At its developer-focused Build 2022 conference today, Microsoft has announced a range of updates for its Azure services. The most interesting announcement deals with the Intelligent Data Platform.
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Microsoft has acquired Kinvolk, a German open source company whose best known project is Flatcar Container Linux, a distribution designed for container workloads.
Kinvolk was founded in 2015 in Berlin and its first project was building a container runtime, called rkt, for Container Linux (formerly CoreOS), a lightweight Linux distribution. CoreOS Inc, the company behind Container Linux, was acquired by Red Hat in early 2018. Anxious for the future of Container Linux, Kinvolk founder and CEO Chris Kühl said Flatcar Linux is a friendly fork of CoreOS s Container Linux and as such, compatible with it.
The rationale for Flatcar Linux was uncertainty about the future of Container Linux after Red Hat s acquisition. At the time, Red Hat product manager Rob Szumski said Red Hat plans to continue Container Linux’s development and promised that it would remain free.