Microsoft quietly releases a new Linux distro called CBL-Mariner

Microsoft wasn’t a big supporter of open source back in the 2000s, but ever since Satya Nadella took charge as the CEO of the company, it’s become one of the biggest open source contributors in the world. Its commitments to open source are now more pronounced as Microsoft has released yet another Linux distro called CBL-Mariner under the open source MIT License.

In the CBL-Mariner repository on GitHub, Microsoft described it as “an internal Linux distribution for Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure and edge products and services.” In simple words, this is your server-side Linux and not a Linux desktop. So what this effectively means is that anyone that has some Linux skills can download and install CBL-Marine for their server and edge-based projects.

This isn’t Microsoft’s first specialized Linux distro, however. Back in 2018, the software giant announced its first-ever Linux-based microcontroller operating system, though 2019 was when it’s released for the general public.

Coming back to CBL-Mariner, you can build it on Ubuntu 18.04 or newer. But apart from that, you’ll also need the latest version of the Go language and Docker. And if meet all the requirements that are needed to install Microsoft’s new Linux distro, you should definitely give it a try.

via Tomshardware; ZDNet