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.

> 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/linuxandopensourceb...), I'm not sure how the author got it wrong.

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

Yeah, 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.

It's general purpose in that it can run any Linux application in numerous different ways, containerized, as a VM, or on specific bare hardware.

You and Microsoft are using the word "general purpose" to mean different things.

This is not generally compatible with different hardware.

Nor does it include things that could be considered applications, like desktop environments etc. It's not designed to be run by an end user on a desktop.

Someone says:

> Here is a general purpose Linux distribution, give it a try!

Where does your mind go? That this is a server-only distribution meant for a specific provider? Or that it's something like Debian, that could be run on servers and desktops alike without much tinkering, or meant for any provider?

FWIW, Microsoft themselves don't seem to call this a "general purpose Linux distribution", I could probably guess why, what Microsoft themselves say is "Purpose-Built for Azure" which sounds much more accurate. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/linuxandopensourceb...

I think the author might have confused (unintentionally or intentionally, who knows?) "general purpose" with "Purpose-Built for Azure", since Microsoft's own announcements get this right, while submission article is littered with this mistake.

Ubuntu server distributions are definitely general purpose.

So if I understand what you're saying, if someone asks you "Hey, could you recommend me a general purpose Linux distribution?", you'd recommend them Ubuntu Server rather than just straight up Ubuntu?

I'd agree both could be used in a general-purpose way, but I'd definitively call one of them more general-purpose than the other.

If they need a general purpose distro for a server, absolutely.

That would likely be a better recommendation than android.

But that wasn't the question, what they ask is specifically "Hey, could you recommend me a general purpose Linux distribution?", would you still first recommend Ubuntu Server?

Most Linux server distributions would be expected to be headless.

"General purpose" Linux distributions (not "server") typically would include a GUI desktop.

A GUI Linux distribution feels vastly more niche than a headless one.

When he said "general purpose" I totally imagined a desktop environment.

According to [1] the guidelines explicitly say to keep editorializing to a specified minimum, unless it is spam. Dont know it this title would allow editorialising

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

They say "please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize".

I think it's misleading and linkbait. The mods would decide what to use instead, this could be "Azure Linux 4.0, Microsoft's Linux distribution for its cloud" or something like this.

Especially given the article says this:

> It is minimal on purpose. Azure Linux ships only what cloud and server workloads need. There is no desktop, no GUI, no general-purpose sprawl.

Yep sure does. Love an article that contradicts its own title. Bonus points for that sentence sounding extremely AI-generated.

You point to a better timeline. Sometimes—when desperately alone—I imagine.

If only the guy who was destined to close a disk operating system deal with IBM hadn’t been goofing around with his plane that fateful day.

We would all be using lisp machines, running smalltalk on microkernels that put the HURD to shame. Just imagine: instead of backslashes and drive letters, we’d have parens. Endless, syntactically-valid parens.

Or CP/M, probably that. But can it run doom?

Sorry to break it to you, but on that timeline, the good things got poisoned. IBM enhanced Lisp with Enterprise Ready features like Spreadsheet Macro Builder, Microsoft took over development of Smalltalk and morphed it into BASIC 2.0, and the HURD community lost a bizarre copyright lawsuit. Fortunately for those folks, an intrepid hacker in the 90s saw some of the interesting ideas in MS-DOS and rebuilt it as LS-DOS. Today, most of their servers and mobile phones run LS-DOS or similar.

LSD-OS would be an AI core unsupported by runtime and operating system that cascades streams of consciousness in a portable cartridge smartphone form factor until mounted on an embodiment to become unified and coherent.

Ah. A common (and understandable) misconception. LSD-OS doesn’t enhance anything in the UX, it just removes the filters that prevent you from seeing reality, man.

Some confuse this with LDS-OS, which makes the user weirdly and unquestionably `nice` by only accepting inputs from protected mode.

That's not at all how it went down.

Please don't spread lies about Gary.

For posterity, parent is correct. The “flying his plane” story is a memeified summary. I did not actually mean that we would have lisp machines otherwise, which was the tell that I was kidding.

For others who did not get the joke, Kindall was kind of a big deal:

https://computerhistory.org/blog/fifty-years-of-the-personal...

> using lisp machines, running smalltalk on microkernels that put the HURD to shame

That future is not different from this future. That road leads down to Javascript and React anyways. (Perhaps with a slightly different syntax.)

sigh .. and SGI would've been the ones to make the killer laptop which morphed into a slick metal pocket dependency for billions ...

Glad that at least we avoided that much more parentheses.

Where is our PL any kind of bracket and other rococo ornamental symbol is at most totally optional?

I 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.

You 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).

I 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.

I would imagine MS employees might (or be made to) either directly or through wsl.

You may be right, its possible however that people running on Azure may use it locally for testing.

I don’t know really. Amazon AL2023 can be used outside aws for example, and people might want the same distro on-prem as the cloud.

It’s not the average joe/jane though.

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?

Don't worry you aren't. Luckily no one will use this distro day to day

I'd say old fashioned Linux would come without any certification or support.

I 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

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?

What I meant was "pure" non-commercial Linux distros like Debian or Arch.

snicker in slackware. get it, thanks for clarifying.

ISV certification is coming.

On-prem hardware support would be interesting, wouldn't it?

without 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.

AFAIK it isn’t a declared term my left shoe is my first general purpose operating system, if i toss an esp32 in there i can probably call it linux too.

Computing changed fast. I'm lucky I bought my new gaming PC last year. Hopefully not my last but the overlords want us to rent forever.

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

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

That, 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!

Surprised it doesn't have Copilot in the name somewhere

That was a glitch, it will be fixed over the weekend. The responsible marketing director will be disciplined.

Don't give them any ideas..

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?

I 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.

But if people are paying for RHEL they won't be using Fedora for production workloads will they?

They 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.

> 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.

Xenix was microsoft's. If you do ctrl-alt-f2 (to f7), you have Microsoft to thank

"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.

Do people not realize that this just instantly torpedoes credibility and respect? I'm dumbfounded.

Did Microsoft have credibility and respect? They've been abusive towards their users for decades.

Got to meet those KPIs regarding using AI on the job.

I thought using AI for everything is the new cool.

No, that's last month. This month the CEOs are getting the AI bills from last month and saying everyone has to stop using AI

Sadly some of them have deep pockets.

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 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.

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

Even the LLM bot accounts are struggling to find something interesting about this.

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

Little 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).

You 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.

The “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.

Even then you can't seem to use RCS from outside of the Apple and Google walled gardens so it probably still counts as some sort of merged extinguish effort.

to be fair to apple one time, RCS is terrible

It’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.

Hello! 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.

> common meme about Google killing their products as evidence of them extinguishing things.

I don't think anyone mentioned Google killing their products? I think you misunderstood my reference that was exclusively Microsoft[0] specific and has nothing to do with shutting down projects. Extinguish doesn't mean close it down in this context. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish was a phrase from some Microsoft exec or VP about embracing some open standard, extending it beyond what it does, and then extinguishing the competition.

Google made Chrome, it was great, then they added things and features that sites often (VERY MUCH LIKE IE USED TO) say "You must use Chrome to visit this website." even when I'm on Firefox, and masking my browser agent enables the website. This is very "old evil" Microsoft like shennanigans.

Google made gmail, people used to have email clients, hell AOL had its own built-in email client with a GUI and all. Now everyone browses email via a browser and is hooked to gmail.

Before YouTube people used Kazaa, Shareazaa etc to share clips much like they do with YouTube, but now there's censorship and automatic censorship via copyright claims that the little guy cannot defend against. I follow amazingly good music YouTube channels that go deeply into how songs are made, which requires playing short samples, its 100% fair use, and gets me to listen to the original songs in many cases, but the record companies want to snag the easy cash so they're heavily discouraged since its time consuming work, fair use, and some goon at a Music company is jut flagging all their videos and profiting off someone else's hard work.

There's also Android, which embraced Linux, extended it and extinguished the competition (Ubuntu phone anyone? You know, an ACTUAL Linux phone).

There's also Google Talk / Google Voice / Google Chat / GChat (and the 5000 other names for it!) which was built on top of XMPP. I even tested logging into gmail once, and messaging my facebook account (FB Messenger used to be XMPP!) and it worked. They eventually shut down the openness of XMPP and closed them up (both Google and Facebook[2]).

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5714557

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9266769

Agreed on the Google front here.

That's why they're pushing hardware attestation so aggressively

Not 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/linuxandopensourceb...

As 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.

Same 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#W...>

Time 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.

Extinguish Windows morelike...

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.

Was it vibe coded?

> 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.

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

There 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...

Also 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.

This is not the first distro coming out of Microsoft, see Azure Sphere OS.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/shows/internet-of-things-s...

I would rather say UNIX won the server room, Linux just happens to be the UNIX clone most people hack on nowadays, and can change tomorrow as companies take over and people like Linus eventually pass the torch.

You can already see that on embedded, other FOSS OSes are being adopted, without GPL licensing, like Zephyr, NutXX, FreeRTOS,...

a distro is the opposite of an application

Correct, 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.

I write C# 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.

What advantages does Azure Linux have compared to Ubuntu?

It'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.

When 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.

Oil and gas? Dinosaurs? Can see the connection. Good luck with it next time you are with them.

Yes I think we live in the same country.

Just 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.

Because 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.

You say that, but Microsoft has contributed to Wine!

Both in terms of code and help, on occasion. Microsoft gave Mono to Wine, and while Wine has a ban on accepting code from people who have seen the source of Microsoft Windows, they have, if I recall correctly, accepted documentation on Windows Internals from Microsoft themselves.

Which is rather kind.

They could of also pulled an Oracle , claimed the APIs are copyrighted and sued.

WINE, even if right couldn't afford to fight.

I can even imagine official Linux support for the Surface tablets.

Infact, Microsoft makes very little off its consumer OS. They could even give up the market entirely and bless a distro with solid WINE support for legacy applications.

> They could of also pulled an Oracle , claimed the APIs are copyrighted and sued.

They did, well - not the suing part, but everything else in your sentence; including helping Oracle "pull an Oracle". In 2013, Microsoft filed an Amicus brief in support of Oracle's[1] position, appealing against a judges ruling that APIs cannot be copyrighted. At the time, Microsoft were also trying to get an Android-compatible runtime on Windows off the ground, which was incredibly awkward. They came to their right mind by the time 2019 rolled by and the case had been appealed to the Supreme Court. At this occasion, Microsoft switched teams and filed an amicus in support of Google. I don't know if Microsoft's 2016 release of WSL had anything to do with it.

1. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/microsoft-forese...

Technically they gave mono to the wine project

>MS will never contribute to things such as Wine and Proton and kill its golden goose.

I think Microsoft is contributing to Linux kernel. Their golden gooses are Azure and Office which have nothing to do with Wine and Proton.

It wouldn't be too weird if they will release a win32 compatibility layer for Linux in the future as they might not want to maintain a full operating system.

Nope, they just doubled down on Linux containers integration on Windows, with CLI and OS APIs to drive them from C, WinRT and .NET, that is the main way they see Linux going forward.

Azure Linux 4.0 will be the new WSL default distro, after going into stable.

Source, Linux sessions at BUILD 2026.

DeathArrow also touches on this, but to complete:

Windows stopped being the Golden Goose a long time ago, probably from the point Satya Nadella became CEO.

A visual aid from a quick search: https://visuwire.com/microsoft/

For instance Bing and LinkedIn combined bring in more than Windows at this point. And XBox is basically on par.

Their money makers don't rely on Windows either, so the OS isn't even a useable moat, which is why they can afford to enshittify the consumer version to death.

[Edit: fixed the CEO name]

Sundar Pichai does not work in Microsoft, though. A bit weird to anchor the MS timeline on his position. When he became the CEO, actually? I don’t remember the year even approximately

Pretty sure he meant Satya Nadella but picked the wrong name...

Sorry it was a brain fart. I meant Satya Nadella.

Ah, okay, my bad. Got too focused on the name. Googled the dates, Satya became CEO in 2014 and Sundar became CEO in 2015, so it’s actually not that different, especially when we look at the events more than a decade later.

I 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.

It’s already no longer their golden goose. It’s about 6% of total revenue (see 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.

How many percent of their revenue funel are dependent directly or indirectly on windows beeing the peoples workstation funneling them towards their subpar products?

In the Enterprise, they'll fight tooth and nail to maintain that synergy. In the small business and consumer markets, people are having a very slow divorce from Windows, and Microsoft is well aware. MS365 is an ok product and can absolutely thrive on its own without Windows.

Probably some amount. I agree Windows is strategic, but do definitely could see them giving it away and/or fully open sourcing it.

It is most likely impossible, given the amount of code that is probably still under contractors copyright, or other kinds of licenses.

They don't have to provide the source to give the OS away for free.

The difference between BSD and GPL in one sentence.

[laughs in Torvalds.]

[laughs in Gates]

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

There, I said it.

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

Amazon Linux is based on Fedora as well.

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

Tldr a MSFT maintained fedora fork tuned for Azure hardware.

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

Read 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>

or more specifically, the releases

* <https://github.com/microsoft/azurelinux/releases>