While I agree with you, it seems their bread and butter is shifting more towards their cloud-based services like Azure and Office 365.

That said, I don't see Windows ever going open source if only because of the huge amount of legacy bits and bobs borrowed from elsewhere that would be a nightmare to license.

The only thing I wish they'd open source (or provide Linux drivers for) is their Surface hardware drivers. I'm paying Microsoft more by buying the hardware than what they'd make selling me an OS license, let me install Linux on the damn thing without issues. If they did that I'd never bother buying any other type of laptop honestly. If I can run Ubuntu on a Surface with official Microsoft drivers I am one happy camper. I may very well keep Windows though for legacy .NET Framework stuff, but when doing .NET Core I prefer to just be on Linux and use either VS Code or Rider.

Just use win10 pro and use the Linux inside it... I've been using it and it is perfect. After you configure some good terminal to use that Linux and install your preferred text editor. It works well. You can access both file systems, run applications etc.

I do use WSL but it's just not the same at all. It's useful though but running Linux natively is another experience altogether. I can make my system as minimal as I want. There's the usefulness of WSL of not needing VM's which hog up all your ram as well just to run something under Linux.

Absolutely no way. I don't want anything that comes with windows, not just the tools available.

The only reason I still use Windows is Win32.

Explain?

Win32 is the original API for writing 32 (and 64) bit software to run on Windows. WINE functions by providing a compatibility layer for Win32 API calls. If WINE evolves to a state that it can run enough of the nominally Windows-only programs that people need, there's no more need for Windows.

Probably legacy software compatibility.