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VWWHFSfQ

Very soon Microsoft will acquire Canonical for at least $40 billion. The reasons:

* Ubuntu powers the overwhelming majority of Azure workloads (both customer and internal)

* Nearly all Linux applications and tooling target Ubuntu first (or at the very least)

* Github, VSCode. The missing piece is the actual runtime operating system. Ubuntu.

* Canonical employs nearly all the remaining core enterprise open-source developers after IBM acquired Red Hat

Start the countdown to Microsoft Ubuntu.

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> Ubuntu powers the overwhelming majority of Azure workloads

I expect this to shift. Some years ago `FROM ubuntu:something` was a go-to for Dockerfiles when I wasn't feeling fancy with `FROM alpine` or `FROM busybox` (or `FROM scratch`). Today if I need a generic distro base, I'm consciously going with Debian-based images and Ubuntu is never an option anymore (it used to be "Debian, but better", it became "Debian, but worse").

And I strongly suspect I'm very much not alone. So give it a few years while people convert and upgrade stuff and this might be not exactly longer true.

Ha, it's the reverse for me.

I used to use Debian base image, but now switch to Ubuntu LTS base images almost exclusively due to them offering newer versions of most core libraries, and longer support duration.

> them offering newer versions of most core libraries

Is that actually true? Debian has managed pretty consistent 2 year release cadence, same as Ubuntu LTS, so based on that alone they should on average have similar library freshness. Basically Debian releases on odd years, Ubuntu LTS on even years. I suppose Debian might have slightly longer freeze periods.

Generally agree: these days almost all of my images are either Alpine-based, or Debian-based. For example, the upstream _/ruby and _/python images offer both of those as the only base OS (well, aside from Windows Server Core apparently?) options, which alone makes up a huge chunk of Docker uses. (this is evidently because buildpack-deps offers Debian and Alpine bases, and these images both base from that to try to share layers, neat)

Surprisingly enough, if your primary motivation for doing this is to save system resources, it might be misguided. ubuntu-base docker images are slimmer than contemporary debian slim, even, though debian seems to have been closing the gap recently - I recall the discrepancy as larger. Below shows image sizes in MB as of today:

  docker.io/debian:bullseye         123.4
  docker.io/debian:bookworm         115.7
  docker.io/debian:bullseye-slim    80.1
  docker.io/ubuntu:22.04            76.6
  docker.io/debian:bookworm-slim    74.2
  docker.io/ubuntu:23.04            69.4

This is specific to docker images, while default ubuntu server or desktop releases are otherwise very much a bloat-fest compared to debian.

Unless Microsoft has an Activision-sized amount of cash burning a hole in its pocket, that feels unlikely. Seems far easier/likelier to make a Microsoft branded Debian than to go all-in-on Ubuntu. Maybe I could take the aqui-hire angle, but how many Ubuntu devs would want to stay with Microsoft?

> Unless Microsoft has an Activision-sized amount of cash burning a hole in its pocket

What? You greatly overestimate Canonical. Buying it would be a rounding error in Microsoft's balance sheet.

The parent comment stated the 40 billion figure (joking or not).

It feels like once M&A has decided to buy a company, that money is going to be spent. If Microsoft is prevented from purchasing Activision, I expect a foolishly profligate spending spree to follow.

>Maybe I could take the aqui-hire angle, but how many Ubuntu devs would want to stay with Microsoft?

Probably far more devs than they'd get trying to make their own MS-branded Debian from scratch. Even if a bunch of them left after a while, they'd have competent, experienced people working for them for that time, instead of trying to staff up from zero and having a lot time where there aren't enough people to really get much done, and during that time they can hire new people who aren't going to quit just because it's MS.

I'm not hip to all the big names in open source development, but I know Lennart Pottering and Guido van Rossum both ended up at Microsoft, so they might be able keep a few other engineers around.

What is Lennart doing at Microsoft?

AFAIK WSL

Jesus. Is that why my work laptop keeps crashing every 3-4 days?

No, that would be just Windows doing its thing /s

More specifically, getting systemd to work on WSL2, but he still has the same collection of projects, including UKI and so on.

Add a couple from Java side as well, after all the drama, Microsoft is now an OpenJDK contributor and has their own distribution, after acquiring jClarity.

And a couple from Rust side, after the Mozilla layoffs.

And a couple of ISO C++ members.

And their own Azure Linux distribution went out of preview at BUILD 2023.

People have been saying this for years already.

Might it happen? Sure.

But nothing seems to have suddenly increased the likelihood of this recently, so I'm not sure where the "very soon" is coming from.

Other than maybe you just personally realised they're not badly aligned.

If it gets us closer to being able to run native Office and Directx apps on Linux I'm all for it. Snap enforcement already scared me away from Ubuntu for the most part anyway.

This would be self-sabotage for Microsoft, it erodes their moat. If they actually cared about user producitivity and making those specific products as widely used as possible then it would be reasonable for people to expext this, but that's not their real goal. Acquiring Canonical changes nothing about their ability to make this happen, they could do it today, but their corporate strategy forbids it.

I dunno... Canonical + Ubuntu + Snap Store might be just the right amount of closed market to start to make this make sense to them.

office will become all electron apps before you get native office apps on linux

Were I Microsoft, a custom Linux would be exclusively for server side benefits. Better/more integrated Azure tooling, native VS Code Remote Development containers, improved telemetry, native account/security provisioning, etc. No reason to tempt fate with better cross platform desktop efforts.

They already have that,

https://github.com/microsoft/CBL-Mariner

https://www.infoq.com/news/2023/06/azure-linux-cbl-mariner/

TIL. Truly strange times.

Microsoft already has WSL2 so they can already run Office and Directx on the same box running Linux. I'm not sure that they have an incentive to make people run Office natively on a real Linux desktop. Wouldn't that lose some Windows customer? I think Office 365 already runs in browsers also on Linux but I never had a reason to check.

> Canonical employs nearly all the remaining core enterprise open-source developers after IBM acquired Red Hat

I'm sorry, but what? This is not even remotely close to being true. There's even a pretty good chance that Red Hat employs more "enterprise open source developers" now than in 2018.

I may be wrong, but with Red Hat, IBM was buying all the enterprise customers, but there is not much to buy in Canonical. They seem to don't know where they want to move as a business.

Red Hat 2018 year result was $3B in revenue https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-repor...

and Canonical's 2021 revenue was $175M https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/21/canonical-now-hopes-to-ipo...

That sounds considerably more expensive than Microsoft's usual "embrace, extend, extinguish".

I always knew that http://mslinux.org/ wasn't just a joke, but an omen.

Lena Khan wouldn't let Microsoft acquire a paperclip manufacturing plant right now, do you think this merger would ever be allowed?

For anyone else confused, I think the parent comment means Lina Khan. I was struggling to see what a film director had to do with this.

For anyone wondering WTF?, Lina Khan is the head of the US FTC, the crowd that reviews large mergers and similar (also antitrust, monopoly abuses, etc).

Under her leadership, the FTC has started doing the right thing (finally!) and saying "No, not happening!" to some of the proposed mergers in very recent times.

>... Khan wouldn't let Microsoft acquire a paperclip manufacturing plant right now ...

Microsoft created Clippy. They also have a large partnership with OpenAI.

Given these facts, it is in the interest of the free world for Microsoft not to have the ability to maximize paperclip production at this time.

They can just wait a year. Either the Republicans will give them what they want, or the Biden Administration won't have to keep Khan around because they made it through the presidential election.

If Biden (or Newsom or whoever) squeaks in, they'll be looking to appeal to the right for the midterms, and lightly smearing and firing Khan might actually help them. The WSJ, in particular, has declared her enemy no.1, and the Biden WH has almost seemed embarrassed about the only person in their administration that could get them unambiguously good press, because they don't actually support her.

Why didn't they make Khan their "Dr. Fauci"? Why didn't they push social media companies to amplify accounts that supported her work, or to suppress accounts that spread misinformation or negativity about it?

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