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codycharris | on: Azure Linux 4.0 is Microsoft's first general-purpose Linux
No it's not. It's for tuned for Azure. Nobody is running this outside of their compute environment.
jraph | parent | next
Yeah, a general purpose distro would come with a desktop environment and you'd be able to run it on your PC as your main OS. Calling this general purpose is so misleading.

Of course describing reality in titles would have the inconvenience of causing fewer clicks to these articles.

The title on HN could be updated though.

rswail | root | parent | next
It's general purpose in that it can run any Linux application in numerous different ways, containerized, as a VM, or on specific bare hardware.

You and Microsoft are using the word "general purpose" to mean different things.

This is not generally compatible with different hardware.

Nor does it include things that could be considered applications, like desktop environments etc. It's not designed to be run by an end user on a desktop.

embedding-shape | root | parent
Someone says:

> Here is a general purpose Linux distribution, give it a try!

Where does your mind go? That this is a server-only distribution meant for a specific provider? Or that it's something like Debian, that could be run on servers and desktops alike without much tinkering, or meant for any provider?

FWIW, Microsoft themselves don't seem to call this a "general purpose Linux distribution", I could probably guess why, what Microsoft themselves say is "Purpose-Built for Azure" which sounds much more accurate. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/linuxandopensourceb...

I think the author might have confused (unintentionally or intentionally, who knows?) "general purpose" with "Purpose-Built for Azure", since Microsoft's own announcements get this right, while submission article is littered with this mistake.

tossandthrow | root | parent
Ubuntu server distributions are definitely general purpose.
embedding-shape | root | parent | next
So if I understand what you're saying, if someone asks you "Hey, could you recommend me a general purpose Linux distribution?", you'd recommend them Ubuntu Server rather than just straight up Ubuntu?

I'd agree both could be used in a general-purpose way, but I'd definitively call one of them more general-purpose than the other.

PeterStuer | root | parent | next
95% of my VM's run Ubuntu Server LTS, so yes, that is what I would recommend if I was a recommending person.
tossandthrow | root | parent
If they need a general purpose distro for a server, absolutely.

That would likely be a better recommendation than android.

embedding-shape | root | parent
But that wasn't the question, what they ask is specifically "Hey, could you recommend me a general purpose Linux distribution?", would you still first recommend Ubuntu Server?
thesuperbigfrog | root | parent
Most Linux server distributions would be expected to be headless.

"General purpose" Linux distributions (not "server") typically would include a GUI desktop.

joxdosba | root | parent
A GUI Linux distribution feels vastly more niche than a headless one.
thesuperbigfrog | root | parent
Really?

What are some major Linux distributions that are only headless?

What is the market share of those Linux distributions compared to Linux distributions that have a GUI desktop?

stuaxo | root | parent | next
When he said "general purpose" I totally imagined a desktop environment.
gunalx | root | parent
According to [1] the guidelines explicitly say to keep editorializing to a specified minimum, unless it is spam. Dont know it this title would allow editorialising

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

jraph | root | parent
They say "please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize".

I think it's misleading and linkbait. The mods would decide what to use instead, this could be "Azure Linux 4.0, Microsoft's Linux distribution for its cloud" or something like this.

graemep | root | parent
Especially given the article says this:

> It is minimal on purpose. Azure Linux ships only what cloud and server workloads need. There is no desktop, no GUI, no general-purpose sprawl.

hmry | root | parent
Yep sure does. Love an article that contradicts its own title. Bonus points for that sentence sounding extremely AI-generated.
b33j0r | parent | next
You point to a better timeline. Sometimes—when desperately alone—I imagine.

If only the guy who was destined to close a disk operating system deal with IBM hadn’t been goofing around with his plane that fateful day.

We would all be using lisp machines, running smalltalk on microkernels that put the HURD to shame. Just imagine: instead of backslashes and drive letters, we’d have parens. Endless, syntactically-valid parens.

Or CP/M, probably that. But can it run doom?

hathawsh | root | parent | next
Sorry to break it to you, but on that timeline, the good things got poisoned. IBM enhanced Lisp with Enterprise Ready features like Spreadsheet Macro Builder, Microsoft took over development of Smalltalk and morphed it into BASIC 2.0, and the HURD community lost a bizarre copyright lawsuit. Fortunately for those folks, an intrepid hacker in the 90s saw some of the interesting ideas in MS-DOS and rebuilt it as LS-DOS. Today, most of their servers and mobile phones run LS-DOS or similar.
__patchbit__ | root | parent
LSD-OS would be an AI core unsupported by runtime and operating system that cascades streams of consciousness in a portable cartridge smartphone form factor until mounted on an embodiment to become unified and coherent.
b33j0r | root | parent
Ah. A common (and understandable) misconception. LSD-OS doesn’t enhance anything in the UX, it just removes the filters that prevent you from seeing reality, man.

Some confuse this with LDS-OS, which makes the user weirdly and unquestionably `nice` by only accepting inputs from protected mode.

qmr | root | parent | next
That's not at all how it went down.

Please don't spread lies about Gary.

b33j0r | root | parent
For posterity, parent is correct. The “flying his plane” story is a memeified summary. I did not actually mean that we would have lisp machines otherwise, which was the tell that I was kidding.

For others who did not get the joke, Kindall was kind of a big deal:

https://computerhistory.org/blog/fifty-years-of-the-personal...

otabdeveloper4 | root | parent | next
> using lisp machines, running smalltalk on microkernels that put the HURD to shame

That future is not different from this future. That road leads down to Javascript and React anyways. (Perhaps with a slightly different syntax.)

rigonkulous | root | parent | next
sigh .. and SGI would've been the ones to make the killer laptop which morphed into a slick metal pocket dependency for billions ...
psychoslave | root | parent
Glad that at least we avoided that much more parentheses.

Where is our PL any kind of bracket and other rococo ornamental symbol is at most totally optional?

VincePlatt | parent | next
I was curious to see what it would be like to run this under WLS. I'm guessing we'll get our chance at some point.
haydenbarnes | root | parent | next
You get a sense of it now. Azure Linux 3.0 is the base for the WSL system distro, there all the WSLg (GUI) and now the wslc plumbing happens. It's ephemeral, but you can drop in and look around with wsl --system --user root. An official WSL image of Azure Linux 4.0 is coming in a few weeks that you'll be able to install with wsl.exe --install Azure...(I'm not sure the exact name).
voidfunc | root | parent
I know internal folks running AzLinux 3.0 under WSL and it's fine. Not a lot of reasons to do it vs just use Fedora. I'd expect similar for AzLinux 4.0. It's not tuned for day-to-day WSL centric developer use tho.
tomkarho | parent | next
I would imagine MS employees might (or be made to) either directly or through wsl.
osigurdson | parent | next
You may be right, its possible however that people running on Azure may use it locally for testing.
znpy | parent
I don’t know really. Amazon AL2023 can be used outside aws for example, and people might want the same distro on-prem as the cloud.

It’s not the average joe/jane though.