Microsoft’s Next OS is Based on Linux, Not Windows

This news is almost a year old already, but still worth sharing as not many people have heard about it. There is ginormous amount of tech news out there!

Microsoft has always pushed Windows as the O/S for all devices, from super computers down to small devices using their new Windows 10 IoT Core edition. But as they needed an operating system with even smaller footprint for very small IOT devices, such as might be used in a dishwasher or refrigerator, they decided to use a Linux based kernel.

Of course, as Linux enthusiasts, we have always known that Linux scales both up, down, and horizontally much better then the bloated Microsoft Windows kernel core. Less then 20 years ago, we were running Linux network appliances off a single 1.44MB floppy image.

Windows 10 does make it easy to install Ubuntu on TOP of Windows, which is very interesting. But to have Microsoft building out their own Linux-based distro that runs directly on bare-metal hardware is a huge shift.

Even Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft, has admitted that Linux is no longer a “cancer” and not created by communist thieves.

For more information, see:

• Thurrott article from 2018 on this topic
• Microsoft’s page on Azure Sphere
• Wikipedia article on Azure Sphere
• Redmond magazine article which has more details
• Gigazine article

Image credit: Gigazine