Microsoft made a Linux distro, and it’s not what you’d expect
Microsoft made a Linux distro, and it’s not what you’d expect
Publish Date: 2026-06-27 08:00:00
Source Domain: www.howtogeek.com
When I heard that Microsoft had created a real Linux distro, my first instinct was to look out the window for airborne pork. But as with WSL, it seems that Microsoft has become a Linux distributor with Azure Linux. I decided to give this distro a spin.
What Is Azure Linux?
A real Linux distro from Microsoft, for VMs and the cloud
Azure Linux is a Linux distribution created by Microsoft. About 20 years ago, this would have been a strange sentence to write, with former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, as reported by The Register, denouncing Linux as “cancer” and “communism.” But as the software world has moved away from Microsoft and toward Linux-based cloud computing, Microsoft has had to compete.
As the name suggests, it’s intended mainly for Microsoft’s own Azure cloud computing service. The primary target is to deploy containers. You can download it as a standard Linux distro with an ISO, similar to other distros.
Azure Linux has a specialized use case, but if you make use of the graphical abilities in WSL to display GUI Linux apps, you’re already using Azure Linux. WSL uses it to run X11 and Wayland apps.
Azure Linux is based on Fedora, so anyone familiar with that system should feel fairly comfortable with it. The current version is a 4.0 beta, which Microsoft advises is not ready for production use.
