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Azure Linux (previously CBL-Mariner), is a
free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...
Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...
developed by
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
. It is the base
container A container is any receptacle or enclosure for holding a product used in storage, packaging, and transportation, including shipping. Things kept inside of a container are protected on several sides by being inside of its structure. The term ...
OS for
Microsoft Azure Microsoft Azure, or just Azure ( /ˈæʒər, ˈeɪʒər/ ''AZH-ər, AY-zhər'', UK also /ˈæzjʊər, ˈeɪzjʊər/ ''AZ-ure, AY-zure''), is the cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It has management, access and development of ...
services and the graphical component of WSL 2.


Overview

Azure Linux is being developed by the ''Linux Systems Group'' at Microsoft for its edge network services and as part of its
cloud infrastructure Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to ISO. Essential characteristics ...
. The company uses it as the base Linux for containers in the Azure Stack HCI implementation of Azure
Kubernetes Kubernetes (), also known as K8s is an open-source software, open-source OS-level virtualization, container orchestration (computing), orchestration system for automating software deployment, scaling, and management. Originally designed by Googl ...
Service. Microsoft also uses Azure Linux in Azure IoT Edge to run Linux workloads on Windows IoT, and as a backend distro to host the
Weston Weston may refer to: Places Australia * Weston, Australian Capital Territory, a suburb of Canberra * Weston, New South Wales * Weston Creek, a residential district of Canberra * Weston Park, Canberra, a park Canada * Weston, Nova Scotia * W ...
compositor for WSLg. In a similar approach to Fedora CoreOS, Azure Linux only has the basic packages needed to support and run containers. Common Linux tools are used to add packages and manage security updates. Updates are offered either as
RPM Revolutions per minute (abbreviated rpm, RPM, rev/min, r/min, or r⋅min−1) is a unit of rotational speed (or rotational frequency) for rotating machines. One revolution per minute is equivalent to hertz. Standards ISO 80000-3:2019 def ...
packages or as complete disk images that can be deployed as needed. Using RPM allows adding custom packages to a base Azure Linux image to support additional features and services as needed. Notable features include an
iptables iptables is a user-space utility program that allows a system administrator to configure the IP packet filter rules of the Linux kernel firewall, implemented as different Netfilter modules. The filters are organized in a set of tables, whi ...
-based firewall, support for signed updates, and a hardened kernel. Microsoft released the operating system in 2020. Its
source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...
is available on GitHub, mainly under the
MIT License The MIT License is a permissive software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts very few restrictions on reuse and therefore has high license compatibility. Unl ...
, with some components under , Apache License v2,
GPLv2 The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or copyleft, ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was th ...
, and LGPLv2.1. Building Azure Linux requires the Go
programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...
,
QEMU The Quick Emulator (QEMU) is a free and open-source emulator that uses dynamic binary translation to emulate a computer's processor; that is, it translates the emulated binary codes to an equivalent binary format which is executed by the mach ...
utilities, and
RPM Revolutions per minute (abbreviated rpm, RPM, rev/min, r/min, or r⋅min−1) is a unit of rotational speed (or rotational frequency) for rotating machines. One revolution per minute is equivalent to hertz. Standards ISO 80000-3:2019 def ...
. Starting from the release 2.0.20240301, Azure Linux was renamed from ''CBL-Mariner'' (Common Base Linux Mariner).


See also

*
SONiC (operating system) The Software for Open Networking in the Cloud or alternatively abbreviated and stylized as SONiC, is a free and open source network operating system based on Linux. It was originally developed by Microsoft and the Open Compute Project. In 2022, ...
*
Windows Subsystem for Linux Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a component of Microsoft Windows that allows the use of a GNU/Linux environment from within Windows, foregoing the overhead of a virtual machine and being an alternative to dual booting. The WSL command-lin ...
*
Azure Sphere Azure Sphere is an application platform with integrated communications and security features developed and managed by Microsoft for Internet Connected Devices. The platform consists of integrated hardware built around a silicon chip: the Azure ...


References


Further reading


Azure Kubernetes Service on Azure Stack HCI: deliver Storage Spaces Direct to containers

Enabling Linux based Azure IoT Edge Modules on Windows IoT
2020 software Computing platforms Enterprise Linux distributions Free and open-source software Linux containerization Linux distributions Microsoft free software Microsoft operating systems Software using the GNU General Public License Software using the MIT license {{Operating-system-stub