From what I see in general MS like Linux on the server, not so much the desktop. The reason for that is pretty obvious. They want as many organizations as possible to use their cloud platform, for that to work, they need first class Linux server support. On the desktop, they'd prefer people to be using Windows, but they want to ensure that developers who deploy to Linux have a great experience, thus WSL, VS Code et a…
They don't _like_ it, that's the author's whole point. They would obviously prefer that everyone pay for windows server, but they've lost that battle. "Like" is pure marketing. >You only have to look at MS presence at Kubecon where you'll often see MS staff with Macs or Ubuntu laptops on their stand. marketing in a market. I think we (or you and the author, I'm just re-iterating his points) are talking past each othe…
They're there to make money, simple as that (whether they should be or not, is a whole other discussion).
What tends to get in the way is internal politics and hubris, where a company gets ossified and scared of change.
There's plenty of examples of this (Nokia, Blackberry, Novell etc etc). A bold company will be willing to change even at the apparent cost of one of their own products.
MS have done a pretty effective job, under Satya Nadella, of realising that clinging to the past isn't effective and that they need to be willing to move with the times.
The argument, that I felt the article made, that this is some EEE strategy is (IMO) misplaced. I think MS has no intention of trying to extinguish Linux (if such a thing was even possible), they're adapting to the new reality.