Azure Linux 3 hits general availability – but don't expect any frills

With impeccable timing considering recent Windows issues, Microsoft has made Azure Linux 3.0 generally available. It includes an update to the Linux kernel and new versions of various packages. However, users tiring of issues with Microsoft's flagship operating system should look away now. Azure Linux 3.0 (formerly CBL-Mariner …

[david 12]

"Windows Subsystem for Linux springs to mind."

"as well as significant updates to [..],systemd,

By default the WSL kernel version does not have systemd support enabled.

We are still in the middle of the systemd wars. systemd is normal now, seems to be used in most distributions, but Docker and WSL are still holding out: "yes you /can/ use systemd, but no, we aren't going to make it /easy/".

[Joe Burmeister]

Re: "Windows Subsystem for Linux springs to mind."

Docker is single application focused, so SystemD doesn't make sense for it. If you want multiple applications/services in a container (with SystemD), LXC is a better bet.

[david 12]

Re: "Windows Subsystem for Linux springs to mind."

so SystemD doesn't make sense for it

Yeah, like I said. So Azure Linux 3 isn't designed to be a natural fit for WSL, or Docker.

But when you have a hammer, every screw looks like a nail, and I work with developers whose normal work environments are Debien and Docker.

[Chris Warrick]

Re: "Windows Subsystem for Linux springs to mind."

Using systemd in WSL is very easy, you only need to edit one config file: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/systemd

[JamesTGrant]

“CBL-Mariner has been engineered with the notion that a small common core set of packages can address the universal needs of first party cloud and edge services while allowing individual teams to layer additional packages on top of the common core to produce images for their workloads."

Is a very long winded way of saying ‘Minimal Distro’

[Liam Proven]

One might almost say, "like Alpine but that was NIH."

[Anonymous Coward]

> One might almost say, "like Alpine but that was NIH."

One might more accurately say "a million miles away from Alpine". Alpine by default uses Busybox to provide many of the standard Linux cli commands, with the "normal" versions of those optionally available to install.

Azure Linux doesn't look that stripped down compared to a typical Linux distro, especially for one oriented towards servers.

"Azure Linux 3.0 (formerly CBL-Mariner) continues to be a bare-bones product, with just enough to get something like Kubernetes running but not much else"

I guess that explains why it includes stuff like alsa-utils, aspell, debootstrap, espeak-ng, libX11, ModemManager, and R :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried Mariner 1 and its successor.

In true Microsoft fashion, the first one they borked the patching (deleting a directory tree during the patch, then the post script failing because the directory was gone and it couldn't copy a file - If I recall it was related to security policies).

The second one I couldn't even get to run properly. Can't remember what the problem was now.

I think I might give this latest version a miss altogether - I don't see much demand for it (though to be fair I didn't for the first two either).

[Binraider]

What's the obsession with loading twelve OSes inside each other, and duplicating functionality and resources for each of those instances?

Never understood the containerisation paradigm. The why, not the how.