Why The Operating System Still (Kind Of) Matters

Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth has been beating the Linux drum for years — particularly around the Ubuntu distribution that Canonical develops and supports — but his message, and that of much of the Linux community, has taken more of an OpenStack tone lately. Shuttleworth came on the Structure Show podcast this week to tell us when Linux still matters and when it’s the cloud — OpenStack, Amazon Web Services or otherwise — that’s driving the ship in IT.

It was a wide-ranging interview, covering everything from Shuttleworth’s space trip to how Canonical makes money, and the whole thing is well worth a listen. But here are the highlights. And, of course, anyone really interested in learning about how the software that powers cloud computing will evolve should come to our Structure conference June 18 and 19 in San Francisco.