Microsoft releases 20,000 lines of code to Linux community

Hell has not frozen over and pigs aren't flying in the sky, Microsoft has just released 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community.

Company officials admitted the move was "a break from the ordinary" but were quick to note this is the first time Microsoft has released code directly to the Linux community. The code will be available to the Linux community and customers and is expected to enhance the performance of the Linux operating system when virtualized on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V.

Sam Ramji, senior director of Platform Strategy in Microsoft's Server and Tools organization said in a statement, "Our initial goal in developing the code was to enable Linux to run as a virtual machine on top of Hyper-V, Microsoft's hypervisor and implementation of virtualization.

The Linux device drivers we are releasing are designed so Linux can run in enlightened mode, giving it the same optimized synthetic devices as a Windows virtual machine running on top of Hyper-V."

Due to the economy and consolidation, big enterprises are looking to standardize their virtualization platform, and according to Microsoft "the Linux device drivers will help customers who are running Linux to consolidate their Linux and Windows servers on a single virtualization platform".