Microsoft has added Debian GNU/Linux to its list of supported Linux distributions on Azure.

On December 2, Microsoft plans to announce availability of Debian as an endorsed distribution in the Azure Marketplace. (The blog post announcing the Debian addition actually went live on December 1.) Microsoft is making the announcement in collaboration with credativ, an open-source services and support consultancy.

From Microsoft's announcement on its Azure blog:

"Debian is a free operating system that comes with over 43,000 packages and runs in many architectures and even different kernels. The 64-bit version of Debian GNU/Linux for Intel architecture is one of the most popular Linux distributions in the market, used by developers, governments, enterprises, application architects and derivative developers alike."

Microsoft users can provision Debian-based virtual machines in Azure using Debian 7 (codename "wheezy") and Debian 8 (codename "jessie), both built by credativ.

Before today's announcement, Microsoft already supported a number of Debian releases running on Hyper-V 2012 R2.

As an "endorsed" distribution, the Debian images available in the Azure Marketplace are supported by Azure's Linux and open-source developer support teams. Microsoft and credativ will continue to offer "the most updated version sof Debian as Marketplace images, as well as to keep a transparent, community-oriented process for building the images," Microsoft officials said in today's blog post.

As of today's announcement, Microsoft now offers support for eight Linux distributions running on Azure. Those distributions include: Canonical Ubuntu, CentOS, CoreOS, Debian GNU/Linux, Oracle Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise, openSUSE and, in conjunction with Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux.