Microsoft Mualaf Linux

Once upon a time, hearing that Microsoft was close to Linux was like hearing news of a cat guarding salted fish. Hard to believe. Steve Ballmer, the former big boss of Microsoft, even once called Linux a ‘cancer’. That phrase is still remembered by open-source warriors today.

But history loves a joke. Now, Microsoft has actually launched Azure Linux, and suddenly it has been announced that version 4.0 is available. Not just a patch. Not cosmetic Linux. This is a full-fledged Linux server distribution made by Microsoft itself. And what is even funnier, it is based on Fedora, a distro from the RedHat family.

Once upon a time, Microsoft was in a cold war with Linux. After years of hostility, they are now living comfortably together. The tech world is indeed strange. Yesterday’s ideological enemy can become tomorrow’s strategic partner, as long as the stock goes up and the servers keep running.

The announcement was made at the Open Source Summit North America. Brendan Burns, one of the founders of Kubernetes who is now a top executive at Microsoft Azure, calmly stated that Linux has now become the majority operating system on the Azure cloud.

Linux is the majority, not Windows. People in the room reportedly blinked twice. The CEO of the Linux Foundation was even stunned, as if hearing the news that Darth Vader had become a preacher at an Islamic boarding school.

Then came that ultimate sentence: ‘Microsoft is now essentially a Linux company.’ That was Brendan Burns’ statement. Instantly, the history of technology felt like a long-running soap opera.

For years, Microsoft had been busy keeping Windows users from ‘fleeing to the Linux mountains’. So they created WSL, the Windows Subsystem for Linux. The intention was clear: to let Windows users taste Linux without actually switching. It was like a coffee shop providing free bitter coffee so customers wouldn’t move to the café next door.

The strategy was clever. Many programmers, AI developers, terminal warriors, and server administrators began falling in love with Linux. But Microsoft did not want them to truly leave. So Linux was put inside Windows, like placing a goat pen in the living room: kept close, but still under the host’s control. And it turned out the strategy worked.

Now the step goes even further. Azure Linux 4 is presented by Microsoft not for home desktops used for typing neighbourhood association letters or editing recitation photos. This is battle-grade Linux. Server Linux. Cloud Linux. AI Linux. This is Linux used to run millions of containers, Kubernetes, machine learning, up to AI infrastructure itself.