Microsoft is the largest software maker on the planet and counts among its offerings the most popular operating system and the most popular productivity software suite. There are challengers to Microsoft on both those categories, but the Redmond firm reigns supreme.

Today Microsoft has announced that it is releasing about 20,000 lines of device driver code directly to the Linux community. The code includes three Linux device drivers and has been submitted to the Linux kernel community for inclusion in the Linux tree.

Microsoft says that the code will be available to the Linux community and customers alike and is designed to enhance the performance of the Linux operating system when virtualized on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V.

Microsoft's Sam Ramji said, "We are seeing Microsoft communities and open source communities grow together, which is ultimately of benefit to our customers. The Linux community, for example, has built a platform used by many customers. So our strategy is to enhance interoperability between the Windows platform and many open source technologies, which includes Linux, to provide the choices our customers are asking for."

Microsoft is providing the code the Linux community under the GPLv2 license, which it says is the preferred license type by the community. The driver code will allow Linux to run in enlightened mode providing it with the same optimized synthetic devices as a Windows virtual machine running on top of Hyper-V. Prior to offering the code Linux could run on Hyper-V, but without the high levels of performance that the new driver code will allow.

Ramji continued saying, "So there’s mutual benefit for customers, for Microsoft, and for commercial and community distributions of Linux, to enhance the performance of Linux as a guest operating system where Windows Server is the host."