They've had Linux Azure offerings for quite a few years, and famously contributed a fair bit of code to the Linux kernel to make some of that possible.

They also released those Nokia branded Android devices.

It is not like MS has been doing consumer hardware releases for that long or anything!

It'll be interesting to see the support, IMHO one thing that keeps people (software devs and consumers) from buying into a new Android OEM that is selling an "Ecosystem" (e.g. Samsung Note) is the fear of a product line being dropped.

It almost feels like Microsoft is conceding the server market, recognising that the ride of cloud computing has been a real boon for Linux - they're putting all the tools in their desktop product to make sure engineers can work easily with Linux, without actually needing Linux to do it.

it's interesting how in the last few years the Microsoft and Linux/Android ecosystems seem to developer side-by-side.

Personally I've replaced my last macbook with the surface and my iphone with an android phone, use mostly linux or windows with WSL these days and I see less and less apple products in particular among developers where the windows/linux combo seems to become more prevalent, at least anecdotally.

From their original stance against FOSS, yes pretty wild.

From UNIX point of view, not so much, given that they were one of the first licensees for PC hardware with Xenix.

WSL2 is already shipping in Beta form in Windows Insider builds and includes a full Linux kernel.

There’s the SONIC network stuff too. Though that’s not a consumer product.