Microsoft surprises with its first server Linux distribution: Azure Linux 4.0
Microsoft surprises with its first server Linux distribution: Azure Linux 4.0
Publish Date: 2026-05-18 18:53:00
Source Domain: www.zdnet.com
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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Microsoft released its first full Linux distro: Azure Linux 4.0
- Azure Linux has split into Azure Container Linux and the new virtual machine edition: Azure Linux.
- Microsoft effectively admits that it’s a de facto Linux-based company.
Minneapolis – So, there I was at Open Source Summit North America, listening to Brendan Burns, co-founder of Kubernetes and today Microsoft’s Corporate VP of Azure Cloud Native and Management Platform, and Open Source, talk about the evolution from open-source to agentic AI. Then, in the middle of his presentation, he said, “When I started in Azure 10 years ago, it was not the majority operating system running on the Azure cloud. It has become the majority operating system running on the Azure cloud in the past 10 years. And today, I think we’re really excited to announce that we’re going to be having Microsoft’s open-source Linux distribution, a supported version of Linux supported by Microsoft, available on Azure, out for anybody to use.”
I blinked. Backstage, Jim Zemlin, the Linux Foundation’s CEO, blinked, and all the Linux-savvy people in the crowd went “Huh?”
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Microsoft has released Linux-based programs before. The first was the Azure Sphere edge computing device. This was followed by CBL-Marnier, a Linux-based container software platform, which was later renamed Azure Linux. Never, however, had Microsoft released a general-purpose Linux distro… until now.
That was it. That was all he said. Zemlin called him back onstage and asked if he’d really just announced a Microsoft Linux distro. Burns replied that yes, he had. Zemlin continued, “When Microsoft joined the Linux Foundation, there was this big conspiracy theory that somehow the Linux Foundation was undermining open source in partnership with Microsoft, and now you announce that you’re…
