Microsoft News Archives

Patches were posted this week for implementing Microsoft's extensions around the ACPI fan device for allowing the operating system to set fan speed trip points. In turn this should help some HP systems and likely other OEMs too in getting fan information working under Linux.

Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization support within the Linux kernel continues to be steadily enhanced and it's inched along further for Linux 6.18.

Microsoft released Azure Linux 3.0.20250910 as the newest version of this in-house Linux distribution used by Azure and other services. Azure Linux 3.0 has long been using the Linux 6.6 LTS kernel while now Linux 6.12 LTS is a new option focused on providing better hardware enablement support.

A new feature Microsoft has been working on for its Azure Linux operating system is OS Guard as a container-host platform that enforces immutability, code integrity, mandatory access control, and other features. Microsoft quietly revealed more about OS Guard last month and yesterday's release of Azure Linux 3.0.20250822 builds out more of the OS Guard functionality.

Last week Microsoft released new versions of WSL2 for a yet-to-be-public security vulnerability affecting their Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 implementation. Those details around CVE-2025-53788 are now public for this vulnerability that could lead to elevation of privileges.

Microsoft today released an updated version of Windows Subsystem for Linux "WSL" that allows running Linux binaries atop Windows 11. There is only one change noted and it's for a yet-to-be-public security vulnerability.

Microsoft formally announced today its newest open-source project: Wassette. The Wassette is MIT-licensed and includes Linux and macOS support alongside Windows while being a Rust+WebAssembly-based project focused on securing AI agents.

Posted today to the Linux kernel mailing list are a set of nine patches for bringing up support for the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite/Plus powered Microsoft Surface Pro 11 2-in-1 laptop.

Microsoft released Azure Linux 3.0.20250702 on Tuesday as the newest monthly update to this in-house Linux distribution used throughout the company and by external parties.

Microsoft announced back in May at their Build developer conference that WSL would be going open-source. Today Windows Subsystem for Linux 2.6 was released as their first new release now being an open-source project.

Microsoft on Tuesday released a new version of Azure Linux, their in-house Linux distribution that is used for a variety of purposes from the Azure cloud to powering other Microsoft services.

Microsoft's open-source code contributions to the Mesa 3D graphics stack continues... Hitting Mesa 25.2-devel today was a patch adding 61,925 lines of code patch as they introduce a new Gallium3D front-end.

Microsoft kicked off its Build 2025 developer conference today with some open-source announcements.

Microsoft announced today that Fedora Linux is now treated as an official distribution within their Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) confines.

Yesterday brought the newest update to Microsoft's in-house Linux distribution, Azure Linux. The Azure Linux 3.0.20250402 brought many package updates mostly in the name of shipping security fixes plus brought new instructions on making use of the AMD graphics driver stack under this Microsoft Linux distribution along with various other updates.

Microsoft last year announced the open-source Hyperlight project as an embedded VMM for use as a micro-VM manager of sorts that can be run within Windows and Linux applications. This VM-based security for small embedded functions now has its scope expanded with the open-source release today of Hyperlight Wasm for bringing in WebAssembly to the party.

With the Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization updates for the Linux 6.15 kernel there are two new features worth mentioning.

Microsoft's newest open-source contribution to the Linux kernel being proposed is... Hornet, a Linux security module (LSM) for providing signature verification of eBPF programs.

Microsoft is out today with their newest monthly update to their in-house Linux distribution, Azure Linux, with all available package and security updates through this month's Patch Tuesday.

Back in 2017 was the initial open-source DirectX Shader Compiler milestone and since then Microsoft has continued iterating on it with better Linux support, new features, and ironing out other gaps in this "DirectXShaderCompiler" project. On Friday they released the newest version of this DirectX Shader Compiler that features another newly open-sourced component.

Microsoft engineers released Azure Linux 3.0.20250206 overnight as the newest monthly update to this in-house Microsoft Linux distribution that is used within their Azure cloud infrastructure and a variety of other purposes at the Redmond company.

In a blog post dated for this past Thursday but only being made public on Sunday night, Microsoft issued an announcement open-sourcing their new NoSQL database... Where it gets weirder is that it's named DocumentDB. Amazon also has a database offering named DocumentDB albeit proprietary.

Microsoft's in-house Linux distribution known as Azure Linux is out with its 3.0.20250102 update today. One of the interesting changes in this release is adding new AMD driver package repositories for allowing Azure Linux users to fetch the latest official AMDGPU driver packages or alternatively the newest "preview" driver packages.

This year was another interesting year for Microsoft with continuing to make more of their software projects open-source, adding more Unix/Linux-like features to Windows, continuing to advance Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), keeping up with maintenance on their Azure Linux distribution, and other unexpected open-source/Linux surprises.

Looking for a 2025 New Year's resolution? The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is encouraging a pressure campaign on Microsoft to continue.

Microsoft engineers rounded out their work week by releasing Azure Linux 3.0.20241203 on Friday evening as the newest monthly installment for their in-house Linux distribution.

A Microsoft Research project that was quietly announced a few years ago to some fanfare but not hearing much about since has been Demikernel as their library OS architecture for kernel-bypass I/O. A Phoronix reader brought up Demikernel this week and while it hasn't been talked about much in recent years it does remain under active development with the most recent commits as of hours ago.

Microsoft last month announced the open-source Rust-written OpenHCL for running confidential Intel TDX and AMD SEV-SNP virtual machines. Today Microsoft is announcing another interesting open-source, Rust-based project in the virtualization space: Hyperlight. Microsoft's Hyperlight project is an embed-friendly, lightweight VMM for use within Linux and Windows applications.

Microsoft overnight released the newest version of their Azure Linux 3.0 in-house Linux distribution that is used by a variety of internal services at the company as well as external customers.

For years there have been statements about how over half of the VMs running within the Microsoft Azure public cloud are Linux-based... In a new blog post today is the first time I am seeing Microsoft cite now "over 60%" Linux marketshare on Microsoft's cloud.

Microsoft announced today the new and now open-source OpenHCL paravisor for the virtualization stack for enabling Intel TDX and AMD SEV-SNP confidential computing virtual machines (VMs) with this Rust-written software stack. This effort by Microsoft has been five years in the making and is now open-source and will continue to be developed in the open.

Microsoft has released Azure Linux 3.0.20241005 as the "October 2024" update to the company's in-house Linux distribution.

While Azure Linux 3.0 has been available since the late summer, for those continuing to rely on Azure Linux 2.0 in production there is a big update out this weekend. Azure Linux 2.0.20241006 brings dozens of security fixes to this Microsoft Linux distribution.

Microsoft Linux engineers have continued preparing the Linux kernel to support Hyper-V Dom0 for Linux to run as the root partition.

Microsoft's Windows Dev Kit 2023 also known as "Project Volterra" was an early effor to improve the Windows on ARM support by developers via having a nice small form factor ARM PC to run Windows 11. With pending DeviceTree patches there would be mainline support for the Windows Dev Kit 2023 under Linux.

Well this is a hell of a surprise... Microsoft announced today that DirectX will be adopting SPIR-V as the interchange format of the future. Microsoft's DirectX 12 will accept shaders compiled to SPIR-V, the intermediate representation defined by The Khronos Group and commonly associated with Vulkan / OpenGL / OpenCL drivers.

The Microsoft Hyper-V updates have been submitted for the Linux 6.12 kernel. They are mostly small changes but does bring work to optimize the boot time for large Hyper-V VMs.

Microsoft engineers continue contributing to the open-source Mesa graphics driver code for benefiting Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) usage and other related use atop Windows 11. The latest contribution to Mesa is wiring up direct DPB management for the D3D12 video acceleration code.

Back in 2019 Microsoft announced Cascadia Code as an open-source font designed for terminals and code editors. This monospaced font they view is great for developers like those using Visual Studio Code. Over the years Microsoft has further improved upon Cascadia Code with subtle revisions while now they are working to roll-out "Cascadia Next" as their next big step forward.

Azure Linux as Microsoft's in-house Linux operating system that is used for a variety of purposes is out with a new feature release.

LinkedIn has replaced CentOS as their default server operating system choice with Azure Linux to power all of their server needs.

A Qualcomm engineer has posted the Linux kernel patches for adding the DeviceTree to support the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 devices powered by the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 SoCs. This allows Linux to run on these new Snapdragon X1-powered Microsoft laptops but as with the other devices there are a number of support caveats that for most end-users will be a showstopper.

Microsoft is today promoting the v3.0 release of Azure Linux to stable / general availability status for this Linux distribution formerly known as CBL-Mariner.

Microsoft today published a new version of their Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) in pre-release form.

A new preview release is available of Microsoft's Azure Linux 3.0 operating system.

The kernel powering Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) has long been using the Linux 5.15 LTS kernel while finally it's now upgraded past that aging long-term support kernel and onto the current Linux 6.6 LTS series.

Microsoft's in-house Linux distribution, Azure Linux (nee CBL-Mariner), is out with a new update. In the first new stable release for Azure Linux 2.0 since late April, the Azure Linux 2.0.20240609 update ships with dozens of security fixes to address a wide range of CVEs as well as bringing various bug fixes and other updates.

Microsoft has published its first tagged preview of the upcoming Azure Linux 3.0 operating system.

Given Microsoft's recent BUILD conference, Microsoft has announced a number of sizable updates to Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

Microsoft's open-source DirectX Shader Compiler that is open-source and derived from the LLVM/Clang compiler infrastructure is out with a significant new release as it begins preparing for "HLSL 202x" as a big leap for the High-Level Shader Language.