Some time ago it dawned on me that a future Microsoft operating system, a version of Windows, would be based on Linux. It only makes sense. There is no better operating system to base a desktop, server, or other specialized OS on, for normal hardware. Eventually, this would dawn on Microsoft. I thought it might have a few years ago when Microsoft went from being openly aggressive against Linux and OpenSource, to being neutral, to being nice, and eventually contributing.
And now…
Azure Sphere. It is a custom Linux kernel designed by Microsoft.
This is a device connectivity IOT OS. I remember years ago Bill Gates himself said that your washing machine would run Windows. Everyone laughed, and of course, it was laughable. But Microsoft does not want to be run out of the computer market by ignoring the super large market of super small things. Thus, Azure.
I know, you can’t tell from the video, but this is based on a Linux kernel.
This is not “Microsoft Windows Ubuntu Flavor.” Not even close, and this is not a direct move in that direction.
But it sort of is. Expect it. Someday, the newest version of Microsoft Windows will be a distribution of Linux. Mark my words!
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For a really good layman’s overview go to:
https://staceyoniot.com/here-are-the-details-on-microsofts-azure-sphere-security-platform/
For embedded design professionals (like me) go to EE Times and the other usual suspects for in depth details.
See also https://www.windowscentral.com/what-microsofts-recent-reorganization-means-everyone-every-platfrom
Microsoft knows that the days of their (or anyone’s) desktop OS dominating the marketplace is numbered. They know that people today are using multiple platforms on multiple devices and need interoperability between them. Slowly, but ever so surely, everything is being pushed to the cloud and the apps to access that data are available for all the main platforms. MS is moving away from selling standalone installations pushing you to Office 365. Google has their Chrome cloud and Android services, and Apple seems (I don’t pay much attention to Apple) to be moving more and more of their offerings into their cloud. This is where the market of the immediate future is so it makes sense for MS to do this Azure Sphere.
Look at what is happening in the world of commercial AI. There is a big battle brewing between MS, (we use one of Azure’s for research in our own work) AWS, and Google – all three making access to the massive AI engines they have built available to developers for free or low cost in order to bring them on board their clouds during development and then deployment.