Microsoft transforms to Linux

Shocking Changes in the World of Technology

In the past, referring to Microsoft as a company that is familiar with Linux feels like hearing the news that cats are patrolling salted fish. Very unreasonable. Steve Ballmer, the former big boss of Microsoft, even called Linux a “cancer.” The sentence is still remembered by the open source fighters.

But history is joking. Now, Microsoft is actually launching Azure Linux, which has now reached version 4.0. Not just a patch or linux cosmetics. This is a full Linux server distro made by Microsoft itself. In fact, the base comes from Fedora, a Linux distro for the big Redhat family.

In the past, Microsoft and Linux competed with each other. After a long time of enemies, now they live comfortably together. The world of technology is strange. Sometimes today’s ideological enemies turn into strategic partners tomorrow morning, as long as the stock goes up and the server stays alive.

The announcement appeared on the Open Source Summit North America. Brendan Burns, one of the founders of Kubernetes who is now a high-ranking Azure Microsoft official, calmly said that Linux is now the majority operating system in the Azure Cloud.

Linux is the majority, not Windows. The people in the room were said to have blinked twice. The CEO of the Linux Foundation gaped as if he had just heard the news that Darth Vader had moved to become a pesantren ustadz.

Then came the final sentence: “Microsoft is now basically a Linux company.” That’s Brendan Burns’ words. Instantly the history of technology feels like a long series of soap operas Azab.

Even though Microsoft has been busy for years to keep Windows users from “escaping into the mountains of Linux.” then made WSL, Windows Subsystem for Linux. The meaning is clear, so that Windows users can taste Linux without actually moving. It’s like a coffee shop that provides free bitter coffee so that customers don’t move to the cafe next door.

The strategy is smart. Many programmers, AI developers, server administrators, and terminal fighters are starting to fall in love with Linux. But Microsoft doesn’t want them to really leave. Then linux is inserted into windows like putting the goat cage in the living room: let it be close, but still in the control of the host. And it turned out that the strategy worked.

Now the steps are even further. Azure Linux 4 is not available for home desktops that are used to type RT letters or edit photos of recitations. This is a combat class Linux. Linux server. Linux for the cloud. Linux for AI. Linux is used to run millions of containers, Kubernetes, machine learning, to its own AI infrastructure.

Well, this is where many ordinary people start to get confused: “What is Azure?” Imagine Azure like a giant city belonging to Microsoft in the digital sky. It contains server buildings, data toll roads, computing electricity substations, and AI warehouses. Companies rent space there to run their applications, websites, databases, analytics, to AI.

So if ordinary Linux distributions are like private cars, Azure Linux is an international port container truck. Made not for style, but for 24-hours without sleep, just like Windows Server.

Azure Linux is not a distro to show off anime wallpapers and RGB keyboards. It is made thin, minimalist, resource-saving, safe, and stable. Even some versions are immutable. This means that the system can hardly be tampered with carelessly. Similar to the Ministry’s filing cabinet: once locked, don’t try to change the contents.

Why is Microsoft like that? Due to the undeniable fact, modern AI was born, grew, ate, slept, and mate in the Linux ecosystem.

Almost all large AI frameworks run natively on Linux. CUDA, Docker, Kubernetes, PyTorch, Tensorflow, Inference Server, GPU Cluster, all of them are most convenient to live on Linux. The world of AI is like a big pesantren, and Linux is the yellow book. Windows in the AI world sometimes feels like an invitation guest: it comes neatly, but is confused about where to sit.

Microsoft finally realized. If you want to become the king of AI, then you have to make total peace with Linux. And in fact they had long since given up secretly. It was only recently that Brendan Burns admitted it openly, when Azure Linux had entered version 4.

GitHub runs on Linux. Azure mostly uses Linux. The Openai infrastructure uses Linux and Kubernetes. Even the chatgpt which is now used by millions of people every day stands on a Linux foundation. Very ironic. Many people use Windows to open a browser, then access the live AI on Microsoft’s Linux server.

Like buying fried rice through a diet application. The funny thing is, Microsoft still says they still support Ubuntu, Red Hat, and other distros on Azure. It’s like the owner of a Padang restaurant who opened a Sate Madura stall in his own yard while saying, “Relax, we’re still friends.”

But the big message is clear: Linux won the long war. Not winning by demonstration. not with propaganda. Not with the black terminal meme full of scary green writing. Linux wins because of its efficiency, stability, flexibility, and survivability in the modern server world.

And the history of technology does often move like a flood. The one that was laughed at was finally used. The one who was insulted was finally hugged. What used to be called cancer is now the company’s heart.

Perhaps this is the funniest lesson from the modern digital world: The technology ideology is ultimately subject to market needs. When AI needed Linux, even Microsoft finally joined Linux. The world did not change due to speech. The world is changing because the server is overheating and the cloud bill is too expensive.

And behind all that, senior Linux users might just smile a little while sipping black coffee in front of the terminal. Because they know, sometimes the worst victory is when the enemy starts using our own operating system.