Anyone tried Microsoft's Version of Linux yet?

Microsoft recently released it's own distro of Linux call CBL-Mariner.

I recently grabbed an iso and threw it up as a VM in my test environment, and my first thoughts are "meh"

It seems to be somewhat based on Arch Linux pr sorta a cross with that and Debian, although I would have personally preferred it to be a little more debian like.

Not much in the way of packages yet, but some that work on other distros may work ok on it.

Documentation is a bit lacking so far, so had to dig a bit to find the NIC setting so I could make it multi homed.

By now the iso is likely available a few places, I used one I had found directly on Arch's site.

I think this move makes sense for them, and who knows I look forward to them writing some tools to be released possibly in future versions of windows to possibly manage this distro, or maybe a cpanel type application that could be used, or maybe some packages that could be used to manage windows servers.

The first attempt to install it using the graphical interface failed, but my guess is that it may have been looking for better graphics or even a gpu, which I don't use a passthrough on a vm enviornment. The 2nd attempt I just used the command line and it went fine.

Not completely sure the direction this will take, their official statement at github is

Quote:

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CBL-Mariner is an internal Linux distribution for Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure and edge products and services. CBL-Mariner is designed to provide a consistent platform for these devices and services and will enhance Microsoft’s ability to stay current on Linux updates

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This will likely mean most packages or tools developed will lean more heavily toward managing Azure and Azure cloud apps.


Rick
Universal4

I haven't tried Microsoft's version of Linux yet, but from the reviews, it seems to be easy to use and good!

I've tried but not for work and it's great product. Simple to use and convenient.

Thanks for the review and info ... sounds quite interesting. Will certainly check it out when I have the time.

Correct me if I am wrong, but was not the point of Linux to get away from Microsoft?

im try version on Microsoft

I'm in "just buy a mac laptop" territory now. they solved laptops.

Gonna keep PC for gaming, and I guess enjoy nix scripting on mac

(also, No need for this *nix **** w/ dual boot anyway for the most part, imo - but #newtoys for someone i guess)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PROFRBcom

Correct me if I am wrong, but was not the point of Linux to get away from Microsoft?

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The actual roots of linux was to offer users a better choice for the x86 386 market since UNIX was far too expensive for the average users and early adopters of computers (geeks) which actually led to the computer age in the home.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux

There are many other factors that came in to play, such as the work by AT&T, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates etc, as well as the controversy of who stole from who, but it was because of linux that both the money side driving innovation as well as the free and what became open source also helped continue to drive innovation and forced the commercial companies to continue to improve as well.


IMO, I think the competition among the companies help keep all of them alive.

In fact linux has evolved and packages have been added very often to help it co-exist in the large enterprise space for years, pretty much since the beginning of the OS.

Microsoft were the ones that delayed embracing linux more fully until they finally understood that it was the Enterprise IT managers and directors that were solving many of the issues of co-existence, especially when it came to domains and domain controllers (having zero to do with website domains) and thing like shared storage, SMB and a long list of applications that may be needed in the corporate space for either MS OS or linux.

In case anyone didn't know, Microsoft acquired github in 2018.
https://news.microsoft.com/2018/06/0...r-7-5-billion/

What is interesting that at least some linux proponents rarely admit, especially when they start pushing lunux as a desktop replacement, is that almost every new version of gnome, kde or any other desktop environment for linux struggles with every release to become more and more windows like.

Although I do see growth in linux marketshare, especially as the environment does become more windows like, Microsoft will most likely not lose huge marketshare in the large enterprise or desktop space for at least a number of years to come.

Today new companies or enterprises have more choice when they consider application development, factory or manufacturing build outs etc. Often their choices on whether to build on linux, windows, etc will be partially determined by the coders and the concept of how they will implement the programming and their choices among perl, python, .NET, C etc for their line of business programming.

But in the highest number of percentages, it will still be windows on the desktop, or a mix or that and apple.

But back to Mariner, I do think this shows MS commitment to helping the developers of both communities, that possibly in the future it might be easier to have applications written that will allow more access to the subsystems of windows, which may drive even more innovation.

Rick
Universal4