14 DAY TRIAL // “Microsoft loves Linux” is something that we hear every once in a while, especially from Microsofties who try to get the software giant more involved into this world that they once hated.
But it’s this love the one that skyrocketed the adoption of Linux on Microsoft Azure, so the open-source platform grew so much that it eventually managed to overtake Windows Server.
The confirmation comes from nobody else than Microsoft Linux kernel developer Sasha Levin, who revealed (via ZDNet) that the Linux usage on Microsoft cloud services surpassed Windows, essentially becoming the number one choice for customers.
While this might sound surprising at first, it’s certainly not, especially as Microsoft itself has pushed very hard to get closer to Linux in the last few years.
Rapid growth for Linux on Azure
And as the cited source notes, it all started several years ago when Mark Russinovich, Azure CTO, revealed that no less than one in four instances of Azure were running Linux. This means that at that point, 25 percent of the systems were based on Linux.
That figure rapidly increased, and in late 2018, Scott Guthrie, Microsoft's executive VP of the cloud and enterprise group, confirmed that Linux adoption reached 40 percent on Azure.
And now, here we are in 2019 with Azure finally surpassing Windows thanks to this rapid adoption, and there’s a good chance it would grow even more in the coming months and year.
Microsoft itself has become a big Linux fan, and the company has implemented support for the open-source platform into its key products, including Windows. Right now, Windows 10 users can run Linux on top of the OS with the Windows Subsystem for Linux, or WSL, which supports major Linux distros like Ubuntu.
Azure also supports a wide array of Linux distributions, like CentOS, Oracle Linux, and Debian.