Microsoft is working towards running Linux as ARM64 Hyper-V guest

Microsoft's love affair with Linux has been developing in recent years, and has now reached the stage of being a serious relationship. Such is Microsoft's commitment that the company is now actively involved in contributing to the Linux kernel.

One of the latest updates sees the company shifting its focus slightly when it comes to Hyper-V. Its virtualization tool has thus far been largely fixated with x86_64, but now there is a move towards "running Linux as ARM64 Hyper-V guest".

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The news was noticed and shared by Michael Larabel of Phoronix, who says: "While Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization hypervisor and their Azure cloud has largely been x86_64 focused, with the Linux 5.13 kernel they are moving further for supporting Linux as a ARM64 Hyper-V guest".

Larabel goes on to say:

Microsoft's Hyper-V changes that were merged last week for the Linux 5.13 kernel include VMBus enhancements and other work, but arguably most notable are new patches for "running Linux as Arm64 Hyper-V guest". Those Hyper-V changes are shifting around CPU architecture neutral code and other low-level alterations to the Microsoft hypervisor code.

There is speculation that we will see not only 64-bit ARM with Hyper-V, but also Azure ARM64 in due course.

You can see full details of the commit here.

Image credit: Eric Glenn / Shutterstock