Microsoft overnight released Azure Linux 3.0.20260204 as the latest release of their in-house Linux distribution widely used within their Azure environment and elsewhere.
Azure Linux 3.0.20260204 continues making use of the Linux 6.6 LTS kernel by default that’s increasingly showing its age with two Long Term Support kernels since then (Linux 6.12 and 6.18) plus Linux 7.0 now being in development. But new to this release is Microsoft now publishing a Gen1 marketplace image of the Linux 6.12 kernel as a hardware enablement (HWE) option for those needing a newer kernel. A bit surprising perhaps they didn’t spring ahead to the newer Linux 6.18 LTS base but in any event this 6.12 kernel is opt-in for those wanting newer hardware support.
Azure Linux 3.0.20260204 also adjusts its ARM64 HWE kernel configurations in the name of performance improvements. Those changes include various DevFreq and IOMMU adjustments,enabling MLRU, and other adjustments for that ARM64 kernel-hwe package.
Azure Linux 3.0 also enables Zstd SquashFS support by default for its standard kernel, among other adjustments. There are also various fixes and dozens of package updates mostly in the name of shipping security fixes. Rust 1.90 is also now present in Azure Linux 3.0.
Downloads and more details on this monthly Microsoft Azure Linux 3.0 operating system update via GitHub.
