Microsoft Reportedly Looking At Rebasing Azure Linux On Fedora

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BK_Rich@reddit

Do they mention what they use Linux for on their back end?

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popcapdogeater@reddit

From the way I understand it, cloud infrastructure in basically all Linux. Kubernates, Docker, countless other tools used for back-end cloud server stuff are mostly linux-only apps.

Microsoft basically had to create their own distro in order to integrate into that ecosystem.

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siodhe@reddit

Not like they've ever made any other correct choices with respect to Unix. The failfest continues.

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xalibr@reddit

If you are wondering, Azure Linux currently is an own distribution, not a fork of another one, though it already uses RPM.

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xeoron@reddit

I am more wondering when MS Windows will be replaced by a MS official Windows Linux distro using explorer as the UI shell and the rest is all Linux.

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I theorized this from the perspective of gaming. Because once Xbox console is dead, you wouldn't need D3D for windows, you can use other open standards, whatever that is. And once that happens, everyone is optimizing for the open standard, you don't need Windows for gaming anymore.

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degaart@reddit

What would microsoft gain from that? Windows is notorious for its backwards compatibility, you can run an app written for windows nt 3.51 unmodified and it'll work on windows 11 without problems. Switching their kernel to linux means they now become another linux distro which has no apps, who is gonna use that? No vendor is gonna ditch all their windows-dependent IP just because microsoft switched to an incompatible kernel. Then we have drivers. Who is gonna rewrite them? Then we have maintenance and support contracts. Will microsoft be able to maintain two codebases, the old NT-based one they are contractually obligated to support, and the linux-based one, which has no apps and is just a money sink.

This is not going to happen. Stop dreaming.

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Ulu-Mulu-no-die@reddit

Windows is notorious for its backwards compatibility, you can run an app written for windows nt 3.51 unmodified and it'll work on windows 11 without problems

I have an old piece of software made for Windows 95 that I never replaced because there's nothing like it, it stopped working on Windows 10, doesn't work on 11.

It still works fine on Linux with WINE.

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MidnightBlue5002@reddit

well, there you go. Your app works in WINE so all of the (literally) hundreds of millions of legacy windows apps that exist on the planet will also work on WINE.

Wow. OK. Sure.

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iamarealhuman4real@reddit

I often think that Wine/Proton has a better chance of running old games than modern Windows.

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martyn_hare@reddit

The driver layers are mostly kernel independent and Microsoft already maintained two kernels with support for one set of ABIs before. So it's not impossible for them, and it's also not unprofitable for them either. It used to be a deliberate strategy for them until the mid-00s.

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DesiOtaku@reddit

Think more about the MS's profit margin rather than the actual needs of the business. What will make MS more profit? Selling cloud services for a OS they spend little R&D money on, or selling a single license of an OS that takes a lot of time and money to maintain backwards compatibility with modern hardware? Microslop is trying to move to services rather than products and the fact that they didn't maintain perfect backwards compatibility with their ARM version of Windows shows they are willing to make compromises in that field. It won't be long before MS says "Yeah, backwards compatibility isn't profitable for us anymore so you are on your own, good luck".

As for support contracts, they all expire at some point and I am sure MS will no longer renew any contract that says it must maintain perfect backwards compatibility or will just do some kind of built-in VM method of running the app (like Apple did with Mac OS 9 for a while).

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BenL90@reddit

Probably WSL2 will be more powerful. I'm feeling crazy now that I can run Windows Container and Linux container in same machine on layer 1 OS in cheap Thinkpad using HyperV seat side by side. Never once cross in my mind this would happen 10 years ago..

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MrMelon54@reddit

I find WSL2 to be significantly faster than windows when working with heavy io operations like writing large files or switching branches with git. Though I am unsure if this is an issue with stock win11 or corporate bloat. Running the Linux kernel natively on my personal desktop and laptop always feels so much smoother and snappy.

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enigmamonkey@reddit

Corp bloat is definitely a factor.

That said, if you’re managing files on the Win native filesystem from within WSL2, then that’s likely the classic VM->Host file share slowdown. But I will say working with files in the WSL2 native filesystem still feels far faster for me over the Win11 native on a corp machine, by far. Basically, from fastest to slowest for me WSL2 native > Win 11 native > WSL2/Win11 crossover.

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MrMelon54@reddit

Yeah I get the same results. I also noticed that tab autocomplete is instant in WSL2 but with git bash it is so slow. I assume this is probably related to the filesystem performance.

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myrsnipe@reddit

Might be an issue with nofejs ecosystem, but I can count minutes difference between npm install of the same project depending if I'm in wsl or windows land (obviously project is cloned on the correct side of the VM disk so that's not the factor)

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BenL90@reddit

I wanted to use my personal desktop for it, sadly I need to do remote works using Windows 365 and the RDP with native OVD optimization for MS Teams only works on Windows...

So Only WSL2 to rescue :')

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natermer@reddit

What would microsoft gain from that?

They get to go back to their roots as being the primary Unix vendor for commodity PC-based hardware.

Microsoft OS adventures started off with Unix, not DOS. IBM just wanted a OS for the PC that wouldn't eat into sales of more expensive units.

Regardless Windows is moving to a model were virtual machines play a important role in how the OS works on a fundamental level. With VBS enclaves and the rest.

With Linux being utterly dominate in the cloud and becoming more and more important on developer workstations and for AI stuff... I wouldn't be surprised if something approaching "Microsoft Linux desktop" becomes a option for people.

I imagine switching to it be akin to switching from Gnome to KDE on Linux. Just log out, select "linux" and log back in.

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dutch_connection_uk@reddit

Was it not CP/M derivative?

I know that they had a UNIX variant called Xenix, but I think that was a pretty different product.

To be fair CP/M kind of was meant to be copyright-non-infringing off-brand UNIX for microcomputers.

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_AACO@reddit

I mean, there should be no one better to improve wine than MS themselves.

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KnowZeroX@reddit

What they gain is simple, MS wants everyone on cloud. Developing windows in itself is a money sink. If they switch to linux, it would reduce the financial burden on them. As for all the backwards compatibility of windows stuff, that will be run in the cloud.

Just imagine how much money they can get more if they make people pay a subscription for running their stuff?

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DeClouded5960@reddit

Who hurt you? Better yet, show us on the doll where Linux touched you.

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xeoron@reddit

They would do it for better security, less cost for upkeep and most of their products and income don't come from Windows the OS so it is about maxing profits and resources

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lewphone@reddit

There's tons of GNU and other open-source apps that they can use, and they already do with Azure Linux. Drivers can be wrapped, and legacy software can be containerized.

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RetiredApostle@reddit

Time to heavily invest in Microsoft Wine.

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Maleficent-One1712@reddit

Considering how they keep giving up on their own products, I guess it's possible.

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jabrodo@reddit

That plus Valve nearly single handedly breaking Windows' grip on desktop gaming. Powershell, C#, VS Code, .NET, among others are all ported. I'm really failing to see the business case for MS to continue developing their own from scratch operating system. Yes it's a major portion of their revenue and will be a large effort to fully sunset and transition...but then you don't have to do kernal maintenance and get to fully crowd source out a good portion of the ecosystem. Develop Azure Linux into a proper desktop OS, fork another, purchase Red Hat or Canonical. I'd be really surprised if they havent already had some discussion about it.

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MidnightBlue5002@reddit

purchase Red Hat it would be interesting to see IBM sell Red Hat to Microsoft. That would be quite a financial gain for them.

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huskypuppers@reddit

Man, I only want this because MS will either develop enough that you can use all (newer) Windows programs on Linux or they'll give a giant middle finger to the likes of Adobe, Autodesk and Dassault and force them to finally make Linux versions (which I'd personally like to see a lot more)

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dutch_connection_uk@reddit

It annoys me that Ableton Live has a Linux version that developers use internally, but they don't want to support Linux so they do not ship it.

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dutch_connection_uk@reddit

Powershell, .NET, and VS Code were all meant to be cross platform from the beginning. Maybe that was a mistake but it's not some coup against Microsoft. VS Code was also based on Atom, so it piggybacked off of an existing open source effort.

I think for MS right now they're pretty happy with their linux subsystem and thus don't feel a particular rush to abandon their NT kernel. Maybe they might offer a commercial desktop linux with support as a separate product at some point but I think they'd probably just tell people to use Windows.

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xeoron@reddit

Just think of all the development money they will save being FOSS and not full of AI slop

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microserf86@reddit

Regular Home or Regular Pro? And which Which one do I need to use Outlook (New classic)? Pls help

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xeoron@reddit

Outlook the app comes from with either... unless you are using webmail.

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General_Alfalfa6339@reddit

My work computer has two different versions of Outlook. The “old” Outlook that is…ok, then the new and improved Outlook it keeps prompting me to try. I tried and it’s awful.

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thnderbolt@reddit

Hey it's progress! New Outlook has fancy features like no more adding signature to calendar invites.

Who needs signatures in calendar invites anyway!

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bankroll5441@reddit

Same thing for Teams, would I use Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Teams (personal) or Microsoft Teams (work/school)? So many options!

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getridofwires@reddit

You need Microsoft Teams Pro Gold Edition with the following add-ons. Click below for information and pricing!

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sCeege@reddit

Obligatory?

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bankroll5441@reddit

It's insane that this actually exists now with "Teams Premium". I started getting adds and a banner for it in Teams about a month or two ago, despite having a 365 premium license lmao

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microserf86@reddit

I'd like one Teams Copilot (homeschool) please

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Martin8412@reddit

Whichever you pick you’ll be under-licensed when audit comes

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Normal_Usual7367@reddit

NT kernel is very good. No reason to replace it, it's just the bloat MS added on Windows that's bad.

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theadwaita@reddit

based sub for not downvoting you for speaking the truth.

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Martin8412@reddit

So what you’re saying is that we’ll soon be seeing GNU/NT?

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teleprax@reddit

GNUT

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KnowZeroX@reddit

I doubt, but let us be honest if they went that route it would be rust coreutils/NT, no way they will take the GPL if they can avoid it

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Normal_Usual7367@reddit

lesgooo

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enricojr@reddit

So technically a distro is just the Linux kernel + other software to provide functionality, and WSL basically runs the genuine Linux kernel alongside the Windows kernel, so Windows 10/11 are already Linux distros.

And if you go with that definition, Linux has already conquered the desktop space :-)

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KB8084@reddit

sure buddy

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MikeExMachina@reddit

They could still make money by maintaining and selling their own version of proton/wine for legacy compatibility with the windows API

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Business_Reindeer910@reddit

but why. the underlying OS under the compat layer gunk is pretty decent.

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airmantharp@reddit

I've been expecting this for five years now...

Imagine the operating system... just working!

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Indolent_Bard@reddit

It would be extremely locked down because they don't want you in control of your hardware. Otherwise you you can't get widevine l3 support, so no 4k Netflix. With Framework 13 Pro advertising how long 4k Netflix battery life is, that actually matters.

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DeconFrost24@reddit

Why does everyone keep saying this. It buys them nothing. Whether you like it or not there's a bunch of Win32 software that's out there that matters. There's a lot to disliked about Windows userspace (and their licensing bullshit), but the kernel isn't a problem. Kernels are not operating systems.

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theaveragemillenial@reddit

Within the next 5-10 years.

Once valve and the wine team have done all the hard work of making windows software compatible with Linux.

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ianc1215@reddit

Honestly... That's a possibility. It would make the transition from A to B would be far more painless for people used to a certain layout.

Technically it would be sort of a cycle. DOS shell got Windows, windows become a UI for Linux. Hmmm

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blackcain@reddit

When we Desktop Linux people do our jobs and get linux marketshare on the desktop to the tipping point. Then they'll just make a windows based on the linux kernel and port all the toollkits over. Since flatpak can actually run on WSL 2 they can also fork the flathub.org and/or create a store that supports flatpaks as well.

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hi65435@reddit

...and their projects apparently also use Fedora already (see public OSS Pipelines) What's left is the customers

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e_t_@reddit

Amazon Linux 2023 is cherry-picked from Fedora, too. Does either Amazon or Microsoft really need their own distro or is it just a pride thing?

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redundant78@reddit

it's less pride and more about controlling the supply chain. they need to ship security patches on their own timeline without waiting on upstream maintainers, and they strip the package set down to a minimal surface area for containers/VMs. running someone else's full distro as-is means inheriting their priorities and release schedule, which doesn't fly when you're responsible for millions of customer workloads.

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KnowZeroX@reddit

I think people over complicate what a distro is. A distro is a preconfigured set of defaults. Even in theory if someone were to load up their own wallpapers and rebrand it, it is a new distro. Every windows pc with its own oem disk software is in theory its own windows distro.

So if they are going to preload their own tools on it, then yes it would be its own distro. There is little point of them using vanilla without their tooling. And at that point it is their own distro.

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Junior_Option1176@reddit

Well ublue is trying to kill the distro concept with distroless systems

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cgaWolf@reddit

There's an atheist joke somewhere in there, but i'm too tires to make it well.

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SoilMassive6850@reddit

Even more fundamental than any preconfigured defaults is the packages and software distributed by the distribution. Sure, whatever the packages drop under /etc/ or which software is included by default is important, but the most important work of a distribution is the work in compiling and distributing compatible versions of the thousands of possibly interdependent pieces of software.

This involves testing and managing updates for potentially tens of thousands of packages people rely on to be both secure and keep working according to the stability promises of the distribution.

Something like Ubuntu or Mint wouldn't be worth much without the things they get from Debian and same applies to most "derivative" distributions.

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natermer@reddit

Does either Amazon or Microsoft really need their own distro or is it just a pride thing?

They need their own customizations to be certain.

And they are their own distributions.

Amazon Linux 2 was more or less a clone of CentOS 7. Most of the RPMs from EPEL and CentOS was binary compatible. They had a few changes and enhancements... like changing the GCC version and such things. Causes a couple issues here or there in terms of compatibility, but not a big deal.

Amazon Linux 2023 is much more its own thing. Amazon maintains their own set of RPMs for it now and EPEL isn't compatible. Which is a bit of a shame.

I am sure they have their reasons for it. Just not sure what the exact logic is.

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cusco@reddit

Should learn to trust Debian stability 😅

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0riginal-Syn@reddit

I love Debian, but enterprises use Red Hat far more than any other distro, and it is not close. It is an area my company works in a lot.

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cusco@reddit

Red hat enterprise it’s all about buying safety from headaches trough contracts.

You need to buy it and therefore outsource responsibility

Now for those downvoting me, please present your arguments.

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0riginal-Syn@reddit

Part of it but it is the standard in the enterprise. I deal with a lot of these enterprise and in the enterprise you see Red Hat, followed by SUSE if you are in Europe, Oracle, then Ubuntu. Stability wise at that level they are all the same. The mid business I see more Ubuntu, then Rocky/Alma and some Debian. But support is a huge part of it at the corporate level.

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cusco@reddit

I mean, yes I agree. However, being azure I wouldn’t think that external support would be needed, rather they would create their own distro with a good base and support them themselves. Thus no red hat.

I wouldn’t think stability comes first, while having the distro cut down to their hardware needs (kernel compiling flags etc)

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martyn_hare@reddit

Microsoft already has staff which work on Fedora indirectly through downstream container projects (even Bazzite has some MS employees involved) so this isn't much of a surprise. They should, and maybe they should consider adding a few months of tail end support to upstream Fedora too!

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linuxjohn1982@reddit

They found out that it's harder to do EEE when using their own distro that nobody else uses.

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AMidnightHaunting@reddit

If they do, can they PLEASE fix Fedora’s configs surrounding smartcards. I don’t know what it is, but in Cachy/Arch (also Bazzite once I used non-flatpak browsers) my opensc config is great. In Fedora 43, it’s a struggle/shuffle of constantly re-inserting my card (that’s recognized the entire time) and/or stopping all work in all browsers and closing them all. I’d love to help out and submit a PR if I even knew what the issue was.

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natermer@reddit

In Fedora restart the pcscd service if you are having issues.

You can run "gpg2 --card-status" to see if it is picking up on your "smart card".

I think it has to do with something how they have it configured so you can log into via GDM.

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MaybeTheDoctor@reddit

Why would I insert a smart card in an azure cloud server?

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arwinda@reddit

We are at a point where users expect Microsoft to fix issues in Linux... See the comment above yours.

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AMidnightHaunting@reddit

Well yes, Microsoft should contribute to (or “fix” in your words) Linux, and why wouldn’t they? “Because Windows”?

Many corporate companies who use/profit off of Linux contribute back financially and code wise. FOSS licensing is very important.

Examples: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, IBM, RedHat, Canonical, SUSE, Intel, AMD, VALVE, Oracle, Sony (mostly Unix)… etc.

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arwinda@reddit

Let me point to the relevant part of my comment about your comment:

where users expect Microsoft to fix issues in Linux

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AMidnightHaunting@reddit

I’m not going to continue to go back and forth with you but semantically yes if I am paying (or my employer) for their service and they recommend their distro for their support as a User I expect them to “fix” their product. Since it’s open source, that benefits everyone when/if they upstream. This is not a hard concept.

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deviled-tux@reddit

They already do that, just mostly things that either:

Impact azure workloads and are not desktop related
Impact people who are running Linux under windows through WSL2 or Hyper-V

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arwinda@reddit

I'm talking about the user expectations, not what MS is doing by itself.

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AMidnightHaunting@reddit

As a container image? There probably is no need to do that from my anecdotal experience.

Also from my anecdotal experience, these cloud vendors maintain a few of their images that are the same base: - a light weight container image or two - a general purpose server OS

I work with Amazon Linux OS servers every work day and Azure, GCP, and OCI sometimes. Some of these are containers, and some are Bastion hosts. Some have full desktop environments as that is what the user/customer or client wanted.

But additionally, let’s not paint broad strokes here and ask “why” dismissively. I’ve worked for/with folks who irrationally want things done their way and not the best practice/industry standard. It’s kinda the deal unless you’re the boss.

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Martin8412@reddit

They could be using it as an interface for a cloud HSM I guess

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Demented_CEO@reddit

Fedora is "just" upstream Red Hat, why not? It'd make sense to go this route and e.g. Fedora Server is already very mature and stable, so Azure Linux would slot in just fine.

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gplusplus314@reddit

Also, SELinux (RHEL-likes) is a better fit for a mixed Windows/Linux system administration, in my opinion. Windows’s object-based policy enforcement is a lot more similar in capability to SELinux than it is AppArmor (non-RHEL-like distros like Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, and more).

I don’t think this would affect specifically Azure Linux, but I do think it could open the door to better Windows/Linux mixed enterprise environment use cases.

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natermer@reddit

Azure Linux does use SELinux, btw. So I think you are right on the money.

They have a special enhancement they call "OS Guard". This is intended to be used as a "hardened" immutable OS for doing things like hosting Kubernetes.

It use "Integrity Policy Enforcement (IPE)" feature of SELinux that was added on in Linux 6.12.

https://docs.kernel.org/next/admin-guide/LSM/ipe.html

Basically it combines SELinux with dm-verity (block level) or fs-verity (ext4, fsf, or btrfs) and is intended to verify the checksums of read only files.

It would be interesting to see this thing integrated directly into Fedora. Especially for Silverblue and their derivatives. IPE is technically supported, but it isn't used.

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gplusplus314@reddit

Interesting. I had no idea about this. Thanks for the reply!

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natermer@reddit

Fedora is "just" upstream Red Hat, why not?

Fedora is it's own thing. There are quite a few packages and other details in Fedora that are not in Redhat and there are some other differences.

For example: Fedora installs on BTRFS by default. In Redhat Btrfs support doesn't even exist.

Fedora is upstream for Redhat, yes. It is also upstream for Almalinux, Rocky Linux, CentOS, Oracle Linux, Amazon Linux 2023, VzLinux, Ublue (Bazzite, Bluefine) etc etc.

A lot of those are RHEL clones or RHEL-like. Some are not: UBlue isn't a RHEL Clone, neither is Amazon Linux 2023 (Amazon Linux 2 was, though...).

As far as I know pretty much RPM using distributions are based on Fedora except OpenSUSE, OpenMandriva, and CBL-Mariner (Azure Linux) I am sure there are others. These are the biggest ones I can think of off the top of my head.

Out of those non-Fedora-based distributions CBL-Mariner probably has the largest install base in terms of pure numbers of cloud installs.

But otherwise... Yes it makes sense to switch. Less work, better support, better compatibility, etc.

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themuthafuckinruckus@reddit

If they were braver they’d rebase on ELN. Such an underrated true “upstream” of the RPM distros.

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mattias_jcb@reddit

What is ELN?

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carlwgeorge@reddit

It's Fedora Rawhide continuously rebuilt with the complier options and RPM macros for RHEL. It's used to bootstrap the next major version of CentOS, which then becomes the major version branch of RHEL.

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/eln/

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mattias_jcb@reddit

Thank you! 🙂

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themuthafuckinruckus@reddit

Also known as Enterprise Linux Next ;)

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Apprehensive-Try-315@reddit

just wanted to share that im working on this amazing opensource project dedicated to implementing Enterprise level AI-SPM. By doing so organizations can proactively protect their AI systems from threats, minimize data exposure, and maintain the trustworthiness of their AI applications (agents, mpc servers, models and more), it supports deployment of agents on the secure platform and usage of divers LLM of your choice. check it out : https://github.com/dshapi/AI-SPM

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varsnef@reddit

Microsoft can't even rebase their Control Panel.

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Cube00@reddit

At least I don't need to run up an old VM to reminisce about Win7 just run a troubleshooter or check network status and it's there in all its franken aero glory.

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PerkyPangolin@reddit

I'm sure there 3.x UI bit still somewhere in there. Has the font picker been finally updated?

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FortuneIIIPick@reddit

Seems like they'd want to use Ubuntu.

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0riginal-Syn@reddit

Ubuntu is certainly popular, but the Red Hat side of things is far bigger at the enterprise level.

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FortuneIIIPick@reddit

They may use Red Hat stuff internally but Ubuntu is what most enterprises are using outside the big cloud providers.

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0riginal-Syn@reddit

Yes for some non-enterprise areas in the cloud, but even that is limited to not secure areas for the most part. Canonical is much much smaller than Red Hat in that space. It is not really close. Red Hat is just a way bigger company with a lot more money.

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glhaynes@reddit

Why?

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Marble_Wraith@reddit

Does this mean Fedora needs to set up an enshitification firewall?

We don't need the shit floating upstream

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Apprehensive_Milk520@reddit

That's what I'm kinda worried about, lol...

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ang-p@reddit

MS tying the knot with distro that has as it's major funder an IBM subsidiary...

That wasn't on my 2026 bingo card...

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