Microsoft has just announced the general availability of Microsoft Defender ATP for Linux a few months after the company rolled out the preview build of the application.

“Adding Linux into the existing selection of natively supported platforms by Microsoft Defender ATP marks an important moment for all our customers. It makes Microsoft Defender Security Center a truly unified surface for monitoring and managing security of the full spectrum of desktop and server platforms that are common across enterprise environments (Windows, Windows Server, macOS, and Linux),” Microsoft explains in a post today.

Microsoft Defender ATP for Linux current supports a total of six different server distributions, including the following:

RHEL 7.2+
CentOS Linux 7.2+
Ubuntu 16 LTS, or higher LTS
SLES 12+
Debian 9+
Oracle Linux 7.2

Microsoft’s love for Linux

Microsoft focusing more on the Linux ecosystem isn’t necessarily surprising, as the company is makes huge efforts to expand in this world.

And the Windows Subsystem for Linux, which is currently at the second generation in Windows 10, is the living proof in this regard, as it allows users to run Linux on top of Windows. The new version that debuted with the May 2020 Update (or version 2004) also comes with a Linux kernel, and the most popular distributions are already available, including Ubuntu.

The new antivirus is supposed to offer a full command line experience on the client, but what admins need to know is that installing the Microsoft Defender ATP for Linux requires a Microsoft Defender ATP for Servers license.

The company says it plans even more improvements for Linux, and more announcements would be shared rather sooner than later.

“We are just at the beginning of our Linux journey and we are not stopping here! We are committed to continuous expansion of our capabilities for Linux and will be bringing you enhancements in the coming months,” the company explains.