Yeah, yeah - we have all heard that "Year of Linux" stuff too many times to count. But it seems lately we are getting more and more media coverage of Linux. I can think of some reasons why:
First, there seem to be more and better tech videos out there. On YouTube there are some truly excellent advocates, and the Luke and Linus Linux Challenge has got a lot of reaction.
Next, a lot of folks are getting left behind in the Windows upgrade process. Not just machines that are too old for Windows 11 are affected; there are lots of perfectly good i-Core Nehalem and Sandy Bridge machines that cannot get Windows 10 security updates. The only option for a current O/S is Linux in those cases.
Finally, with Steam spearheading the process, there are a lot of games that now run well on Linux. That is probably the major reason for the heightened interest.
Maybe I'm just hallucinating, but it does seem to me that the topic of Linux is heating up a bit these days. I'm glad we'll still have a place to discuss it and assist others in the years to come.
> I'm glad we'll still have a place to discuss it and assist others in the years to come.
Yes.
Well Windows has actually helped that by adopting open source and bundling WSL with Windows.
Quote from: securitybreach on December 03, 2021, 11:23:13 PM
Well Windows has actually helped that by adopting open source and bundling WSL with Windows.
Which, to be honest, has made me somewhat suspicious of MS' motives.
Nah, they contribute for their own reasons. A few years ago, they were the largest contributor to the Linux kernel but once again it was for their own benefits. They are actually one of the Platinum members of the Linux Foundation https://www.linuxfoundation.org/our-members-are-our-superpower-2/
Quote from: securitybreach on December 04, 2021, 07:03:11 PM
Nah, they contribute for their own reasons. A few years ago, they were the largest contributor to the Linux kernel but once again it was for their own benefits. They are actually one of the Platinum members of the Linux Foundation https://www.linuxfoundation.org/our-members-are-our-superpower-2/
I'm not clear on what the benefits are for MS. To retain/attract developers from the linux arena? To give developers and other high level admins access to linux tools for servers and such so they can use Windows for that purpose, rather than migrating to linux? What am I missing?
Who wants to run a rock solid OS (linux) on a bloated, buggy, unstable (windows) base? To my logic, I'd rather the buggy/quirky OS run on a supremely stable and reliable OS. Seems to me that the WSL concept is upside down and backwards. WSL should be "Windows serving Linux"! 8) But that's JMO....what the heck do I know?
Well, just my cynical jaded outlook on things these days, and not necessarily my bias against MS, leads me to believe that somewhere, somehow MS sees the potential to make $$$ with Linux.
Quote from: Hedon James on December 05, 2021, 03:02:19 PM
Quote from: securitybreach on December 04, 2021, 07:03:11 PM
Nah, they contribute for their own reasons. A few years ago, they were the largest contributor to the Linux kernel but once again it was for their own benefits. They are actually one of the Platinum members of the Linux Foundation https://www.linuxfoundation.org/our-members-are-our-superpower-2/
I'm not clear on what the benefits are for MS. To retain/attract developers from the linux arena? To give developers and other high level admins access to linux tools for servers and such so they can use Windows for that purpose, rather than migrating to linux? What am I missing?
Who wants to run a rock solid OS (linux) on a bloated, buggy, unstable (windows) base? To my logic, I'd rather the buggy/quirky OS run on a supremely stable and reliable OS. Seems to me that the WSL concept is upside down and backwards. WSL should be "Windows serving Linux"! 8) But that's JMO....what the heck do I know?
Compatibility. This will help answer https://www.techrepublic.com/article/what-is-microsoft-doing-with-linux-everything-you-need-to-know-about-its-plans-for-open-source/
QuoteThe Linux Systems Group at Microsoft also created an internal Linux distribution, CBL-Mariner, designed for IaaS; (it stands for Common Base Linux). It's used for running the Azure Kubernetes Service on Azure Stack HCI -- but again, it's not a general Linux distribution like Ubuntu.
The same group creates the Linux kernel used for WSL2, the Windows Subsystem for Linux that puts a Linux kernel in Windows so you can run Linux binaries. That's to make developers' lives easier, because so many tools and frameworks assume developers are using Linux -- and even though Visual Studio Code is available on Linux, Microsoft has spent the past few years working on wooing developers onto Windows.
"We're really trying to meet developers where they're at in terms of what they can do," Andrew Clinick from the Windows developer platform team told TechRepublic. WSL started out as a way of accessing Linux command-line tools, but developers wanted more than that. "So now you can run GUI apps, and you can run, essentially, what you would expect from Linux, so you can run all your workflows," said Clinick. "We're trying to provide you a complete solution so that it's not, 'oh, I guess I can run some Linux on Windows'. We want to make Windows the best place for you to be able to build any application. WSL is part of that, as Linux integration with Azure. No matter where your code is running, you can create it on Windows and you can utilise it on Windows -- and obviously in the cloud."
At the launch of .NET 5, the Visual Studio team explained the value of WSL 2 for developers in very pragmatic terms. "For a Windows .NET user targeting Linux, WSL 2 lives in a sweet spot between production realism and productivity". Debugging in a remote Linux environment or container means the code is running where it will run in production, but debugging locally in WSL is faster and more convenient.