What is Microsoft doing with Linux? Everything you need to know about its plans for open source
With the growing popularity of Open Source, Microsoft is following the customers and the ecosystem - but pragmatic investment in Linux doesn't diminish the company's commitment to Windows.
'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 (a rather more select community). Microsoft is submitting patches to the Linux kernel "to create a complete virtualisation stack with Linux and Microsoft hypervisor". And when Microsoft wanted to add container support to Windows, it picked an open-source specification designed originally for Linux rather than the internal Windows-centric implementation it had already written.
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. That's not just the obvious ones like the Azure Kubernetes Service: Microsoft Tunnel -- the VPN replacement for iOS and Android apps connecting to corporate resources on-premises through Azure AD -- installs as a Docker container on a Linux server.