Microsoft Releases Its First Linux Server

Microsoft has released Azure Linux, its first general-purpose server distribution, making the Fedora-based operating system available to all Azure cloud customers.

Microsoft has officially launched Azure Linux as a general-purpose server distribution for all its Azure customers, marking the company's first-ever server Linux distribution. The new operating system is based on the Fedora project. Previously, Azure Linux was used internally by Microsoft for its own services, but this release makes it a publicly available option for anyone running workloads on the Azure cloud platform. The announcement was met with surprise by some in the open-source community, including the CEO of the Linux Foundation, who noted the significant shift in Microsoft's strategy over the years.

Alongside the general-purpose version, Microsoft is also productizing Flatcar Linux as Azure Container Linux. This provides a specialized, immutable operating system designed specifically for hosting containers, catering to modern, cloud-native application development. By offering its own optimized Linux distribution, Microsoft aims to provide a tightly integrated and secure environment for running services on Azure. This move gives developers and IT teams a first-party option for their Linux workloads, potentially simplifying support and improving performance while positioning Microsoft to compete more directly with other Linux distributions popular in the cloud.