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.
