Microsoft’s New Linux Distro Is a Warning Shot at Red Hat

Condobloke

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 30, 2017
Messages
8,180
Reaction score
6,656
Credits
54,576
Ever so quietly, Microsoft dropped a new operating system out in the wild. No, not Windows 11. Microsoft created its own Linux Distribution. And while you might be tempted to crack jokes that Microsoft hates Linux, this is a big deal. Especially for anyone who relies on Red Hat or Suse.

Microsoft’s new Linux Distro, dubbed Common Base Linux (CBL)-Mariner, isn’t the type of distro you’d want to install directly on any old machine. It’s primarily meant for cloud infrastructure and edge products. Specifically Microsoft’s Cloud and Edge products.

But if you are curious, it’s possible to run

Juan Manuel Rey, a Microsoft Senior Program Manager for Azure VMware, recently published a guide to ISO CBL-Mariner image. With that, you can easily get it up and running. And you can build CBL-Mariner on an Ubuntu 18.04 desktop

It’s not a guarantee yet, but with CBL-Mariner, Microsoft could bring what it does best in Windows to Linux—Patch management and distribution. Windows updates might be a hated affair in the consumer world, but in the enterprise area, Microsoft wins points for predictability and reliability.

While Red Hat and Suse provide well-respected distros and some support, they don’t go anywhere near as far as Microsoft. And few other Linux companies (if any) can claim to support on the same massive scale as Microsoft.

With CBL-Mariner, you can have the best of both worlds. World-class server management capabilities with strong provisioning support for both Unix and Windows and the ability to skip Windows if you need.

Most people wouldn’t notice as Microsoft quietly became one of the largest Linux distributors in the world.

It’s too early to say that Microsoft will definitely go in this direction yet, but it’s making all the right moves to enter the Linux Enterprise space. And possibly own it. Companies like Red Hat should probably take notice.
 


They are also quite discrete by not making it obvious Microsoft owns github


 
microsuck is also "partnered" with Canonical and we all know what that means
evilgrin0025.gif
which is a very good reason to avoid Ubuntu too.
t3612.gif
 
...

Microsoft is on the Linux Foundation.

Speaking of which:

Selection_172.png


And...

Selection_173.png


And...

Selection_174.png


It was pretty easy and painless to generate the .iso. The installation went okay, though I've not gone further by adding a desktop or anything like that.
 
LOL I'd just started it. It's still happily chugging along, I suspect. I disconnected from the device.

It wasn't hard to clone the repo and then build the .iso. It's not a desktop, or even really a server-oriented, distro.
 

Members online


Top