The article says "Microsoft will release a custom Debian Linux," but the linked Github repository says:<p>> Q. Is SONiC a Linux distribution?<p>> A. No, SONiC is a collection of networking software components required to have a fully functional L3 device that can be agnostic of any particular Linux distribution. Today SONiC runs on Debian
In tangentially-related news, there was a lot of talk at NetDev about switchdev, a new Linux driver model for hardware-offload switching hardware.<p>It allows the kernel's Layer-2 and Layer-3 switching/routing configuration to be reflected down into the switch offload hardware, and the switch's ARP and MAC table data to be reflected back up to the kernel stack.<p>The overall idea being you can continue to use the same userspace tools to configure the routing/switching, and it all just magically goes faster if you have supported switching hardware.<p><a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/675826/" rel="nofollow">https://lwn.net/Articles/675826/</a>
I imagine anything Microsoft releases that could possibly have gpl software, such as the linux kernel in it will have the most aggressive search for violation of any software ever. Memories are long and that distrust is not going away any time soon.
Well, Microsoft had the best (and most widely deployed) desktop UNIX distribution back in the 80s too.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix</a>
Satya Nadella is a breath of fresh air. It's amazing the difference in management styles from the Balmer days.<p>When Microsoft put Nadella in charge, they made a great decision. And I honestly don't say that very often about top level management.
In a sudden twist of fate, Microsoft announces that are writing their own closed source systemd alternative. Millions of naysayers flock to the systemd hailing it as the Savior of Linux.
Why Linux? The networking stack on BSD is superior, and the OS places no copyleft restrictions!<p>I'm starting to believe that developers choose OS/Tools the are used to (Linux in this case) versus the one best suited for the job (BSD)
Actually what Microsoft is doing could be breat.
However I don't understand why they even use Jenkins for this project (<a href="https://github.com/Azure/sonic-build-tools" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Azure/sonic-build-tools</a>)
I mean I love jenkins, but wouldn't it be at least good if they would've used their own build tool? I mean something like tfs-linux-worker I know that doesn't exists, but if they would've done something they could've done something good somehow.
Using jenkins feels like "we can't yet do that with our own stuff"
Linux has been the best friend of MS Windows for quite some time now. All the Linux users dual-boot into Windows each time they need some half-decent GUI for an app or whatever. Linux might be a good server host OS, but it failed spectacularly to conquer the desktop.
In other news, there is now a stable Microsoft operating system I could use on my computer.<p>If they ported Windows to it, they could probably make a solid Wayland/KDE competitor.
It's probably also the OS that used to run SQL Server on Linux announced this week - <a href="https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2016/03/07/announcing-sql-server-on-linux/" rel="nofollow">https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2016/03/07/announcing-sql-s...</a>.
Ah, how wonderful it will be to live in a world without embrace and extend.<p>Wait. systemd, kdbus, GNOME and systemd-udevd. Shit.<p>We have met the enemy, and befriended it. Now we are the enemy.
Finally M$ Linux comes true. So we must prepare to viruses, antiviruses, "defenders" and other whole infrastructure industry that lives on creating problems out of nothing and then heroically solving them.