Microsoft News Archives

After publishing open-source versions of MS-DOS years ago for versions 1.25 and 2.0, Microsoft and IBM have now announced that MS-DOS 4.0 has been open-sourced under an MIT license.

With time Microsoft's Linux kernel contributions have extended beyond just the initial business focus on Hyper-V support and other needs for Azure as well as around Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) to more general contributions. Microsoft has also hired more key Linux contributors along with stakes in other projects like systemd. Earlier this week were patches from a Microsoft engineer working out Rust language improvements for the Linux kernel while now in ending out the holiday weekend are patches for making the Linux kernel language more inclusive.

What a time we live in where Microsoft not only continues contributing significantly to the Linux kernel but doing so to further flesh out the design of the Linux kernel's Rust programming language support. A previously unimaginable combination of Microsoft, the Rust programming language, and the Linux kernel.

Microsoft is rolling out WSL 2.2.1 to WIndows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) users with more reliable networking support, hang fixes, and other improvements.

Microsoft has submitted their various Hyper-V updates to the in-development Linux 6.9 kernel.

This is their LLVM/Clang-based shader compiler for compiling HLSL programs into the DirectX Intermediate Language (DXIL) that can then be fed to DirectX GPU drivers from the different vendors. While Microsoft Windows is obviously the main focus, today's update does improve the Linux build support.

Microsoft's in-house Linux distribution used for a variety of purposes had been known as CBL-Mariner for "Common Base Linux" while now it appears to be in the process of transitioning to Azure Linux.

Microsoft announced today they will be winding down their support for Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA), which is similar to Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) but was designed to run Android apps from the Amazon Appstore atop Windows 11.

Microsoft's in-house CBL-Mariner Linux distribution has routinely seen weekly-ish updates to this open-source code used within Azure, WSL, and other areas of the Redmond company. But it's been one month since the prior CBL-Mariner 2.0 release... That changed Saturday night with a shiny new release.

There's been recent reports that Microsoft is bringing sudo to Windows as discovered in recent Windows 11 Insider previews. This was briefly confirmed today by Microsoft in a since-removed blog post as well as noting that it's open-source.

Microsoft's in-house Linux distribution CBL-Mariner that is used for a variety of purposes from Azure to WSL has seen its first release of 2024. While the distribution has at times released up to a few new versions per month, there hadn't been a new release since late November given the holidays.

While years ago it was hard envisioning Microsoft contributing significantly to the Linux kernel or Mesa 3D graphics driver stack, maintaining its own in-house Linux distribution, or publishing so much open-source software, these days it's par for the course thanks to Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), Linux dominating Azure instances, etc. Over the course of 2023, Microsoft continued investing in various Linux/open-source efforts that benefit their cause.

In addition to Microsoft enabling OpenGL 4.6 over Direct3D 12 via Mesa, Microsoft engineers have also been working on some video improvements within the Mesa code-base.

With Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) continuing to prove popular mot only for end-users and independent developers but within organizations as well for having easy access to a Linux environment from the confines of Windows 11, Microsoft has added new enterprise-focused security options for WSL.

It was just last week that Microsoft got OpenGL 4.3 implemented over Direct3D 12 for use in cases where Windows lacks a native OpenGL driver or for use under Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSLg). After implementing a few more GL extensions atop D3D12, Microsoft has now got OpenGL 4.4 in Mesa running on Direct3D.

Microsoft yesterday published CBL-Mariner 2.0.20231106 as the newest version of their in-house Linux distribution that is used for a variety of services from Azure to WSL.

Microsoft has published a big feature update to Windows Subsystem for Linux "WSL" for running Linux binaries within the confines of Windows 11.

While Microsoft is known for their own set of security issues on Windows and related software, Microsoft on Patch Tuesday ended up releasing CBL-Mariner 2.0.20230904 as their open-source Linux distribution that with this update is primarily driven by security fixes.

Microsoft has released CBL-Mariner 2.0.20230805 as the newest monthly-ish update to their in-house Linux distribution used for purposes from Azure to WSL.

Microsoft has released an updated version of its CBL-Mariner 2.0 in-house Linux distribution that includes various security patches, new packages being added to the OS, and a variety of other updates.

CBL-Mariner 2.0.20230630 is now shipping as Microsoft's newest in-house Linux distribution release.

Microsoft's latest contribution to the Mesa 3D graphics driver stack is enhancing their Direct3D 12 driver to support AV1 video encoding with the VA-API interface.

Microsoft's CBL-Mariner team has published v2.0.20230609 as the newest update to their in-house Linux distribution that is used for a variety of purposes inside and outside the Redmond company.

Microsoft has published the latest release of their Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) implementation for running Linux distributions within the confines of Windows. With the WSL 1.3.10 update there is now experimental memory reclaim support and other changes.

For Linux gamers relying on Microsoft Xbox controllers, the upcoming Linux 6.5 kernel will enable rumble support for several newer controller models.

In addition to Microsoft's Build 2023 conference this week where they announced expanded archive/compression format support, Windows Terminal improvements, more AI tech, and other initiatives, they also happened to release CBL-Mariner 2.0.20230518 as the newest version of their in-house Linux distribution.

While the Vulkan high performance graphics and compute API is backed by many vendors, Microsoft and Apple are two notable organizations that haven't backed this Khronos Group standard. For Microsoft's part, they obviously prefer their in-house Direct3D. However, Microsoft is making preparations for submitting their first Vulkan extension.

In addition to Microsoft having a significant present at last week's Linux Security Summit, there were also multiple Microsoft engineers at the Linux Foundation's Open-Source Summit that was also taking place in Vancouver. Among the Microsoft Linux talks this week was a presentation on the Linux kernel usage by WSL2 -- including how it's moving closer to a mainline/upstream status and also mentions of Linux kernel features loved by Microsoft's engineering team.

While many Linux distributions look at Btrfs or F2FS when evaluating new root file-system options or even something like OpenZFS, in the case of Microsoft's in-house Linux distribution only this month have they even gotten to supporting XFS as a root file-system option.

For those making use of Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization there are some notable additions to find with the in-development Linux 6.4 kernel.

Microsoft has published its latest CBL-Mariner 2.0.20230407 Linux distribution images this weekend as their in-house open-source OS that is used for a variety of purposes, mostly around Azure infrastructure.

Microsoft's in-house Linux distribution that they make public, CBL-Mariner, began with a very niche focus while over time has continued adding additional packages as it is worked into becoming a more robust Linux platform.

Last year I wrote about a Google engineer working on rumble support for the latest Microsoft controllers in conjunction with Microsoft's Xbox team. That patch seemed to have fallen through the woodwork but has been updated and sent out in "v2" form this week for allowing Linux gamers to enjoy rumble functionality with these latest Microsoft controllers.

Microsoft engineers continue to work heavily on enhancing the Linux support for Hyper-V considering that in the Azure public cloud at last report was more than 50% of their VMs running Linux. Microsoft has continued implementing more Hyper-V features within the Linux kernel and their latest is working on Virtual Trust Level (VTL) integration as part of Virtual Secure Mode (VSM) handling.

Microsoft's in-house Linux distribution CBL-Mariner has been public now for about two years. CBL-Mariner has been in use for Microsoft's use-cases from their Azure cloud to Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) while their newest release continues a recent trend of pointing towards a high performance computing (HPC) workloads focus too.

Microsoft on Tuesday released CBL-Mariner 2.0.20230208 as the latest version of their in-house public Linux distribution that serves a variety of purposes from the cloud down to the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

For over a year I have been writing about how Microsoft has been working on Direct3D video acceleration for Mesa, getting VA-API mapped atop Direct3D 12 video APIs, video engine based effects, and other enablement around Direct3D 12 video support. Microsoft has today officially released the Direct3D 12 GPU video acceleration support now for Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) users.

Microsoft on Friday released version 1.14 of their ONNX Runtime, a cross-platform, high performance machine learning inferencing and training accelerator.

Microsoft on Wednesday released CBL-Mariner 2.0.20230126-2.0 as the newest version of this in-house Linux distribution used for a variety of use-cases from within Azure infrastructure over to WSL purposes.

Microsoft engineers seem to be working on getting the Dozen "dzn" Mesa driver up to speed as quickly as possible. It was just earlier this month it began passing nearly all Vulkan 1.0 conformance tests, Vulkan 1.1 was then exposed just a few days ago, and now Dzn is ironing out Vulkan 1.2.

After Microsoft engineers got Vulkan 1.0 conformance tests to nearly 100% for their Dozen "Dzn" Mesa driver, they have now enabled Vulkan 1.1 support as their next step for this Vulkan-atop-Direct3D 12 open-source implementation.

It's easy to forget that Microsoft maintains a command-line package manager for Windows... The open-source WinGet package manager is approaching three years since its announcement while it continues to not be as rich and robust of what Linux users for many years have enjoyed, but in any case it's continuing to be improved.

Microsoft's Dozen "Dzn" code within Mesa is a Vulkan implementation built atop Direct3D 12 for enjoying this modern industry-standard graphics/compute API atop Microsoft's D3D12 API, should the system lack an underlying native Vulkan driver or in cases like using Windows Subsystem for Linux. Dozen is now above 99% for its conformance pass rate for Vulkan 1.0 and more of Vulkan 1.1 is now being worked on by Microsoft's engineers that contribute the open-source code to Mesa.

Microsoft's Dozen "dzn", which was merged to Mesa last year as Vulkan implemented on Direct3D 12, is onto a 98.5% pass rate for its Vulkan 1.0 coverage.

Microsoft released CBL-Mariner 2.0.20221222 on Tuesday as their first update of 2023 for their in-house Linux distribution that is used for a variety of purposes within the company from Azure to other behind-the-scenes Linux OS use.

In early 2017 Microsoft open-sourced their DirectX shader compiler and shortly thereafter it's been possible to build it on Linux while finally as of this week Microsoft has begun providing official Linux binaries of their shader compiler.

While the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) has been around for six years now and with WSL2 is on to running graphical Linux apps with GPU acceleration and a wide array of capabilities, including the ability to run systemd and the like, only today has Microsoft promoted WSL to "general availability" status on Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Microsoft on Tuesday released .NET 7 with improved Linux support, better performance, and many new features throughout this Microsoft platform stack.

Microsoft has issued a big update to their in-house Linux distribution, CBL-Mariner, with a few new packages introduced as well as various updates to existing packages and other OS modifications.

The latest patches from Microsoft for the Linux kernel are for extending the kernel's support to allow running on a nested Microsoft (MSHV) hypervisor.