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How things change! Microsoft is porting SQL Server to Red Hat's Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). And now, Red Hat will support Microsoft's open-source .NET Core 2.0 on RHEL, Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, and other Red Hat platforms. It's no wonder Bill Gates only owns 1.3 percent of Microsoft these days.

Microsoft's .NET Core is a lightweight and modular platform for creating web applications and micro-services. It enables developers to create .NET applications across platforms and deploy across Red Hat's operating systems and clouds.

This new Microsoft programming framework was released on Aug. 14. .NET Core is the open-source cross-platform implementation of the .NET development platform that runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

The latest version of .NET Core supports .NET Standard 2.0. This provides enhanced platform compatibility and portability across all .NET runtimes and workloads. It also streamlines application packaging with easier access to ASP.NET 2.0 and EF Core 2.0.

This new version of .NET has jumped from 13,000 application programming interfaces (API)s in .NET Standard 1.6 to 32,000 in .NET Standard 2.0. Most of the new APIs are .NET Framework APIs. This means developers should have an easier time porting their existing .NET Framework code to .NET Standard. In short, Microsoft's main programming language is now more cross-platform than ever.

When .NET Core 2 is combined with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and/or Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, the 2.0 release supports C#, F#, and Visual Basic for the creation of modern, containerized applications.

Red Hat is the first commercial Linux provider to offer full, enterprise-grade support for .NET Core across its portfolio.

Harry Mower, Red Hat's senior director of Developer Programs, said in a statement, ".NET is one of the most widely-used development platforms in the industry and Red Hat, as a major contributor to the .NET Core community, is helping to further expand the reach and capabilities of the technology. By supporting .NET on RHEL, we are able to provide one of the broadest, supported and fully-open developer solutions on the market and offer organizations greater assurance that they can run .NET workloads on non-Windows-based systems in production, backed by Red Hat's expertise and award-winning support."

Microsoft's .NET Core 2.0 will soon be available through various Red Hat products as RPMs for traditional yum installations or as Linux container images.

Bill Gates hasn't said anything about this marriage between Linux and Windows technologies.

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