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Azure Linux 4.0 is Microsoft's first general-purpose Linux
- nullbio 4mo agoWas it vibe coded?
- nullpoint420 4mo agoEmbrace, Extend, Extinguish anyone? Although, as a Fedora user I'm happy it's RPM based.
- giancarlostoro 4mo agoLittle harder to pull that off when the key components are all GPL licensed, but also all of Microsoft's bits and pieces for their distro seem to be MIT Licensed. Honestly, it certainly feels more like Google lives by Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (email, browsers, video streaming, etc).
- greenavocado 4mo agoThat's why they're pushing hardware attestation so aggressively
- nullpoint420 4mo agoAgreed on the Google front here.
- saghm 4mo agoYou cited three of the most prominent counterexamples to the common meme about Google killing their products as evidence of them extinguishing things. I'm not saying you're wrong necessarily, but I don't think you've demonstrated what you think you have.
- brokencode 4mo agoThe “extinguish” part refers to your competition, not to your own product. You embrace a popular open standard, add new features to your software that build upon the standard (but are proprietary), then watch as your competitors die off because customers become locked into your proprietary features. Similar to how Apple hijacked SMS to add iMessage and introduced all kinds of features and the blue/green bubble styling. For the longest time, they refused to support RCS, trying to keep people on iPhone by making texting between iOS and Android suck. Of course, a lot of people switched to third party messaging apps because of how much Apple was intentionally ruining texting, so now Apple has had to adopt RCS. So the “extinguish” part can be hard to pull off given sufficiently strong competition.
- trumpdong 4mo agoto be fair to apple one time, RCS is terrible
- brokencode 4mo agoIt’s better than SMS and is the new industry standard. Also, iMessage kind of sucks too. There are many better messaging apps. The problem is that many people in the US never even try those. They just see that Androids have green bubbles and cause problems due to SMS.
- simoncion 4mo agoHello! I'm a USian, so my telecom situation might be really weird when compared to the rest of the world, IDK. > It’s better than SMS... If it guarantees timely and in-order delivery, then yes, it's better than SMS. If it doesn't, no matter what else it does it's just as bad. > ...and is the new industry standard. Odd. The only RCS messages I receive are spam. Literally zero legitimate entities send me RCS messages. Plus, I heard that Google's shipping this "Feed us more metadata about who you're calling and when!" service that's billed as a "Ensure the caller calling you is actually on an Android(TM) or iPhone(TM) phone!" "safety" feature. No thanks.
- tossit444 4mo agoNot really. They've always advertised it for, well, Azure, and the actual announcement[0] makes it clear that it's simply a distro for Azure workloads. Considering they state it's "built exclusively for cloud and server workloads, it is not intended to support desktop usage or GUI applications," Microsoft isn't playing that game here. [0] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/linuxandopensourceblog/announcing-azure-linux-4-0-purpose-built-for-azure-now-in-public-preview/4524267 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/linuxandopensourceb...
- yjftsjthsd-h 4mo agoAs a Fedora hater, I'm also happy it's RPM based; IMO, .debs are just flat out worse than .rpm as a format and the tooling on top matches that. I do wonder, though: > 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. Then what's the point? They could just ship Fedora. There are minor differences, but all things that sound easy to get upstreamed with minimal effort.
- fragmede 4mo agoTime difference. A VP at Microsoft has someone they can yell at to make an ship a change. Having to ask upstream politely and then wait for their release schedule was proving to be an issue.
- mhitza 4mo agoSame as with any distribution it gives you flexibility over update cadence, validate your software doesn't break with updates, and push out your own hotfixes without being tied to the release process upstream. Default configurations as well, since it states FIPS compliance it has to change defaults <https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/RemoveFipsModeSetup#Why_remove_fips-mode-setup? https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/RemoveFipsModeSetup#W...>
- tigerlily 4mo agoExtinguish Windows morelike...
- redmonduser 4mo agoIt's too late to embrace, extend and extinguish and Microsoft has moved past that era. I think this is an attempt to gate keep the inclusion of opensource libraries in the distribution that have contributions from unverified users and potential state actors.
- froh 4mo agocall 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?
- PacificSpecific 4mo agoDon't worry you aren't. Luckily no one will use this distro day to day
- haydenbarnes 4mo agoISV certification is coming. On-prem hardware support would be interesting, wouldn't it?
- froh 4mo agowithout certification of other clouds and any hardware this is not general purpose. their plan might however be a Micro-Windows, which only boots the hyper-v, which then runs that Linux. that move would leverage the Microsoft Windows hardware certification.
- steve1977 4mo agoI'd say old fashioned Linux would come without any certification or support.
- froh 4mo agoI didn't mean DIY / Linux from scratch. and I meant where I come from a general purpose OS is for any purpose, not just to run it on a very specific stack. SUSE - Find Certified Hardware Products https://www.suse.com/yesCertified/home https://www.suse.com/yesCertified/home similar pages exist for RH and canonical but then Windows also is a general purpose OS. hm. what if MS strategizes on their hyper-v as hypervisor, with windows as control Panel and all payload on their Azure Linux? popcorn time?
- unethical_ban 4mo agoTldr a MSFT maintained fedora fork tuned for Azure hardware.
- codycharris 4mo agoNo it's not. It's for tuned for Azure. Nobody is running this outside of their compute environment.
- osigurdson 4mo agoYou may be right, its possible however that people running on Azure may use it locally for testing.
- VincePlatt 4mo agoI was curious to see what it would be like to run this under WLS. I'm guessing we'll get our chance at some point.
- haydenbarnes 4mo agoYou get a sense of it now. Azure Linux 3.0 is the base for the WSL system distro, there all the WSLg (GUI) and now the wslc plumbing happens. It's ephemeral, but you can drop in and look around with wsl --system --user root. An official WSL image of Azure Linux 4.0 is coming in a few weeks that you'll be able to install with wsl.exe --install Azure...(I'm not sure the exact name).
- voidfunc 4mo agoI know internal folks running AzLinux 3.0 under WSL and it's fine. Not a lot of reasons to do it vs just use Fedora. I'd expect similar for AzLinux 4.0. It's not tuned for day-to-day WSL centric developer use tho.
- jraph 4mo agoYeah, a general purpose distro would come with a desktop environment and you'd be able to run it on your PC as your main OS. Calling this general purpose is so misleading. Of course describing reality in titles would have the inconvenience of causing fewer clicks to these articles. The title on HN could be updated though.
- gunalx 4mo ago
- drnick1 4mo agoThis 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.
- santoshalper 4mo agoI don't think Microsoft would intentionally compete with Windows, but it does seem as though they are preparing for a world where Windows is no longer their golden goose, or at least hedging their bets. Given that Windows has already decisively lost the battle for servers, this seems prudent.
- kenjackson 4mo agoIt’s already no longer their golden goose. It’s about 6% of total revenue (see http://bullfincher.io/companies/microsoft-corporation/revenue-by-segment http://bullfincher.io/companies/microsoft-corporation/revenu...). Microsoft could give Windows away for free and be fine. Of course it’s still a lot of money, so they’re not going to leave a multibillion dollar business on the table. But strategically, preserving its revenue is not their priority.
- warumdarum 4mo agoHow many percent of their revenue funel are dependent directly or indirectly on windows beeing the peoples workstation funneling them towards their subpar products?
- kenjackson 4mo agoProbably some amount. I agree Windows is strategic, but do definitely could see them giving it away and/or fully open sourcing it.
- pjmlp 4mo agoIt is most likely impossible, given the amount of code that is probably still under contractors copyright, or other kinds of licenses.
- smitty1e 4mo ago[laughs in Torvalds.]
- tenderfault 4mo ago[laughs in Gates]
- mattoxic 4mo ago"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.
- WD-42 4mo agoDo people not realize that this just instantly torpedoes credibility and respect? I'm dumbfounded.
- pjmlp 4mo agoGot to meet those KPIs regarding using AI on the job. I thought using AI for everything is the new cool.
- __MatrixMan__ 4mo agoDid Microsoft have credibility and respect? They've been abusive towards their users for decades.
- ciupicri 4mo agoWhy are you saying it's an AI slop?
- mattoxic 4mo ago
- gnabgib 4mo agoPreviously (61 points, 17 days ago, 49 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48187736 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46805841
- jdw64 4mo agoWhat advantages does Azure Linux have compared to Ubuntu?
- speedgoose 4mo agoIt's from Microsoft. Many companies love to be very tightly tied to Microsoft, for some reasons. I never really understood the actual underlying reasons. Perhaps Windows 95 was that good and it's brand loyalty since.
- jdw64 4mo agoBecause someone has to be accountable, right? In business practices, having no clear party responsible for an area you don't fully understand is a difficult problem. Ultimately, I think it's a matter of accountability. Regardless of how lightweight and good Linux is, Windows is still a bit more convenient on the GUI side.
- pjmlp 4mo agoJust like Amazon, Google and even Vercel have their own distros. To have full integration with their cloud services, instead of a random purpose Linux distro. And accountability.
- olavgg 4mo agoWhen I look at the oil & gas sector, I remember MS-DOS + Wordperfect was the beginning. Then Windows 3.1 + Microsoft Office took over, and since that, its been Microsoft, Azure, and SAP. They refuse Google Cloud, AWS, and many still believe open-source is cancer. They are Microsofts best customers. They prefer consultants over hiring software developers, and the consultants just to what they're told and never question the status quo. Whenever I spending time at these companies, my head is filled with dinosaurs. Where I live we have something called The ONS event/Exhibition, where the oil sector gathers to promote themself. 2 years ago AWS had a big stand there, but it was mostly empty. This year, AWS doesn't participate at all.
- speedgoose 4mo ago
- ramon156 4mo agoHow 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?
- szszrk 4mo ago> now they claim they have a linux distro? They have had a linux distro for a while, this one is at least 6 years old. They used it for container workloads, including those visible to client like AKS. It seems with 4 they are using Fedora underneath.
- sourcegrift 4mo agoXenix was microsoft's. If you do ctrl-alt-f2 (to f7), you have Microsoft to thank
- pjmlp 4mo agoThey are valued 4 trillon dollars, lots of FOSS stuff now depends on Microsoft's money. Valve has to translate Windows and DirectX to have any meaningful games on the SteamDeck. Only HNers to think Microsoft is desperate.
- pepperoni_pizza 4mo agoI don't think it's desperate. I'm thinking companies are now paying for Red Hat license and support on Azure VMs and Microsoft wants that money. It's an easy thing for Microsoft sales guy to offer to your bosses' bosses' boss next time they're golfing and having expensive dinner together, "hey you can get your Linux also from us, it will save you money by consolidating vendors and whatnot". I expect many companies will switch to this no matter how much worse it might be than what they had previously.
- 2b3a51 4mo agoBut if people are paying for RHEL they won't be using Fedora for production workloads will they?
- ChrisArchitect 4mo agoPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48187736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48187736
- fortran77 4mo agoMicrosoft was a *nix supporter from the very beginning, with Microsoft Xenix.
- pjmlp 4mo agoThere is even an interview of Bill Gates where he talks about UNIX as the future of computing, naturally with Xenix, how things turn around. Xenix was my introduction to UNIX. "The Future of Xenix" https://archive.org/details/Unix_World_Vol02_10.pdf/page/n21/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/Unix_World_Vol02_10.pdf/page/n21...
- cbdevidal 4mo agoAlso relevant quote that I think about when this subject comes up: “If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won.” ~Linus Torvalds In this case, an entire freaking distro.
- trumpdong 4mo agoa distro is the opposite of an application
- cbdevidal 4mo agoCorrect, but who 25 years ago could have imagined they’d have gone so far as to roll their own? I remember the Balmer days. But the fact that they’re rolling a distro tells me they’re likely also writing software for Linux. I’m sure their Azure Linux contains apps they wrote and maintain, used by the OS. Then there’s Microsoft apps on Android, with Linux under the covers.
- fortran77 4mo agoI develop C#/F# applications in Windows that run on Mac OS, iOS, Linux, and Windows. It's by far the best environment for this sort of thing. You can get native performance in a much lighter environment than those crappy electron apps.
- aykutseker 4mo agoMoving from tdnf to dnf5 is interesting. Most internal platforms get more bespoke over time, not less.
- foltik 4mo agoEven the LLM bot accounts are struggling to find something interesting about this.
- solidarnosc 4mo agoMicrosoft are pieces of shit lads. Run by nonces. Also 4.0, first? Lord give me strength.
- xaerise 4mo agoRead the article. MS have shipped 1.0-3.0 earlier... "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." And if you are still unsure. Checkout the repo: * <https://github.com/microsoft/azurelinux https://github.com/microsoft/azurelinux> or more specifically, the releases * <https://github.com/microsoft/azurelinux/releases https://github.com/microsoft/azurelinux/releases>
- shaunpud 4mo agoSurprised it doesn't have Copilot in the name somewhere
- logicchains 4mo agoDon't give them any ideas..
- classified 4mo agoThat was a glitch, it will be fixed over the weekend. The responsible marketing director will be disciplined.
- pseingatl 4mo ago[flagged]
- piokoch 4mo agoI 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.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- jocelyner 4mo ago[dead]
- PunchyHamster 4mo agoWhy 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
- rswail 4mo agoAmazon Linux is based on Fedora as well.
- kobie12 4mo ago[flagged]
- DANmode 4mo agoI’ll never use anything carrying the Azure name for anything I care about. There, I said it.
- bananaquant 4mo agoIt 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.
- pjmlp 4mo agoAmazon does exactly the same. Piggy backing into Red-Hat work is exactly what everyone using CentOS was doing, but somehow that was ok.
- tenderfault 4mo agoI 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.
- egorfine 4mo agoEmbrace 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.
- surcap526 4mo ago[dead]
- reacweb 4mo agoIt 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.
- rswail 4mo agoOK, 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.
- embedding-shape 4mo ago> 1. It's general purpose in that it is designed to be used to deliver any application software FWIW, it's only the HN title and this article that calls this new distribution "general-purpose". Microsoft themselves say that this the distribution is "Purpose-Built for Azure" (https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/linuxandopensourceblog/announcing-azure-linux-4-0-purpose-built-for-azure-now-in-public-preview/4524267 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/linuxandopensourceb...), I'm not sure how the author got it wrong.
- panny 4mo ago>OK, so this is important not because it comes from Microsoft. No, it IS important because it comes from Microsoft. >If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won. - Linus Torvalds Never in his wildest dreams did he imagine this would happen. Microsoft spent a decade trying to kill Linux via SCO lawfare. Linux has won. Microsoft is completely and utterly defeated.
- endemic 4mo ago> Microsoft is completely and utterly defeated. All the way to the bank, apparently.
- megous 4mo ago> 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.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- VimEscapeArtist 4mo agoOh wow, the first AI-generated Linux! Will it suck monkey balls just as much as Windows 11?
- classified 4mo agoThat, and it will be as secure, reliable and snappy as GitHub! Also, coming from Microslop, the path to ever deeper enshittification is a foregone conclusion. It will be the first "Linux" with ads!
- theandrewbailey 4mo ago> It will be the first "Linux" with ads! Ubuntu 12.10 had Amazon shopping results when you searched from the main menu.
- lanycrost 4mo agoI always prefer to use debian while it comes to linux. Seems you've just made some kind of Amazon Linux copy.