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Ubuntu images on Microsoft Azure have recently started shipping with the open source package azure-vm-utils included by default. Azure VM utils is a package that provides essential utilities and udev rules to optimize the Linux experience on Azure. This change results in more reliable disks, smoother networking on accelerated setups, and fewer tweaks to get things running. Here’s what you need to know.

On October 23rd, we announced the beta availability of silicon-optimized AI models in Ubuntu. Developers can locally install DeepSeek R1 and Qwen 2.5 VL with a single command, benefiting from maximized hardware performance and automated dependency management. Application developers can access the local API of a quantized generative AI (GenAI) model with runtime optimizations for efficient performance on their CPU, GPU, or NPU.

When evaluating cybersecurity products, it's easy to focus on surface-level features like dashboards, alerts and integrations. But real strength often lies more deeply, in the architecture itself. One embedded capability that demonstrates rigorous security design principles is Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux). Originally developed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and released to the open-source community, SELinux is a mandatory access control (MAC) framework built into the Linux kernel.