AlmaLinux, a free and community-owned enterprise-grade Linux distro, has been available in Microsoft’s Azure Marketplace for over three years.
However, its recent endorsement has made it an officially recognized choice on Azure, joining other well-established names like Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Enterprise Linux.
Regarding this, benny Vasquez, Chair of the Board of the AlmaLinux OS Foundation, said:
The AlmaLinux OS Foundation is thrilled that AlmaLinux has been recognized as an endorsed Linux distribution in Azure. This endorsement underscores our commitment to providing a stable, secure, and high-performance Linux distribution for enterprise environments.
Okay, but what does being an Azure-endorsed Distributor mean? Let me explain. On Azure, customers have the flexibility to deploy any Linux distribution from multiple sources, including the Azure Marketplace, custom images, or community galleries.
However, a subset of these distributions—now including Alma—are recognized as endorsed ones. While this is not an official recommendation from Microsoft, it means that the distro has met several important criteria:
- Market and Customer Demand: AlmaLinux has demonstrated strong market and customer demand, making it a valuable addition to the Azure ecosystem.
- Contractual Agreement: The AlmaLinux OS Foundation has a formal agreement with Microsoft, ensuring consistent updates and fast remediation for any issues.
- Engineering Collaboration: AlmaLinux benefits from a close engineering relationship with Microsoft, which means ongoing support for new features, integration of customer feedback, and problem-solving forums.
- Content Mirror in Azure: The AlmaLinux OS Foundation maintains content and infrastructure across multiple Azure regions, ensuring customers a seamless and efficient update experience.
In other words, with this endorsement, Alma will adhere to rigorous testing and update standards, receiving support as outlined in Microsoft’s Linux and open-source support policies.
So, whether you’re using x64 or Arm64 architectures, Alma is available through the Azure Marketplace, including Microsoft’s latest Cobalt 100-based virtual machines.
It is also available in the Community Gallery and supports Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), making deploying and managing AlmaLinux workloads on Azure easier than ever.
However, another intriguing piece of news that caught our attention was mentioning a figure we’ve never seen Microsoft publicly disclose before—the percentage of Linux-based operating systems used in Azure.
According to the announcement, that number is an impressive over 60%, which, though unsurprising, clearly highlights Linux’s dominance within Microsoft’s cloud service.
For more information, refer to the official Microsoft announcement or next to this on Alma’s website.
