to stay clear of Apple too (since Apple II+) not so much for the software or the hardware but because I don't like the company nor am I prepared to pay that "icon" -extra, a used Apple laptop with Linux one day, perhaps. In a way it's funny how Gates should, perhaps, have shut up regarding Linux and used the IBM strategy with worked like this - "Pinux.. Finux..what.. never heard of that", or "Linux.. yes we love them and we have tried to help them ..... but,, no.. just between us... we are afraid they will not survive*". But IBM was the first big company who invested in Linux and certainly the only company who had an international Linux campaign in the television ever. Could be you could find it on YouTube. Smart move by IBM to embrace Linux. Steve Jobs wanted to employ Linus Torvalds but demanded he would lay off Linux, and he did not. Much could have gone very differently, and had I not been so damned modest you would write about Larx to day. (PS. I have never told my wife about this).

Some will remember the "back stabbing" in Yes Prime Minister.

[Adrian 4]

Optimised for x86 ?

I should hope so. The ARM, MIPS, PPC, IBM360 etc. builds aren't likely to run too well on intel hardware, are they ? There again, I think you'll find most of the other distros already offer an x86 build.

[druck]

Re: Optimised for x86 ?

A decreasing number of distros are supporting x86, AMD64 is what they are targeting now.

[Mage]

Re: Optimised for x86 ?

I'm sure Intel really means AMD64 rather than 386/486, or the sinking Itaniaum x64, see Wiki about XP version, which died in 2005, only two years after release. There was a 64bit NT4.0, but that was for DEC Alpha. The Itanium version was the 2nd 64bit Windows. The similarly named XP for the AMD64 was the 3rd 64bit Windows, released in 2005.

I stopped my MSDN "get all the disks" sub in early 2004. I don't think I missed out on anything useful from MS.