back to article Red Hat Enterprise Linux lands on Microsoft Azure cloud – no, we're not pulling your leg

Microsoft has announced a partnership with Red Hat to support Red Hat Linux in the Azure cloud. "While today’s news does not mark our first collaboration with Microsoft, it is by far our deepest," says Red Hat's Paul Cormier, Products and Technologies president. There are four parts to the partnership. First, Microsoft Azure …

  1. Paul Crawford Silver badge
    Joke

    Last option?

    I thought the last option on the list was to continue pushing systemd on to an already suffering world so Linux users get the same sort of "WTF is this up to?" joy as svchost provides Windows users with?

    1. PNGuinn
      Trollface

      Re: Last option?

      With any luck systemd will break 'em both

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. GrumpenKraut

        Re: Last option?

        I am not exactly a Microsoft fanboy, but... systemd? That's way too harsh!

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Last option?

      Makes sense for large scale cloud - Hyper-V does scale rather better than KVM - after all Azure runs on it - and Windows is optional. (unlike KVM which can't run without Linux).

  2. Nolveys
    Meh

    Partnering With Microsoft

    I hope Red Hat doesn't end up with a nice big knife in their back.

    1. Gene Cash Silver badge

      Re: Partnering With Microsoft

      Considering they push systemd, I hope they get stabbed like the blonde in a horror movie.

    2. Hans 1
      Facepalm

      Re: Partnering With Microsoft

      RedHat is on my list of purveyors to avoid, along with Suse ... and I guess 95% of the open source crowd will react the same.

      RedHat just committed ritual suicide, ala Suse.

      Don't believe me ? How much marketshare did Suse lose with their partnership with Redmond, 80 or 90% ?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Partnering With Microsoft

      >I hope Red Hat doesn't end up with a nice big knife in their back.

      Why? 2 years ago I had a dozen RHEL appliances at SoftLayer - like many thousands of their customers (most I suspect given the migration options the DC put in place and promoted heavily) I dropped RedHat like a hot rock when they massively increased license costs overnight. Thought they'd be gone by now, can't imagine they'll still be here in another 2 years.

  3. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Why?

    whywhywhy for fuck's sake WHY?

    1. Adair Silver badge

      Re: Why?

      Try 'money'.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Typical MSFT!

    Assimilate, extend, exterminate!

    1. Alan Bourke

      Re: Typical MSFT!

      Give people supported, functional software to run businesses with!

      1. hplasm
        Devil

        Re: Typical MSFT!

        "Give people supported, functional software to run businesses with!"

        Leopards, spots, etc.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Maybe time to move distro

    I like Red Hat and Centos too, but it might be wise to plan for moving our services including those we provide for clients to another distro.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Maybe time to move distro

      So MS is simply providing Red Hat Linux .Net support on Azure and you complain that you want to move your customers away from Red Hat?

      If I was your customer and had need for such support I would move...to another IT provider who wasn't so frikking unnecessarily paranoid, alarmist or such a Linux Snob.

      MS did not buy Red Hat, they did not absorb them, they simply announced that they would work together. Maybe that bodes well for the future of Azure. Newsflash, some customers have to cross the boundaries between various operating systems.

      Your job as an IT Professional is to help the customer without being judgmental.

      1. Dazed and Confused

        Re: MS did not buy Red Hat, they did not absorb them...

        Maybe not, but the thing about viruses is that they're generally contagious

      2. Hans 1
        Boffin

        Re: Maybe time to move distro

        >Your job as an IT Professional is to help the customer without being judgmental.

        Your job as an IT Professional is to help the customer, sure, and that means to avoid proprietary BS.

        Self-headshot!

        1. sabroni Silver badge

          Re: avoid proprietary BS.

          Open source bullshit is far superior!

          1. hplasm
            Happy

            Re: avoid proprietary BS.

            GNUshit!

        2. Tomato42
          Facepalm

          Re: Maybe time to move distro

          >Your job as an IT Professional is to help the customer,

          > sure, and that means to avoid proprietary BS.

          and which part of the announcement exactly says that you won't be able to run Red Hat Enterprise Linux on anything but Azure?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Maybe time to move distro

      Wise? It's essential. The MSFT evil will spread like a virus!

  6. pyite

    Boring and lame

    If they want to have a real .NET core -- make things like WPF work with Mono. I would be willing to pay for that.

    1. JDX Gold badge

      Re: Boring and lame

      How useful is WPF on a web-server? Isn't it desktop/client-only?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Boring and lame

      God no. Even MS are giving up on WPF.

  7. tekHedd

    There is no good news regarding the CLR. Ever.

    I have been using Mono and .NET for cross platform development for the past 10 years. Any news worthy of reporting about either platform means my deployments will be broken and I'll be back to downloading tarballs again.

    This fall, we actually reached a point for once where you can install monodevelop on RHEL7/CentOS7 from the official yum repository, and it just works. The latest build of mono, even. Everything just works. So of course Microsoft has to do something--can't buy Xamarin,.. I know, why don't we push the "official" core over to the platform, deprecate Xamarin's repo, and break everything?

    You know what happens when you assume? That's right, you look back on 10 years of experience and extrapolate. This isn't cynicism, this is experience.

    Bet you a beer this will push us back to building our own RPMs again. There is never good news for CLR users on Linux.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Re: There is no good news regarding the CLR. Ever.

      was this 'it just works' or 'it works... just'?

      Judging by the tone of your post it might be that you are thinking that it will go from the first to the last.

      Time to sell my RH shares? Possibly.

      1. Hans 1
        Boffin

        Re: There is no good news regarding the CLR. Ever.

        RH shares will plummet, they might rise on the annoucement, so wait a little before you sell, but RedHat will lose at the very least 80% of their customers by this time next year.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: There is no good news regarding the CLR. Ever.

          You forgot to add that 2016 will be the year of Linux on the desktop. Just as well your predictions aren't used for anything that actually matters ;-)

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A no brainer

    Everyone is moving away from Windows, even MS.

    .NET is enterprise ready. Windows isn't.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A no brainer

      "Everyone is moving away from Windows, even MS."

      Windows desktop - market share of PCs is currently stable.

      Windows Server still has an increasing commercial market share.

      So nope.

  9. The Average Joe

    .NET?

    well, I hope that containers make it so that devs start to focus on using Linux for scale out and cloud workloads. MS products are the things that you show your children and when they grow up they get to use big boy tools and drink beer, i.e. use Linux/UNIX/FreeBSD.

    We are tired of the churn from Microsoft and the complexity.

    Containers are one of the 1,000 cuts....

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: .NET?

      "I hope that containers make it"

      Windows users have had similar technology for years thanks to App-V. Glad to see the Open Source world is finally catching up - and Docker are working with Microsoft on a unified container structure.

      You still wont get features like install on demand and streaming with the Open Source containers though - you need App-V for that!

    2. midcapwarrior

      Re: .NET?

      There are those who see Linux as a tool to get a job done as in fit for purpose.

      Then there are those who see it as a religion.

      Red Hat is a public company. It has to look for ways to increase sales, that's what a business does.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Please stop the childishness

    OK, so 2 companies have decided to work together to provide better supported services to their customers and so (hopefully) make more money.

    "Oh Nooooooooeees! RH are in bed with the evil empire! I must waste my time and money migrating to something else because stuff."

    Meanwhile, the adults can get on with business as usual.

  11. BitDr

    How is this beneficial to anyone using free software?

    This deal will, I think, not help RHEL as much as MS, and may bruise Linux fairly badly when it comes to cloudy offerings. Microsoft has worked superficially to make themselves appear friendly with Free Software, and this move may help them in this regard. The important thing to keep in mind is that at the deeper corporate level MS is still the same animal. It seeks control.

    Is this good business? For Microsoft I think it is, but for Red Hat, if you're expecting great things then get ready for disappointment. Red Hat has moved their position from that of a competitor providing an alternative, to a partner providing assistance. I think they will be paraded around that light, and I think their customers may be obliquely portrayed as happy-campers now that they can use Azure. Let's see if that happens (I hope I am wrong).

    As a strategic move by Microsoft I see how it benefits them, but I can't see any long-term sustainable gain for Red Hat. I can see one of two things happening with this deal;

    1. Red Hat realizes what is going on and allows the deal to slowly fizzle out, thereby saving face.

    2. They become Microsoft's lap dog

    If I was Microsoft I would expect option #1, and not knowing how much time before the light comes on at Red Hat means I need to make as much marketing hay from this deal as possible.

    Rule #1. Don't do business with Microsoft

    Rule #2. See Rule #1.

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