Sounds unbelievable, doesn’t it? Yet an independent lab verified this performance improvement in Microsoft’s web software running on Linux, from 2120 requests per second to 1,822,366 requests per second served.

A couple of big caveats are in order. First, TechEmpower, the organization performing the tests, only perform tests against software running on the Linux operating system. The previous version that performed so poorly was not produced, endorsed or supported by Microsoft. It was an open source implementation of the .Net environment called Mono that allowed some .Net (C# and Visual Basic) programs to run on Linux.

Second, the new version of .Net that runs on Linux, called .Net Core, is produced and supported by Microsoft. This is a reflection of the new direction that the current CEO, Satya Nadella, has brought to the organization. Microsoft is moving quite aggressively to support Linux. As evidence, the effort to port SQL Server to Linux is (as of Dec. 9 2016) at public preview status.

Of course, running .Net code on Microsoft’s operating systems is still, and will continue to be, fully supported.

TechEmpower is quite impressed with the new .Net Core offering. Please click the link and read the bottom of their test results summary page to read their impressions of the dramatic performance improvements.

Over time, I expect the broader I.T. community to embrace C# programming on Linux, and the traditional walls between the Windows and Linux worlds in the datacenter to begin to fall. It’s an exciting time to be a .Net developer. If you need some C#, web development, or other Microsoft product training, we would love to hear from you.