Microsoft has participated in the Linux community for several years now, contributing drivers for Hyper-V to the Linux kernel source code base, and then working with Linux distribution partners to incorporate those drivers into their distros. We’ve had great results in running a variety of Linux distros as a guest OS on Hyper-V and as a VM in Microsoft Azure, and our collaboration with SUSE has been a foundation for this work for many years.

Now we’re taking it a step further and open sourcing our test automation tools in a GitHub project, making it easy to validate Linux images for running in Azure. As noted in a recent blog post by SUSE, these test automation tools are Powershell, Python, and BASH scripts that allow Linux images to be tested for compatibility with Azure. 

These are exactly the tools that Microsoft uses in-house to validate Linux images for running in Azure, and we’re super-pleased that SUSE and their ISV eco-system are able to make use of this automation to provide an even broader set of Linux images for Azure. And, of course, we encourage ISVs or anyone else who wants to create a Linux image for Azure to make use of these tools and to contribute to the GitHub project as well.

fernapp is an open source tool that can run a GUI application on a Linux server that can be accessed via web browser.

In this brief demo, I’ll setup fernapp on an Azure-hosted Linux virtual machine and export a Linux-based GUI over a TCP endpoint so it can be consumed remotely on a browser.

Any other interoperability scenarios you'd like to see? Please let us know in the comments! 

There’s more! Related content:

Curah! Open Source on Azure: Getting Started

Microsoft Azure: Creating Linux Virtual Machines

Earlier this month, Node supporters convened for a Node.js Paris community meetup, and it was great to see how Node is supporting the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), through creation of APIs that can connect devices to data.

Node is being tapped for IoT because it’s great for getting projects done quickly, leveraging broad knowledge of JavaScript and scaling for massive concurrency needed for mobile and IoT devices.

Issac Roth, CEO of StrongLoop and one of the major contributors to the Node.js core and module ecosystem, highlighted one of the most popular scenarios for Node – creating REST APIs for mobile apps and IoT devices. He demonstrated an open source framework called LoopBack and constructed a mobile REST API in minutes, including security and offline sync.

Microsoft’s Stéphane Goudeau demonstrated how he built a Node.js IoT application prototype that displays real time temperature and humidity data graphs on Azure website with notification alerts pushed on a Windows Phone. He explained that Node.js is one of the reference technologies for the development of these services due to its natively asynchronous design, the richness of its modules ecosystem, and the ability for developers to leverage their existing skills in JavaScript. You can get the full recap on Stéphane’s blog (in French, but Bing translator can help out) and the sample code is published on github.

The Node.js Paris community is fueled by two strong leaders -- Quentin Raynaud and Etienne Folio. It was great to see the energy behind the event, on stage and late at night, from these two entrepreneurs. Thanks to their dedication and open collaboration, Microsoft was able to host this Node community for the second time.

To learn more about the community and how to get involved, visit https://www.nodejsparis.fr/.

Check out Microsoft Azure’s Node.js Development Center for the SDK, tutorials and resources.

Continuing our “how to” series of demos, I’m sharing another example of how you can deploy a full range of open and community-driven OS and software solutions on Microsoft Azure.

In the below video, I’ll use connected Linux virtual machines and Microsoft Azure load balanced sets to show you how you can clusterize services like OpenLDAP and MySQL. I’ll also show how to use readily available open source tools like DRBD, Corosync and Pacemaker to create a shared-nothing highly available architecture and Azure CLI as a STONITH resource.

Any other interoperability scenarios you'd like to see? Please let us know in the comments! 

There’s more! Related content:

Curah! Open Source on Azure: Getting Started

Microsoft Azure: Creating Linux Virtual Machines

Microsoft Azure’s Node.js Developer Center provides support for deploying Microsoft Azure Websites, Virtual Machines, and Mobile Services, configuring git-based deployments, and using Service Bus and Storage.

In this video, I’ll use Azure's open source SDK for Node.js, the REST interface of Azure Service Bus, and Node.js and Web Sockets support on Azure Websites to illustrate how to capture data from sensors connected to a Pinguino board. All on a Raspberry Pi running Linux.

This demo was part of my presentation at LinuxFest Northwest 2014. Slides are available here and sample code on GitHub here.

Any other interoperability scenarios you'd like to see? Please let us know in the comments! 

Related content:

Curah! Open Source on Azure: Getting Started

Microsoft Azure: Node.js Developer Center

Microsoft Azure helps developers build their mobile applications with Mobile Services – a scalable and secure backend that can be used to power apps on any platform – iOS, Android, Windows or Mac.

In this video, I’ll show Java developers how to jumpstart their Android applications by creating Mobile Services, downloading prebuilt packages for several platforms and removing the need to create and maintain a backend that enables CRUD operations. In this example, I’ll work with a prebuilt package for ADT/Eclipse and add functionality to it.

Any other interoperability scenarios you'd like to see? Please let us know in the comments! 

There’s more! Related content:

Curah! Open Source on Azure: Getting Started

Microsoft Azure: Java Developer Center

Channel 9: Azure WebSites - Java runs great in Azure!

Channel 9: Java on Microsoft Azure

Today Microsoft announced the availability of Azure HDInsight for all customers in China as a public preview, making it the first global cloud provider to have a cloud Hadoop offering publicly available in China.

Azure HDInsight is a 100% Apache Hadoop-based service in the cloud with the ability to process big data volumes from unstructured and semi-structured sources. Both local Chinese organizations and multi-national corporations with offices in China can now spin up a Hadoop cluster within minutes. 

Check out the SQL Server blog for more on this release and to learn about how Blackball, a Taiwanese Tea and Dessert restaurant chain, is improving its business analytics.

Although tablets and smartphones have become extensions of our daily routines, typing on the small screens can be arduous at times. To resolve this productivity dilemma, Microsoft announced the Universal Mobile Keyboard for iPad, iPhone, Android devices and Windows tablets.

To see it in action, including switching between device platforms, check out the brief video below.

[View:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdPT-TzgU84:0:0] 

The Universal Mobile Keyboard will be generally available in October 2014 for the estimated retail price of $79.95 at the Microsoft Store and at various other retailers.

Today Microsoft announced the acquisition of Mojang, the celebrated Stockholm-based game developer, and the company’s ground breaking “Minecraft” franchise.

Available across multiple platforms, “Minecraft” is one of the most popular video games in history. Fans have logged more than 2 billion hours on Xbox 360 in the past two years, and the game is the top paid app for iOS and Android in the US. Microsoft plans to continue supporting gamers across all the platforms on which it is available today: PC, iOS, Android, Xbox and PlayStation.

“Gaming is a top activity spanning devices, from PCs and consoles to tablets and mobile, with billions of hours spent each year,” said CEO Satya Nadella. “Minecraft is more than a great game franchise – it is an open world platform, driven by a vibrant community we care deeply about, and rich with new opportunities for that community and for Microsoft.”

For more on this news, check out Phil Spencer’s post on the Xbox Wire.

This week’s Microsoft Azure update includes new features for Azure Websites, an enterprise-class cloud service for developing, testing, and running corporate websites, business applications, and digital marketing campaigns.

In addition to VPN support, Azure Websites introduced a scalable WordPress offering through the application gallery to help enterprises setup robust CMS backed sites. Frederic Lardinois at TechCrunch covered how this release “makes scaling WordPress on Azure easier,” noting that almost a quarter of all sites on the web today run WordPress. 

Users can now quickly spin up new sites that leverage Azure capabilities such as Azure Storage for media assets, curated WordPress plugins that are optimized for performance, and a scalable backend with Standard Websites instances and higher end MySQL SKUs.

For more on this news and other enterprise updates, please check out the Microsoft Azure blog.