4 ms·

Azure Linux Desktop

75 points by haydenbarnes 4mo ago

cryo32 4mo ago
That’ll be deprecated in 6 months. Nope.
- pjmlp 4mo ago
  This is not official. Azure Linux 4.0 is the next version of Azure Linux (duh), and WSL base distro.
  - sterlind 4mo ago
    is it replacing CBL-Mariner as the utility distro for WSL?
    - pjmlp 4mo ago
      Yes, Azure Linux 4 is the evolution of CBL Mariner. Search for Linux talks on Microsoft Developer channel, related to BUILD 2026.
leoncos 4mo ago
Great work! I really hope it can be designed to be agent-friendly. The current CodeX/Claude code sandbox functionality is very limited; it would be wonderful to use this as a sandbox.
- sshine 4mo ago
  I use bubblewrap inside Ubuntu inside WSL. https://github.com/nix-tools/bubblebox https://github.com/nix-tools/bubblebox
  - haydenbarnes 4mo ago
    I had issues with bubblewrap inside the container and creating namespaces. Need to dig into a bit further.
    - sshine 4mo ago
      Are you saying you're having problems with bubblewrap in general, or specifically with bubblebox that I linked to? Feel free to submit bug reports. I actively use it on NixOS, Ubuntu WSL and nix-darwin.
baq 4mo ago
The year of the Linux desktop. Meanwhile I’m stuck on macOS for work. Oh the irony.
- PowerElectronix 4mo ago
  We're getting there. But I doubt your average joe will ever use anything that may require even once to type something on a terminal.
  - bokkies 4mo ago
    The thing is now the average Joe doesn't need to. Just tell Claude to fix it
    - carlosjobim 4mo ago
      Imagine if different sectors worked like that. To go to a restaurant, each customer brings their own private chef to let loose in the kitchen. Wouldn't it make more sense for OS makers to "tell Claude" to make a user friendly GUI for their terminal commands?
      - jack_pp 4mo ago
        Funnily enough the terminal which was the reason people said linux is too much of a hassle is the very thing that now makes it so you can easily fix your computer with natural language. Sure the problem is it will still come with problems out of the box but that's mostly on laptop manufacturers. At least now you can easily fix them with an agent. For me it's much more fun to tell my computer what I want and to get it than to scroll through a settings GUI but to each his own
      - Magniquick 4mo ago
        That's what KDE (and gnome, to a lesser extent) have been trying to do for a long while. The fundamental issue is that a GUI is a static abstraction over a CLI that allows for millions of potential combinations. You can only expose so many options in a menu before the interface becomes completely unusable. To expand on your analogy, it’s like running a restaurant that only uses automated vending machines to serve food. It works perfectly fine if someone just wants toasted bread. But the moment a customer asks for more than toasted bread, you're toasted. Imho, the best bet for the future is a bunch of pre loaded llm skills and clis an agent can work with: getting the chef to use pre-approved hardware, sorta, that can cook up anything that is needed.
bpavuk 4mo ago
I am more excited about WinUI Reactor than anything else. the gap between Compose/React thinking and XAML thinking is enormous, and Reactor just bridges it. I am curious about interoperability - how would one include a Reactor-based component into existing WinUI 3 app? how would one include a XAML-based control from some other library into a (future) modern WinUI Reactor app?
- pjmlp 4mo ago
  Don't be, if the WinUI team past performance is anything to come by. They will leave it half baked like everything else since Project Reunion was announced in 2020.
neogodless 4mo ago
More on Azure Linux 4.0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48407499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48407499 Azure Linux 4.0 is Microsoft's first general-purpose Linux (boxofcables.dev) 1 day ago | 143 comments
sublimefire 4mo ago
Even within MS Azure Linux is at odds because it is not working in WSL out of the box. Folks had to port stuff to AZL away from ubuntu but without an easy path to use WSL to continue development. Sure you could adopt it but there is something fundamentally fragmented if such an adoption vector is missing in WSL. Now this… why do I need AZL desktop?
- cyanydeez 4mo ago
  my theory is Microsoft's infrastructure does not yield as well do the best AI tools right now, which is all bash based; so they're struggling to 'catch up' so they can achieve at the least minimum gains.
- haydenbarnes 4mo ago
  > it is not working in WSL out of the box I added a bunch of weird stuff for the GUI and PowerShell for fun. The base container boots out of the box just fine.
- pjmlp 4mo ago
  Of course not, people talk about what they don't know. This was released this week, and Microsoft clearly stated it is coming to WSL later this year. But people love to take conclusions without informing themselves.
dzonga 4mo ago
someone once said - windows will die or will be killed by Microsoft - when they start pushing a windows flavored linux distro. with all the arm chips coming into consumer hardware - seems we are about to be there.
abc123abc123 4mo ago
Microsoft Linux... what an abomination. But each generation has to learn the lessons of the previous one, again and again. Have fun with the lock-in and e.e.e. Microsoft-fans!
- lordleft 4mo ago
  The return of Xenix :)
- pjmlp 4mo ago
  Devs already forgotten the IE lesson and have offered the Web on a plate to Google.
AshamedCaptain 4mo ago
Bluecurve? Is this some type of delayed April Fools?
- haydenbarnes 4mo ago
  I was hoping someone would catch that.
embedding-shape 4mo ago
> It is a general purpose server and container distribution. My god, it isn't, where are people getting that from? The previous submission (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48407499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48407499) from the very same author got it wrong both times? Microsoft themselves call it "Purpose-Built for Azure", why cannot the other Microsoft/Windows salesmen also call it that instead of "general purpose server and container distribution"?
- hparadiz 4mo ago
  Both of those things are true in different ways. Purpose built for azure probably means integration with azure meta data APIs and kernel specific tweaks for the hardware. It could also be general purpose for what you can run on it. Basically it's a curated distro. Not complicated or anything different from what AWS and GCE are doing.
  - yndoendo 4mo ago
    Your statement is contradicting with stating it was Purposely built for Azure. Someone would have to make a Ubuntu equivalent and use Azure Linux as the base to turn it into a general purpose Linux OS. Personally, I don't trust Microsoft and their Linux distro with how they Enshitified Windows OS and all of their other software products. Add in the fact that Microsoft likes to multi-count CVEs, per distro, instead of the actual flaw to try and make Windows OS look better when it comes to security. Microsoft is a bad actor.
  - embedding-shape 4mo ago
    > It could also be general purpose for what you can run on it. Yeah of course, it's a Linux distribution. But feels like a marketing push when multiple people suddenly go "oh yeah Microsoft building a general purpose Linux distribution" when that's not what's happening. So what if it isn't general purpose and built purposefully for Azure? It doesn't remove anything, just being more accurate with how it's being marketed.
    - hparadiz 4mo ago
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
ashitlerferad 4mo ago
AI slop

Azure Linux Desktop

75 points by haydenbarnes 4mo ago

cryo32 4mo ago

That’ll be deprecated in 6 months. Nope.

pjmlp 4mo ago
This is not official. Azure Linux 4.0 is the next version of Azure Linux (duh), and WSL base distro.
- sterlind 4mo ago
  is it replacing CBL-Mariner as the utility distro for WSL?
  - pjmlp 4mo ago
    Yes, Azure Linux 4 is the evolution of CBL Mariner. Search for Linux talks on Microsoft Developer channel, related to BUILD 2026.

leoncos 4mo ago

Great work! I really hope it can be designed to be agent-friendly. The current CodeX/Claude code sandbox functionality is very limited; it would be wonderful to use this as a sandbox.

sshine 4mo ago
I use bubblewrap inside Ubuntu inside WSL. https://github.com/nix-tools/bubblebox https://github.com/nix-tools/bubblebox
- haydenbarnes 4mo ago
  I had issues with bubblewrap inside the container and creating namespaces. Need to dig into a bit further.
  - sshine 4mo ago
    Are you saying you're having problems with bubblewrap in general, or specifically with bubblebox that I linked to? Feel free to submit bug reports. I actively use it on NixOS, Ubuntu WSL and nix-darwin.

baq 4mo ago

The year of the Linux desktop. Meanwhile I’m stuck on macOS for work. Oh the irony.

PowerElectronix 4mo ago
We're getting there. But I doubt your average joe will ever use anything that may require even once to type something on a terminal.
- bokkies 4mo ago
  The thing is now the average Joe doesn't need to. Just tell Claude to fix it
  - carlosjobim 4mo ago
    Imagine if different sectors worked like that. To go to a restaurant, each customer brings their own private chef to let loose in the kitchen. Wouldn't it make more sense for OS makers to "tell Claude" to make a user friendly GUI for their terminal commands?
    - jack_pp 4mo ago
      Funnily enough the terminal which was the reason people said linux is too much of a hassle is the very thing that now makes it so you can easily fix your computer with natural language. Sure the problem is it will still come with problems out of the box but that's mostly on laptop manufacturers. At least now you can easily fix them with an agent. For me it's much more fun to tell my computer what I want and to get it than to scroll through a settings GUI but to each his own
    - Magniquick 4mo ago
      That's what KDE (and gnome, to a lesser extent) have been trying to do for a long while. The fundamental issue is that a GUI is a static abstraction over a CLI that allows for millions of potential combinations. You can only expose so many options in a menu before the interface becomes completely unusable. To expand on your analogy, it’s like running a restaurant that only uses automated vending machines to serve food. It works perfectly fine if someone just wants toasted bread. But the moment a customer asks for more than toasted bread, you're toasted. Imho, the best bet for the future is a bunch of pre loaded llm skills and clis an agent can work with: getting the chef to use pre-approved hardware, sorta, that can cook up anything that is needed.

bpavuk 4mo ago

I am more excited about WinUI Reactor than anything else. the gap between Compose/React thinking and XAML thinking is enormous, and Reactor just bridges it. I am curious about interoperability - how would one include a Reactor-based component into existing WinUI 3 app? how would one include a XAML-based control from some other library into a (future) modern WinUI Reactor app?

pjmlp 4mo ago
Don't be, if the WinUI team past performance is anything to come by. They will leave it half baked like everything else since Project Reunion was announced in 2020.

neogodless 4mo ago

More on Azure Linux 4.0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48407499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48407499 Azure Linux 4.0 is Microsoft's first general-purpose Linux (boxofcables.dev) 1 day ago | 143 comments

sublimefire 4mo ago

Even within MS Azure Linux is at odds because it is not working in WSL out of the box. Folks had to port stuff to AZL away from ubuntu but without an easy path to use WSL to continue development. Sure you could adopt it but there is something fundamentally fragmented if such an adoption vector is missing in WSL. Now this… why do I need AZL desktop?

cyanydeez 4mo ago
my theory is Microsoft's infrastructure does not yield as well do the best AI tools right now, which is all bash based; so they're struggling to 'catch up' so they can achieve at the least minimum gains.
haydenbarnes 4mo ago
> it is not working in WSL out of the box I added a bunch of weird stuff for the GUI and PowerShell for fun. The base container boots out of the box just fine.
pjmlp 4mo ago
Of course not, people talk about what they don't know. This was released this week, and Microsoft clearly stated it is coming to WSL later this year. But people love to take conclusions without informing themselves.

dzonga 4mo ago

someone once said - windows will die or will be killed by Microsoft - when they start pushing a windows flavored linux distro. with all the arm chips coming into consumer hardware - seems we are about to be there.

abc123abc123 4mo ago

Microsoft Linux... what an abomination. But each generation has to learn the lessons of the previous one, again and again. Have fun with the lock-in and e.e.e. Microsoft-fans!

lordleft 4mo ago
The return of Xenix :)
pjmlp 4mo ago
Devs already forgotten the IE lesson and have offered the Web on a plate to Google.

AshamedCaptain 4mo ago

Bluecurve? Is this some type of delayed April Fools?

haydenbarnes 4mo ago
I was hoping someone would catch that.

embedding-shape 4mo ago

> It is a general purpose server and container distribution. My god, it isn't, where are people getting that from? The previous submission (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48407499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48407499) from the very same author got it wrong both times? Microsoft themselves call it "Purpose-Built for Azure", why cannot the other Microsoft/Windows salesmen also call it that instead of "general purpose server and container distribution"?

hparadiz 4mo ago
Both of those things are true in different ways. Purpose built for azure probably means integration with azure meta data APIs and kernel specific tweaks for the hardware. It could also be general purpose for what you can run on it. Basically it's a curated distro. Not complicated or anything different from what AWS and GCE are doing.
- yndoendo 4mo ago
  Your statement is contradicting with stating it was Purposely built for Azure. Someone would have to make a Ubuntu equivalent and use Azure Linux as the base to turn it into a general purpose Linux OS. Personally, I don't trust Microsoft and their Linux distro with how they Enshitified Windows OS and all of their other software products. Add in the fact that Microsoft likes to multi-count CVEs, per distro, instead of the actual flaw to try and make Windows OS look better when it comes to security. Microsoft is a bad actor.
- embedding-shape 4mo ago
  > It could also be general purpose for what you can run on it. Yeah of course, it's a Linux distribution. But feels like a marketing push when multiple people suddenly go "oh yeah Microsoft building a general purpose Linux distribution" when that's not what's happening. So what if it isn't general purpose and built purposefully for Azure? It doesn't remove anything, just being more accurate with how it's being marketed.
  - hparadiz 4mo ago

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

ashitlerferad 4mo ago

AI slop