Microsoft News Archives


331 Microsoft open-source and Linux related news articles on Phoronix since 2006.

Microsoft Adds Enterprise Security Features To WSL
Microsoft Adds Enterprise Security Features To WSL

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.

16 November 2023 - Windows Subsystem for Linux - 9 Comments
Microsoft's CBL-Mariner Linux Distribution Now Ships The AMD Graphics Driver
Microsoft's CBL-Mariner Linux Distribution Now Ships The AMD Graphics Driver

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.

25 May 2023 - CBL-Mariner 2.0.20230518 - 1 Comment
Microsoft Preparing For Their First Vulkan Extension
Microsoft Preparing For Their First Vulkan Extension

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.

20 May 2023 - MSFT Vulkan Extension - 18 Comments
Linux Features Loved By Microsoft Engineers Working On WSL2
Linux Features Loved By Microsoft Engineers Working On WSL2

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.

14 May 2023 - WSL2 Kernel Talk - 64 Comments
Linux Patch Updated For Rumble Support On Latest Microsoft Xbox Controllers
Linux Patch Updated For Rumble Support On Latest Microsoft Xbox Controllers

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.

9 March 2023 - Microsoft Xbox Controller Rumble Support - 14 Comments
Microsoft Increasing Linux Security On Hyper-V With VTL/VSM Support
Microsoft Increasing Linux Security On Hyper-V With VTL/VSM Support

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.

1 March 2023 - Improved Security With Hyper-V - 2 Comments
Microsoft's CBL-Mariner Linux Shows Increasing HPC Interest
Microsoft's CBL-Mariner Linux Shows Increasing HPC Interest

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.

24 February 2023 - New Core Packages - 4 Comments
Microsoft Officially Launches D3D12 GPU Video Acceleration For WSL Linux Use
Microsoft Officially Launches D3D12 GPU Video Acceleration For WSL Linux Use

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.

13 February 2023 - Windows Subsystem for Linux - 42 Comments
Microsoft's Dzn Mesa Driver Already Hits Vulkan 1.2
Microsoft's Dzn Mesa Driver Already Hits Vulkan 1.2

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.

27 January 2023 - Dozen On Vulkan 1.2 - 18 Comments
Microsoft's Dzn Mesa Driver Now Exposes Vulkan 1.1
Microsoft's Dzn Mesa Driver Now Exposes Vulkan 1.1

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.

25 January 2023 - Dozen With Vulkan 1.1 - 4 Comments
Microsoft Releases WinGet 1.4 For Improving Its Open-Source Package Manager
Microsoft Releases WinGet 1.4 For Improving Its Open-Source Package Manager

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.

23 January 2023 - WinGet 1.4 - 29 Comments
Microsoft's "Dzn" Mesa Code Achieving 99.75%+ Vulkan 1.0 Conformance
Microsoft's "Dzn" Mesa Code Achieving 99.75%+ Vulkan 1.0 Conformance

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.

20 January 2023 - Dozen - 8 Comments
Microsoft Promotes Windows Subsystem For Linux "WSL" To GA Status
Microsoft Promotes Windows Subsystem For Linux "WSL" To GA Status

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.

22 November 2022 - WSL General Availability - 84 Comments
Microsoft Adds Mesa Support For Building Against The DirectX 12 Agility SDK
Microsoft Adds Mesa Support For Building Against The DirectX 12 Agility SDK

Windows users are increasingly making use of Mesa with Microsoft investing in supporting a number of different open, industry standard APIs and then layering them atop the underlying Direct3D 12 driver for the likes of WSL2 usage. OpenGL, OpenCL, Vulkan, and VA-API video acceleration have been the primary targets for Microsoft engineers working on Mesa with the Windows Subsystem for Linux in mind while also posing other possible use-cases where the host may lack native drivers for those APIs. For bettering Mesa on Windows, Microsoft has now added support for compiling against the DirectX 12 Agility SDK.

21 October 2022 - DirectX Agility SDK - Add A Comment
Microsoft Continues Improving Its Internal Linux Distro With Another Update
Microsoft Continues Improving Its Internal Linux Distro With Another Update

It was just over a year ago Microsoft lifted the lid further on CBL-Mariner as its internal Linux distribution used for a variety of purposes at the company from running within their Azure cloud environment to also finding use by WSL, and various other use-cases. They have continued issuing updates and expanding the capabilities of this enterprise-tasked Linux distribution.

5 August 2022 - CBL-Mariner 2.0 July 2022 Update 2 - 17 Comments
Systemd Creator Lands At Microsoft
Systemd Creator Lands At Microsoft

Yesterday's surprise was that Lennart Poettering quietly had left Red Hat following a decade and a half there leading PulseAudio among other projects and ultimately going on to start systemd that has fundamentally reshaped modern Linux distributions. It turns out he had joined Microsoft and continuing his work on systemd.

6 July 2022 - systemctl enable microsoft - 213 Comments
Microsoft's CBL-Mariner 2.0 Linux Distro Now Supports Kernel Live Patching, PXE Boot
Microsoft's CBL-Mariner 2.0 Linux Distro Now Supports Kernel Live Patching, PXE Boot

Last month Microsoft issued the first production release of CBL-Mariner 2.0, its in-house Linux distribution used for powering services from Microsoft Azure to WSL use-cases and more. CBL-Mariner 2.0 this weekend saw a rather large monthly update with a number of fixes, package updates, and new additions to this "Common Base Linux" platform.

26 June 2022 - CBL-Mariner 2.0 - 4 Comments
Microsoft Ships Big Update To Their CBL-Mariner 2.0 Linux Distribution
Microsoft Ships Big Update To Their CBL-Mariner 2.0 Linux Distribution

Last month Microsoft published their first production release of CBL-Mariner 2.0 as an updated version of their in-house Linux distribution used for a variety of purposes from Windows Subsystem for Linux to Azure. This week Microsoft released a rather hefty stable update to their CBL-Mariner 2.0 distribution.

5 June 2022 - Microsoft Linux Distro - 9 Comments

331 Microsoft news articles published on Phoronix.