www.it-connect.fr
Microsoft Launches Azure Linux 4.0, Its First Fedora-Based Linux Distribution
At Open Source Summit North America 2026, Microsoft unveiled Azure Linux 4.0, its free and open source Linux distribution. If you want to learn more about it, read on.
Table of Contents
Azure Linux 4.0, alongside Azure Container Linux
Through a post published by Brendan Burns, its Corporate Vice President (and co-founder of Kubernetes), Microsoft unveiled its first mainstream Linux distribution: Azure Linux 4.0. This free and open source Linux distribution, based on RPM packages and derived from Fedora, is built and maintained directly by Microsoft. As its name suggests, it is optimized to run on the company’s Cloud infrastructure, and therefore on Azure.
Although Microsoft has already offered open source tools such as CBL-Mariner (now Azure Linux), the American company had never gone as far as offering such an open Linux distribution. That is now done. In practice, current versions of Azure Linux, including Azure Linux 3.0, are designed to run only on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Microsoft has decided to remove this limitation and turn it into a versatile Cloud distribution.
In addition, Microsoft announced the general availability of Azure Container Linux. This is an immutable, container-optimized operating system based on the Flatcar project.
Azure Linux 4.0 will be able to run on Windows
Proof that Microsoft wants to make Azure Linux 4.0 a versatile distribution, it will be possible to run it on Windows 11. Indeed, support for Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) will be provided. However, Azure Linux 4.0 is not intended to become a Linux distribution installed on a workstation for everyday use. In any case, it ships without a graphical interface.
Microsoft is mainly betting on adoption within its Cloud. The article published by Brendan Burns also notes that two-thirds of Azure customers’ computing cores run Linux machines.
Microsoft loves Open Source
Although Microsoft is seen as a publisher of proprietary solutions, which is absolutely true, it should be noted that it has a dedicated open source team. It is also worth remembering that Microsoft contributes to open source projects (sometimes in its own interest), including the Linux kernel.
"For Microsoft, this journey truly began in 2009, when we contributed more than 20,000 lines of Hyper-V driver code to the Linux kernel. A small patch at the time, but a clear sign of the direction we were heading in.", we can read.
Microsoft is also one of the main contributors to public Cloud and CNCF projects, notably helping develop projects such as Kubernetes, Helm and Radius.
There is a strong chance that additional information will be revealed at the Microsoft Build 2026 conference scheduled for June 2 and 3.
