In the wider world of Big Data, Hadoop always runs on Linux. But HDInsight's original claim to fame was that it was a Microsoft- and Hortonworks-produced port to Windows. Microsoft now offers Hadoop running on either operating system, but Linux is now the de facto default, and only the first three cluster types listed in the last slide are available on Windows.
Pictured here is the selection of the generic Hadoop cluster type, with Linux selected as the OS. Note the five features, highlighted at the center-left, that are available because of this selection and the one feature, highlighted at the center-right, that is not.
Perhaps the most noteworthy feature that is available due to the selection Linux as the OS is that of "HDInsight applications." Since the Hadoop ecosystem is fully Linux-focused, many third party applications are compatible with HDInsight only when it runs on the open source OS.
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