First Look Microsoft has released a public preview of SQL Server for Linux, and I took it for a spin.
There are three supported platforms for SQL Server on Linux, these being Red Hat Enterprise 7.2, Ubuntu 16.04, and a Linux-based Docker engine. Installation on other versions of Linux may also work, although unsupported. The Docker image enables installation on Mac or Windows. Microsoft specifies a minimum of 3.25GB of RAM.
I installed on a modest 8GB dual-processor VM running Ubuntu 16.04 "Xenial" for testing. Setup involves agreeing a licence and setting an SA (system administrator) password. I then installed command-line tools, sqlcmd (execute SQL queries) and bcp (bulk copy). The install script prompts you to enable automatic start-up.
