- They seem to be comfortable shipping that as the default WSL for a few years and this would allow them to integrate even deeper. - Ubuntu is one of the main systems people use in cloud based environments; including Microsoft's own Azure where it and other linux distros are more popular than Windows Server. Taking control of Ubuntu would allow them to take full control of that stack. The goal here would be to offer an alternative to the likes of Oracle and IBM for enterprises and make sure Azure retains its competitive edge over cloud platforms offered by those two. IBM just bought Red Hat; and Oracle ships its own Red Hat derivative. - On premise "cloud" is becoming a big deal. Owning Ubuntu, which is a player in that space too, would enable MS to make Azure on premise a better product.

The Desktop application market at this point is mostly split between creative tools and developer tools. MS is big into the latter and most of that targets Linux already. Creative tools are basically Adobe and similar companies. Most of those target Apple and MS. Finally there's office, which mostly already works in a browser. I doubt they are in a hurry to produce a Linux desktop version. It's a lot of work for basically no big return on investment. They already struggle with keeping the OSX version relevant.

Finally, there are games. PC Games are big drivers for MS Windows sales. It's what keeps home owners buying windows computers with the windows license. While in decline for years, that's still a lot of money for MS. Without gaming, they'd have been bleeding more users to Apple and Linux for years. Of course XBox is still Windows based. I'd say this is the main thing that is keeping Windows Desktop alive. So, I don't see them walking from that any time soon. They might however, transition X Box to a subscription based streaming service at some point. Various companies are already piloting solutions for this (Google, Amazon, NVidia). Linux might make sense here but it would require tight integration with hardware and software. I'd say forget about MS even attempting to support that at the level they currently support Windows. But, I wouldn't discount it for a future iteration of XBox though.