Microsoft left Linux users in the cold for almost an entire day

Microsoft Edge Linux
Microsoft Edge Linux (Image credit: Microsoft)

What you need to know

  • Linux loyalists had a nasty surprise waiting for them on June 16.
  • packages.microsoft.com died for the bulk of the day.
  • Even when it returned, users reported painfully slow downloads.

Linux fans suffered a not-so-minor inconvenience when packages.microsoft.com went down on June 16. Everything from Visual Studio Code to Microsoft Edge and Teams package links were affected as repositories suffered a serious outage that lasted almost the entirety of a day.

Though a day isn't a long time relative to most things, it's a virtual eternity for those whose entire ecosystem is crippled by such an outage. As reported by Ars Technica, Microsoft took five hours to acknowledge the issue, then another thirteen hours to claim said issue had been resolved. Commenters on the report cited that even though repositories were back online and functioning, the download speeds were brutally slow.

According to Microsoft's log of the issues, it seems the tech giant clocked problems for around 20 hours, though 18 versus 20 is splitting hairs — the point is that the headaches persisted for far longer than they should have.

In short, it's not an easy life Linux lovers live, and it's moments like these that expose that sad reality. On the flip side, if you're interested in seeing an operating system family that's a top priority for Microsoft, take a peek at Windows 11. It's not official yet, but the leaks surrounding it have revealed a boatload of OS content that we've taken for a hands-on spin.

Robert Carnevale

Robert Carnevale is the News Editor for Windows Central. He's a big fan of Kinect (it lives on in his heart), Sonic the Hedgehog, and the legendary intersection of those two titans, Sonic Free Riders. He is the author of Cold War 2395. Have a useful tip? Send it to robert.carnevale@futurenet.com.

4 Comments
  • "In short, it's not an easy life Linux lovers live, and it's moments like these that expose that sad reality." Seriously? Is this 1998? Here let me fix that for you: "In short, it's not an easy life Windows Subsystem for Linux lovers live, and it's moments like these that expose that sad reality." Strangely enough, while Microsoft was having its issues yesterday, none of my company's Linux servers had any issues applying updates - because they aren't running WSL and don't get their updates from Microsoft-hosted servers. Linux wasn't the problem yesterday... Microsoft was.
  • Lmao at the other getting pissed off
  • "Semantics make me angry!" smashes table repeatedly
  • Some context to drfyzziks. He's referring to the approach MS had towards Open Source. Lookup the Halloween Documents on Wikipedia. "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish". The author of this article has some inaccuracies. Correct, only people using Microsoft repos were affected. WSL is a huge focus of MS. MS and the majority of proprietary software are built on Open Source. It is hard to find software that hasn't been touched by Open Source. More than 50% of Azure deployments are Linux based. MS has been improving WSL at a rapid pace, bringing Linux GUI apps, performance improvements and more to the Windows desktop. Customers depend on WSL on a daily basis to do their work. Not me, because I run Debian :p. I like a fast machine with no tracking. Trolls be trolls!