Microsoft's Azure now supports Linux...Sort of..

Microsoft has announced that it wil now support Linux.  Well if you are running a few distros they will.  Those would be:

Suse Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2

OpenSuse 12.01

CentOS 6.2

Ubuntu 12.04

If you didn't notice there is one very large distorbution missing from that list.  Red Hat and Fedora are not there but CentOS is.  CentOS is a dirivitive work off of Red Hat.  So it's not likely a driver issue.  It's more likely that it's a licensing and support contract thing.  We have another story about a contract they just signed so we know it's also unlikely that they aren't happy about working with each other.  Check out the podcast to hear us go into more detail about our thoughts on the whole situation.

Episode 54 - IT Reporters need to just stop...

Running Time: 31:57

1) Introduction

IT People should just say no to Clueless Reporters

2) News

Ubuntu is Heading to the Clouds...

Ubuntu 11.10 review at Linuxinsider

ClearOS a clear replacement for CentOS?

3) Conclusion

Recommendations for People to interview

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Is ClearOS a clear replacement for CentOS?

I heard an interview with the president of ClearOS on Floss Weekly.  A short article about it over on LinuxJournal.com reminded us that we needed to talk about it. After hearing the initial interview I decided to setp a VM.  The install was easy to do.  The Web Based management UI was simple, intuitive and easy to use.  Whether you are a Linux Geek or a Newbie it makes managing and configuring new and existing applications easy.  If your a small business looking to switch over to Linux we highly recommend putting this on a VM and testing it out.

Application Installers Unite.....

According to this article we found, meetings are starting to happen and people are trying to move towards a common Application Installer. So their could be the end of the "My package manager is better than yours is" debates?  Well it's a bit early to tell but it does sound like the big distros are talking about settling on a common package format.  If they do go forward with this we can only hope that it's adoption moves faster than LSB(Linux Standards Base).  It would definitely go a long way to help adoption of Linux as a platform.  For instance, only seeing one line on download pages like Windows and Mac have would help newbies or people thinking about trying linux be less afraid.  When you can create app stores that only have to carry one type of package they become a lot easier to create.  We here at linuxinstall.net hope that every linux install will get easier over time.

What do you think?  What problems will one package format have?  What hidden benefits are there?  What hidden problems?