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+There has been a great disturbance in the force lately. Microsoft, once the second biggest enemy of Linux (SCO Group takes top honors there), has been positively giddy about not just supporting Linux but actually building tools to run Linux in Windows and Windows software in Linux. 
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+You can run <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/07/windows_10_with_ubuntu_now_in_public_preview/">Ubuntu inside Windows 10</a>, install CoreOS and Docker containers inside Azure, even fire up SQL Server on <a href="https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/23/microsofts_linux_lovein_continues_with_suse_support_in_sql_server/">SUSE Enterprise Linux</a>.
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+It's a veritable Linux love fest up in Redmond, which is a distinct about face for a company whose CEO once called Linux a "cancer" and maintained its anti-Linux "Get the Facts" website well past its expiration date (it was there until 2007 to be precise). 
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+Why the Linux love and why now? What does Microsoft get out of it? 
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+The company's PR department would like you to believe it's Microsoft finally coming around and embracing open source software. But that's not the real story. The real story is the same as it ever was: Microsoft wants to make more money. 
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+And the company seems to finally be waking up to the fact that the enterprise world is poised to move forward without Windows.
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+You don't have to be an expert at reading the tea leaves to know that even in enterprise software -- Microsoft's traditional stronghold -- the company is fast fading from relevancy. Microsoft does not have a bright future in a world where not only are there dozens of alternative operating systems, but, thanks to container based workflows, it really doesn't matter much which one you choose. 
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+The only place Microsoft can fit in that world is making the software that manages those containers, hence the love for Docker in Azure and the ability to run SQL Server on SUSE Enterprise Linux. Azure and SQL Server need to be free to make money without the legacy Windows-only baggage pulling them down.
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+All of Microsoft SQL Server's competitors are available on Linux, but until the recent announcement, SQL Server was not. That meant that if you wanted SQL Server you had to forgo Linux, which might mean losing all sorts of other tools you need. At the very least it meant that SQL Server had a cost above and beyond the financial. 
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+SQL Server on Linux eliminates the tight coupling with Windows and will most likely end up making Microsoft more money since it provides an in-road for SQL Server in all-Linux enterprise deployments, a place it would previously have been off the table.
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+Something similar is behind the move to get Linux and Microsoft Azure playing nicely together.
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+There's a lot of hype around container-based computing, but believe it or not some of that hype is deserved. Containers make it possible to run just about anything anywhere. The underlying OS is irrelevant. Red Hat's <a href="http://www.projectatomic.io/">Project Atomic</a> provides the best linguistic clue about what this means: right now, containers are the atomic unit of computing. 
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+Once you have everything you need in individual containers you can deploy them on any platform you want. The only thing that matters is which set of tools you want to use to manage your containers. Microsoft's Azure platform happens to support all the popular choices right now: DC/OS, Docker Swarm and Kubernetes, which makes Azure a compelling option for a very un-Microsoft reason: choice.
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+It's tempting to proclaim that Windows itself is going away, but it's not. Certainly not in the consumer space anyway. Your basic Windows 10 workstation is going to be a staple of the enterprise world for some time to come. But if you want to attract top developers to your platform you need to give them the tools they want. And while Ballmer may be gone, it's clear that his "developers, developers, developers" chant still echos about in the halls of Redmond. Microsoft recognizes that it needs top developer tools to give to its top developers. And that's why you can now run Bash inside your Windows 10 install. That gets you a "native" experience in the shell with tools like awk, grep and all the other developer favorites.
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+Technically speaking this is not Linux running in Windows, Linux is a kernel and there's no kernel here. In fact it's more like GNU running in Windows, which is actually slightly more outrageous from a historical point of view. Why not just run Ubuntu and put Windows in the virtual machine? Well, let's not get crazy, this is still Microsoft we're talking about.
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+But it's clear that, while Microsoft probably isn't quite ready to hand out laptops running Linux to employees, it does need those tools available for developers and it also seems to grasp that improving the dev tools in Windows is not good enough.
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+In fact, Windows itself may not be good enough anymore. When Windows first launched it was built on the idea that the operating system matters. And it did for many years. In some cases it still does, but increasingly in the enterprise space, where the majority of Microsoft's money is made, the operating system has become irrelevant.
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+Let's face it, it's been a long time since anyone really cared about Windows. When was the last time you heard about a hot new technology for Windows that was developed by someone other than Microsoft? When was the last time you heard about a hot new startup building its infrastructure on Windows? Even if Windows soldiers on in the established enterprise market, it lost developer mind share and enthusiasm years, if not decades, ago.
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+That's very bad news for a company built around selling an OS. In the broader context then Microsoft's extensive support and seeming love for Linux is all about shifting the perception of Microsoft from purveyor of an OS no one really likes to a cross-platform technology and service provider.
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+It's very clear that Satya Nadella's Microsoft is not your father's Microsoft. While the interest in Linux and various practical strategies and initiatives show Microsoft changing its Linux tune, what might be more significant is that Microsoft is willing to do an about face on what used to be its core values. 
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+Microsoft's previous strategy of "embrace, extend and extinguish" quite simply didn't work. Linux was never extinguished. Worse, that strategy meant that a ton of energy was focused on extinguishing Linux when the better move would have been improving Windows. While we're used to seeing small startups pivot and change strategies on a dime it's another thing entirely to try to turn a ship as massive and tangled as Microsoft. That does, however, appear to be what Nadella is doing. 
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+Not only has Microsoft embraced Linux, it's turned its back on the fundamental principles that guided it under Ballmer's tenure. The company has been breaking down the very walls it built around its products, decoupling products that were originally designed to be insperable to insure that, for instance, selling SQL Server also meant selling Windows. Regardless of how it pans out the strategic shift is huge.
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+And it remains to be seen whether this new strategy will work. Azure already has a significant share of the so-called Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) market, though as of 2016 it still trails significantly behind Amazon's AWS offering. It does have one big feather to put in its cap though: Azure is well ahead of Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft is clearly hoping that the Linux-backed announcements over the past year will propel it even closer to Amazon's heels.