alt Hacker NewsOK, so this is important not because it comes from Microsoft.
1. It's general purpose in that it is designed to be used to deliver any application software, whether containerized, on a VM or on (specific) bare hardware.
2. It has an SBOM that allows all elements of the distribution when run as a container/VM/bare to have an auditable chain back to the Fedora distribution, which then has a chain back to the source. So that allows companies to comply with the requirements of security audits much better than the "run our automated tool in your kernel to keep you up to date".
3. It's effectively a read-only OS, especially as containers, with that same auditable supply chain.
So no, it won't run on general hardware with random selections of ethernet and wifi and sound and display variations, but it will run any general application in numerous environments with an auditable supply chain.
Replies
>OK, so this is important not because it comes from Microsoft.
No, it IS important because it comes from Microsoft.
>If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won. - Linus Torvalds
Never in his wildest dreams did he imagine this would happen. Microsoft spent a decade trying to kill Linux via SCO lawfare. Linux has won. Microsoft is completely and utterly defeated.
> 1. It's general purpose in that it is designed to be used to deliver any application software
FWIW, it's only the HN title and this article that calls this new distribution "general-purpose". Microsoft themselves say that this the distribution is "Purpose-Built for Azure" (https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/linuxandopensourceb...), I'm not sure how the author got it wrong.