Microsoft News Archives

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.

Increase use of Windows BitLocker for full-disk encryption on Windows 10 and Windows 11 is causing more challenges by Linux distributions for supporting convenient dual boot functionality for those wishing to keep both Windows and Linux on the same systems.

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.

The Microsoft Dozen "Dzn" code within Mesa that allows for the Vulkan API to be implemented atop Direct3D 12 for benefit on Windows now has a working pipeline cache implementation.

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.

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.

A Microsoft-contributed fix as part of their Hyper-V updates for the Linux 5.19 kernel can shave minutes off their Azure VM boot times when launching a virtual machine with numerous GPUs.

Microsoft has made a lot of interesting developments and maneuvers over the past number of months for leveraging open-source Mesa for use by Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and supporting various Khronos APIs atop Direct3D 12 for use when native drivers are lacking on Windows. This work so far has been focused on OpenGL, OpenCL, and Vulkan but Microsoft has now even implemented Direct3D 12 video API support within Mesa and leverages the VA-API state tracker support within Mesa.

Microsoft has another open-source driver they are working to get upstreamed into the Linux kernel.

Made public last year by Microsoft was CBL-Mariner 1.0 as its internal Linux distribution used for selective purposes from Azure to WSL. This Microsoft "Common Base Linux" distribution has worked well for their internal needs while continuing to make roughly monthly public updates to its 1.0 branch. Today CBL-Mariner 2.0 marks its first production release.

Microsoft has made public the source code to the original Microsoft 3D Movie Maker software.

Microsoft has joined the Open 3D Foundation that was started by the Linux Foundation when Amazon's Lumberyard game engine went on to form the Open 3D Engine. Microsoft is now backing the Open 3D Foundation and the Open 3D Engine for promoting open-source 3D game and simulation development.

It was just last week Microsoft issued a new monthly update to CBL-Mariner, its Linux distribution within use at the Windows company for tasks ranging from Azure to WSL. Now a second update for March has arrived for CBL-Mariner with security fixes and a few other updates.

It's been nearly one year since Microsoft published CBL-Mariner 1.0 as their internal Linux distribution in use at the WIndows company. Microsoft continues building upon CBL-Mariner and using it for a variety of use-cases from within Azure (for Sphere OS) to WSL and much more. They continue publishing monthly ISO releases for those wanting to use this Microsoft Linux spin for their own uses.

Microsoft in late 2020 announced DirectStorage as a new API in the DirectX family focused on delivering faster I/O performance for games to yield quicker game load times and more expansive virtual worlds. After being in a limited developer preview since last year, today Microsoft is making the DirectStorage API broadly available.

Microsoft has laid out a proposal whereby they are hoping to contribute support for DirectX, the HLSL shading language, and Vulkan graphics support to the upstream LLVM/Clang compiler.

Microsoft on Tuesday posted a third iteration of their "DXGKRNL" Linux kernel driver for DirectX / Hyper-V compute support for use within Windows Subsystem for Linux / Windows Subsystem for Android.

Microsoft continues work on their controversial "DXGKRNL" driver they hope to mainline into the Linux kernel for benefiting their Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA) efforts.

Not only is Microsoft after having OpenGL and OpenCL layered atop Direct3D 12 for usage by Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) or where the host has no native GL/CL drivers available, but they are also after Vulkan support on top of D3D12. It's looking like Mesa may be close to merging the "Dozen" driver that provides this preliminary Vulkan on Direct3D 12 support.

One of Microsoft's Linux/open-source surprises for 2021 was publishing of CBL-Mariner as their internal Linux distribution used for a variety of purposes at the company. Microsoft has kept to updating CBL-Mariner publicly on a monthly basis and continuing to make it easier to test out and enhance its usefulness. Last night they published their January 2022 build of Microsoft's Linux operating system.

Microsoft's D3D12 Gallium3D code for Mesa 22.0 can now handle tessellations to expose GL_ARB_tessellation_shader in exposing OpenGL over Direct3D 12.

It turns out with enough maneuvering that Microsoft Windows 11 can run well with the open-source Coreboot even with keeping UEFI SecureBoot enabled and meeting Windows 11's TPM requirements and other security measures.

Microsoft announced plans this morning to acquire Activision Blizzard in a nearly $69 billion (USD) deal.

Back in 2020 Microsoft announced the DXGKRNL driver as the kernel driver component for supporting GPU accelerated use-cases within Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2). That original DXGKRNL driver was quickly shot down by upstream kernel developers and various issues raised while now for the past year Microsoft has been reworking this kernel driver and on Wednesday published the new version.

Following Microsoft working on shader storage buffer object support for their Gallium3D D3D12 back-end within Mesa, they've been working on OpenGL compute and OpenGL ES 3.1 support for this controversial component to allow OpenGL/GLES/OpenCL to work atop Windows' Direct3D 12 drivers such as for Windows Subsystem for Linux.

Microsoft had a wild 2021 with Linux/open-source contributions and now days into 2022 we are already seeing more of their Mesa feature work as they look to further advance the capabilities of their Direct3D 12 back-end for running OpenGL/OpenCL atop native Windows D3D12 drivers.

Each year it's interesting to see how Microsoft's usage and contributions around Linux and open-source evolve. In a short period of time they go from sponsoring coffee at LinuxTag to enabling .NET and more on Linux to now in 2021 having made public their CBL-Mariner Linux distribution, supporting more features like eBPF and IO_uring on Windows, and continue heavily investing in the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

Microsoft continues improving the Gallium3D Direct3D 12 path within Mesa for getting more of OpenGL running atop it on Windows.

While now half-way through December, Microsoft today published their November 2021 update to CBL-Mariner 1.0, their in-house Linux distribution.

Back in early 2019 Microsoft announced Windows Terminal as a new terminal for Windows that seemed rather Linux-inspired and supported tabs and other modern functionality. Beginning in 2022, Microsoft will make Windows Terminal their default terminal program on Windows 11.

Microsoft has introduced "Microsoft-Performance-Tools for Linux-Android" as a collection of open-source tools for analyzing system performance on Linux and Android.

Microsoft's latest work in the area of open-source graphics drivers with the Mesa stack is for adding Direct3D 12 video acceleration support.

Another batch of SMB3/CIFS client changes were submitted and merged today for the Linux 5.16 merge window. Plus the KSMBD changes were also merged today for that in-kernel SMB3 file server.

HP announced today that select upcoming HP workstations will begin seeing Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) pre-installed.

While Intel Alder Lake is dominating today's news cycle, Intel and Microsoft also announced today that they have brought oneAPI Level Zero and Intel OpenCL support to Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) while employing Intel graphics hardware acceleration.

Microsoft's latest surprise is adding native Linux support to their Endpoint Manager software.

Microsoft today released its monthly update to CBL-Mariner, its internal Linux distribution that is used for a variety of purposes at the Windows company.

Microsoft has submitted their set of Hyper-V hypervisor updates today for the Linux 5.16 merge window. This time around it's noteworthy with the initial enablement work around Hyper-V "Isolation VM" support.

Those running Microsoft's recently released Windows 11 will now be able to find the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) available from within the Microsoft Store for easier setting up of this Linux-based environment.

Not only did Microsoft release Windows 11 on Monday but they also released the latest monthly update to CBL-Mariner as the company's in-house Linux distribution.

While now into September, Microsoft just published its "August 2021" update to their CBL-Mariner Linux distribution with a variety of changes.

While Microsoft announced that Windows 11 will be formally released on 5 October, rolling out today is general availability on Windows Server 2022.

Microsoft has released an updated version of its CBL-Mariner Linux distribution as their platform within the company that is being used for various cloud and edge computing use-cases among other purposes.

Besides Azure Cloud Switch as a Linux platform created by Microsoft, the Windows company has also been developing CBL-Mariner (Common Base Linux) as their own internal albeit public and open-source Linux distribution.

As expected this morning Microsoft officially lifted the curtain on Windows 11 as the latest evolutionary step to their operating system past Windows 10.

Last summer Microsoft engineers posted a DRM kernel display driver for their Hyper-V synthetic video device. One year later after going through a few rounds of code review, this Hyper-V DRM driver will be going mainline with the upcoming Linux 5.14 kernel cycle.

eBPF has been one of the greatest Linux kernel innovations of the past decade and now Microsoft has decided to bring this "revolutionary technology" to Windows Server and Windows 10.

While Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization hypervisor and their Azure cloud has largely been x86_64 focused, with the Linux 5.13 kernel they are moving further for supporting Linux as a ARM64 Hyper-V guest.

After announcing last year that they would be supporting GUI applications with Windows Subsystem for Linux, today Microsoft published their "WSLg" preview for this feature to run Linux GUI applications atop Windows 10.

Microsoft is preparing the Linux kernel for some yet-to-debut Azure network functionality.