IT runs on the cloud, and the cloud runs on Linux | Hacker News Reader

IT runs on the cloud, and the cloud runs on Linux

zdnet.com

69 pointsalxsanchez52 comments

I love the smell of sweeping generalizations in the morning.

In the future we should expect growing concerns about Linux monoculture — though much less serious than it used to be with desktop Windows monoculture.

It worries me, but definitely less than with Windows. The lock-in factor is a lot lower with Linux. With Windows, once you invested in the infrastructure you were pretty much stuck there for life. If you switched, you'd need all new software and maybe all new hardware (if your alternative was Macs).

With Linux, most of your software runs out of the box on other platforms. If you want to switch to FreeBSD, it's a fairly shallow learning curve and you can be back where you were before too long. If you want to try out Macs, you can run most of the same stuff on them, and switch slowly. Even Windows can run the same software.

Just wait... RedHat is working that lockin issue right now. ( not sure there is a name like Godwin for SystemD yet but if there is I just did it )

This is FUD. A Red Hat employee developed an init system and Red Hat chose to use it for their Linux distributions (which they have every right to do). They didn't force other projects to adopt it, it's actually solving problems for those projects. They're not locking in anybody.

Yep... Just ignore the fact they bought CentOS too. Nothing to see here.

CentOS is (and always was) literally a rebuild of RHEL, so what's your point exactly?

Well isn't CentOS basically the Red Hat Community Edition without the Red Hat label...same/replicated code base?

Between .NET Core and SQL Server coming to Linux, that's starting to change with Windows as well. I think Microsoft knows if they're going to want to compete in this space, they need to win on performance, not lock-in.

They might also be trying to win on library/framework lock-in, rather than OS lock-in.

With Bash on Windows you'll be able to run Linux apps on Windows too. So, if that works out Windows lock-in would be about even with macOS. Lower, if it works really well since hardware is no issue. But that's as a desktop workstation.

This is about the cloud and servers, so Macs don't really apply. Despite the apparent lock-in, Windows is still a great server choice for small and medium sized businesses, even in the cloud. Switching away from say SQL Server to something like Postres isn't that hard. Things only get difficult if you use features like Active Directory integrated authentication, Sharepoint integration, Exchange, etc.

EDIT: I wouldn't switch though. Not for a cloud app that is to be managed by most small IT departments that I run into. SQL Server is so much easier to work with and manage than Postgres due to many seemingly insignificant features including a kick-ass GUI, stored procedures, returning multiple resultsets from a single round-trip query and the fact that it runs on Windows, which is still the number one OS used by the market that I serve, even in the cloud (but mostly for B2B or operations). These are the same sort of reasons that I build their back-ends in IIS/ASP.NET (despite the fact that I also use Node.js heavily for my own projects and I even use it to generate static files for my ASP.NET projects).

Great in theory not so great in reality. I really doubt bash on Windows is going to be all that great and that Linux support is going to be that great either. Microsoft is going to half-ass it because that's not their core competency and it never will be. It's just a shady business tactic to try to win users that are no longer interested in their platform.

> Great in theory not so great in reality.

OK. How exactly? Any details? Tried it?

Your comment is light on facts, heavy on opinion.

> Microsoft is going to half-ass it because that's not their core competency...

Gee, I thought building software for Windows was Microsoft's core competency.

> It's just a shady business tactic...

I suppose then that you must also think that Wine is just some shady "Open Source tactic" to try and get Windows users on Linux?

Maybe you prefer your half-assed software to come from Apple or from the general crowd of Open Source developers. That you have seething hatred for Microsoft is obvious though. Did they kill your pappy?

Haven't tried it out yet but does it handle `grep "string" *txt -r` like it should ? Last time I checked it didn't get recursivity.

No love for FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc? Doesn't the cloud run on the internet? What does the internet run on? Is it primarily Linux? Is it turtles all the way down?

Infrastructure runs mostly on Linux. Just try finding a BSD based router.

It is indeed turtles all the way down. What is most unfortunate because Linux does not have the best security record around.

www.pfsense.org; highly rated, well-respected in the routing space.

Juniper JunOS is a FreeBSD-variant. Many other manufacturers use neither Linux nor BSD.

"Infrastructure runs mostly on Linux. Just try finding a BSD based router."

You mean, like Juniper routers and switches ?[1]

Host-based routers have historically been nearly completely comprised of BSD. Almost universally. This is because for almost two decades the BPF[2] was far superior to anything linux had to offer.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junos_OS

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Packet_Filter

One of best forewalls, the old Sidewinders, were a BSD derivative as well. I imagine a few more showed up after McAffee acquired SCC.

>Infrastructure runs mostly on Linux.

Uh, no. Telecom infrastructure is routers and switches by proprietary vendors like Cisco, Adtran, etc. The world's fiber isn't connected to some kid's linux or pfsense box for routing. Its connected to a RTOS that's battle-tested, supported, etc.

Hum... not that much.

I partially take back my comment, but only because there were plenty of vendors using BSD. As much as I would wish it to be a micro-kernel RTOS with just the needed functionality, it often isn't.

Yeah maybe when it reaches Ma and Pa's Cloud hosting service, but the internet itself, as in the big telecom companies are not running things on a janky BSD box. They're using RTOS based equipment from vendors with strict SLAs, lots of redundancy, etc.

Not Linux, but JunOS on seriously large core routers (T1600, MX960, etc) is a direct FreeBSD derivative.

The first VPS provider (JohnCompanies, 2001) ran entirely on FreeBSD and continues to run (mostly) on FreeBSD to this day.

rsync.net runs entirely on FreeBSD.

Oh By (0x.co) runs entirely on FreeBSD.

The first VPS provider was most likely Utah-based iServer, and it ran on BSDi, then later on FreeBSD. iServer was acquired by Verio in 1998:

http://www.internetnews.com/isp-news/article.php/42301/Verio...

Interestingly, this was jail-based hosting, i.e. not unlike what Docker is. You can say they were a little bit ahead of their times.

I still have some of my mail going through one of their VPS on an employee account. FreeBSD 4.7. shudder The BSDi stuff pre-dated jails but was effectively the same thing.

You are thinking of the earth. The Internet is penguins all the way down.

I wonder if the cloud runs on Linux, or just it runs on the most common operating system where you do not have to pay for each individual license?

How hard would it be for developers/IT departments to play around with linux if instead of just downloading a base image from the cloud, they had to deal with buying a license and more importantly managing whatever tool that makes sure you are paying a license for each docker setup you use?

Being a slowly recovering Windows based shop, I can say with confidence that we don't have issues with paying for licenses, but far more often with getting Microsoft products to activate correctly.

We don't here, but I do know that it's a regular occurrence for Enterprise to use pirated versions of Windows and Office while holding many more licenses than they need legally, simply because the activation and licensing software embedded in Microsoft products just straight up sucks.

"Need to rebuild a Windows machine? Oh your key doesn't work with this particular version of Windows, sorry. Yes I know it's an identical version but it's an OEM key not a retail key."

Steam hacked the motives of most people who pirated games by making the games easy to buy and the licenses totally invisible to the user. Meanwhile I had to format my Surface Pro and had to call to activate Windows. To clarify: I had to CALL SUPPORT, to activate WINDOWS on hardware that Microsoft commissioned, manufactured, and sold under their own brand and that's ABSURD.

I also had to call support to activate Windows on a Surface 3. In total I spoke to 6 Microsoft representatives and only 2 had any idea what I was talking about. I was asked to reboot the computer and go to the BIOS by one of the reps. I was also told that the licence I had was an OEM one so I would have to contact the manufacturer (yes this was from MS licence activation support)

Or, in other words, FLOSS software is a good thing and provides significant cost savings for businesses across the globe, reducing the barrier to entry to implementing competitive IT services?

But why aren't we all talking about Solaris then?

Solaris is typical "too little, too late" IMO.

"Solaris" + "too little" = irony

Because it's no longer open source.

Or FreeBSD, or DragonflyBSD? Because part of the nature of software is that you get the most out of it when you're using what everyone else is using, and doing much the same thing as they're doing, so that the costs of figuring out how to do a given thing can be paid once and documented for everybody else to copy.

That counts whether you're using Windows or choosing to use something else - you'll never hear someone suggesting that you run Apache on Windows, as IIS is standard and what everybody else uses.

So linux's popularity on the cloud has nothing to do with FLOSS, and it's just the most common free OS out there.

Without being FLOSS, GNU/Linux never would've developed to the point where you could reasonably use it as a competitor to Windows in the first place.

What does it matter? Linux is the most common OS where you don't have to buy or fight with licenses, so your two "or" statements are equivalent.

The fact that Linux is free (beer and speech both) is a huge point in its favor. Yes, if you took away one of its big advantages, it would become quite a bit less compelling. But that's hardly a surprise.

I love Linux to bits but I think it isn't the best natural technical fit for the cloud. Unikernels like mirageOS seem IMHO a much more elegant tool for the job and might gain traction in future.

servers are commodities now. let dell and ibm worry about that.

Microsoft is rigt being busy trying to catch up on personal devices.

What personal devices, smartphones?

the jury is still out on that.

microsoft think its tablets with surface.

apple rode the iphone wave and is covering tablets now with ipad pro.

amazon thinks its always on devices at home.

google just throw money at everything everyone else does and see if the money sticks.

Even though Flash is disabled, this site plays three video ads and isn't finished loading after three minutes and 350 requests. All for 15 paragraphs of actual content. Horrible.

I see a bunch of ad-garbage, but luckily nothing played for me when I tried it on my extensionless Chrome profile.

http://i.imgur.com/v4QOYbf.png

Annoying as it sometimes is, I'm starting to love uMatrix.

And the cl0ud-to-butt extension too, I see :)

Yes! I keep forgetting I have it installed :).

Having used uMatrix for years now, I can't imagine browsing without it.

A couple of tips for your ruleset:

* disable first-party plugins (flash, PDF)

* enable first-party "other" (html5 video, audio)

I also enable various CDNs globally, i.e. scripts from cloudflare cdnjs, and frames/video from youtube and vimeo. Though I don't really recommend this if security/privacy is a concern. At least they won't get your cookies :)

Edit: oops, just noticed you accept first-party everything. Still, disabling plugins should prevent a wide class of exploits (see recent Chrome PDF vulnerability).

Thanks for the tip! I've been using it for just a month or so, so I'm relatively inexperienced :). So far I've been only whitelisting youtube/vimeo CDNs and Cloudflare endpoints on a case-by-case basis.

I've learned some interesting things with uMatrix. Like, on Twitter page, the password field of the login box doesn't work unless you let the site download some script (the username box works fine)...

jokes on you for not using noscript and whitelisting domains as you need them.

Best. Cloud-to-Butt. Article. Ever.

"Like it or lump it, my butt is taking over IT. We've seen the rise of my butt over in-house IT for years now. And, what powers my butt? Linux."

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