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Microsoft's CBL-Delridge is 404, long live CBL-Mariner

Microsoft is increasingly standardizing on its in-house CBL-Mariner
Linux distribution. Is this Microsoft Linux?

  * Hayden Barnes

Hayden Barnes

Nov 3, 2022 * 4 min read
Microsoft's CBL-Delridge is 404, long live CBL-Mariner

CBL-Delridge, Microsoft's Debian-based Linux distribution, is no
more. As pointed out to me by Mary Jo Foley, the CBL-Delridge apt
package repository, is now 404:

[image-7]

I had previously written a guide to building your own image of
CBL-Delridge from that repository:

 
Building CBL-Delridge, Microsoft's other Linux distro
Microsoft has another Linux distro you probably haven't heard of. You
can easily build it and even import it into WSL.
[favicon]Box of CablesHayden Barnes
[Untitled-2]

I am afraid that method will no longer work.

[image-6]

Mary Jo Foley also wrote about CBL-Delridge:

 
Surprise: There's yet another Microsoft Linux distro, CBL-Delridge
Microsoft has been public about its CBL-Mariner Linux release, which
just hit the 2.0 milestone. But did you know there's also a Microsoft
CBL-Delridge?
[zdnet-logo]ZDNETMary Jo Foley
[microsoftl]

The only external use of CBL-Delridge by Microsoft, to my knowledge,
was in Azure Cloud Shell, the shell built into Azure's web portal
interface and Windows Terminal:

[image-1][image-2]

But you will notice if you login to Azure Cloud Shell now, another
Linux distro is powering ACS, Microsoft's CBL-Mariner:

[image-4]

CBL is short for "Common Base Linux", which originally appeared to
apply to a whole family of Linux distros within Microsoft, but
Microsoft appears to be increasingly consolidating efforts about
CBL-Mariner.

Microsoft describes CBL-Mariner as "an internal Linux distribution
for Microsoft's cloud infrastructure and edge products and services"
but it now powers such diverse offerings as:

  * Azure Cloud Shell
  * Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
  * SONiC network switches
  * Azure Sphere edge devices
  * The lightweight layer that runs above your distro of choice on
    Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

Unlike Debian and thus .deb-based CBL-Delridge, CBL-Mariner is
.rpm-based, with .spec files borrowed from VMware's Photon OS,
openmamba, and the Fedora Project. The project also acknowledges
Linux from Scratch, so despite being .rpm-based, CBL-Mariner is not a
derivative of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora, or SUSE Linux. It is
something new.

Also unlike CBL-Delridge, Microsoft makes installable .ISO images
available for CBL-Mariner.

The GUI installer on the ISO is quite fast. A full installation on a
VM with just 4GB of RAM took 64 seconds.

[image-15]

And CBL-Mariner is proud of its install speed too:

[image-18]

You can browse the packages available in CBL-Mariner's default
repository. While there is no official GUI desktop, there are some
interesting GNOME packages landing in the repository:

[image-14]

Development on CBL-Mariner is quite active, with 223 releases to date
on both the 1.0 and 2.0 release branches:

[image-8]

CBL-Mariner even provides detailed instructions on how it is built:

[image-9]

And how to build it yourself:

[image-10]

You can learn more from CBL-Mariner's GitHub page:

 
GitHub - microsoft/CBL-Mariner: Linux OS for Azure 1P services and
edge appliances
Linux OS for Azure 1P services and edge appliances - GitHub -
microsoft/CBL-Mariner: Linux OS for Azure 1P services and edge
appliances
[fluidicon]GitHubmicrosoft
[CBL-Marine]

Or Microsoft's official documentation for CBL-Mariner:

 
CBL-Mariner Documentation
CBL-Mariner is an internal Linux distribution built by Microsoft for
use in Azure
[apple-touc]CBL-MarinerMariner Dev Team
[conor-sext]

So, the question is, is CBL-Mariner going to be Microsoft Linux?

    Kelsey works on the WSL 2 kernel, Jim oversees CBL Mariner, and
    Rachel works on CBL Mariner. https://t.co/DDVqXp9azD

    -- Hayden Barnes (@unixterminal) October 13, 2022

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