OK, so this is important not because it comes from Microsoft.

1. It's general purpose in that it is designed to be used to deliver any application software, whether containerized, on a VM or on (specific) bare hardware.

2. It has an SBOM that allows all elements of the distribution when run as a container/VM/bare to have an auditable chain back to the Fedora distribution, which then has a chain back to the source. So that allows companies to comply with the requirements of security audits much better than the "run our automated tool in your kernel to keep you up to date".

3. It's effectively a read-only OS, especially as containers, with that same auditable supply chain.

So no, it won't run on general hardware with random selections of ethernet and wifi and sound and display variations, but it will run any general application in numerous environments with an auditable supply chain.

No it's not. It's for tuned for Azure. Nobody is running this outside of their compute environment.

call me old fashioned isn't a general purpose OS one that runs on any hardware and set up? and is certified with hardware vendors for full backing and support?

all this says is: "MS now provides a unified Linux from WSL to the MS cloud. just like what you got w/ SUSE RH canonical up to now. but without any support outside the MS stack.", right?

or am I missing something?

Oh wow, the first AI-generated Linux! Will it suck monkey balls just as much as Windows 11?

It is bad enough that Microsoft just piggybacks on all the work that Red Hat is doing.

Now they are snapshotting the bleeding-edge distribution and call it general purpose, which carries a strong implication that it is ready for all kinds of production workloads.

It is not. That is why there is a Fedora/RHEL split in the first place.

Previously (61 points, 17 days ago, 49 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48187736

Microsoft's Azure Linux (66 points, 4 months ago, 109 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46805841

How desperate is Microsoft right now? Their model website was trying hard to be Anthropic, now they claim they have a linux distro? Which is just a tuned version?

What's next?

Surprised it doesn't have Copilot in the name somewhere

"Microsoft’s in-house Linux, the distribution that grew out of CBL-Mariner, just hit public preview as a general-purpose cloud OS you can run on any Azure VM. Here is why that is a real step in Microsoft’s Linux journey, not just a version bump."

Christ, they even lead with AI slop.

Moving from tdnf to dnf5 is interesting. Most internal platforms get more bespoke over time, not less.

It is an Azure (and WSL) specific Linux based on a general-purpose Linux (fedora). Having this general-purpose foundation will give access to many packages.

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish anyone? Although, as a Fedora user I'm happy it's RPM based.

Embrace and extinguish.

This is why they call a very specialized distribution "general-purpose". They need to water down the term and own the new space.

I just finished tapping 381 times, disabling (hopefully most of?) Apple Intelligence incursions in my life on a machine I don't really use. Was wondering what will I do next. Oh, look. More crap. That will keep me busy for a while.

Microsoft was a *nix supporter from the very beginning, with Microsoft Xenix.

> Azure Linux 4.0 is derived from Fedora, right now a Fedora 43 snapshot, rather than assembled package by package the way 1.0 through 3.0 were.

More like Microsoft's first non Microsoft Azure distro.

What advantages does Azure Linux have compared to Ubuntu?

Was it vibe coded?

This is a nonevent, unless perhaps some genuine "general purpose" tools come out of this. MS will never contribute to things such as Wine and Proton and kill its golden goose.

I’ll never use anything carrying the Azure name for anything I care about.

There, I said it.

undefined

[laughs in Torvalds.]

Why on earth they'd base it on Fedora where Ubuntu or Alpine is the most common use ? It just adding friction and incompatibilities to most users use case

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48187736

undefined

Microsoft are pieces of shit lads. Run by nonces. Also 4.0, first? Lord give me strength.

I am not exactly waiting for Linux that will have obligatory ads and will take screenshots of my desktop and send them somewhere. Sorry Bill, but now, I've been through this already, I saw how superior DR DOS goes down because your mom was IBM board member, I had to use Windows 98 Millenium Edition, I was lucky to skip Windows Vista. So, again, no, thanks, never again.

Same with your cloud offering, ridiculous solutions like Azure Service Bus that has pathetic performance, pathetic API and high price.

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Tldr a MSFT maintained fedora fork tuned for Azure hardware.

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