My friend... You do not look around you and recognize the “MS extortion business model” that has now spread off to all tech and even non-tech markets?
They set the industry and market standard based on the proprietary “extortion” and “bait and switch” business model that has become the liberal business standard.
No... They will steal it and call it their own if they think they can get away with it, And this culture is just stupid enough to let them get away with it.
“Well if windows says I have to do this then I have to do this”. MS started this particular business model and these idiots are all falling for it. It is the new marketing standard. they sell stocks based on this new business model.
WSL2 makes building and testing Docker containers for Linux and Windows possible on one machine. It’s a perfect fit for my current assignments.That is pretty much the definition of "I use what works best".
Over the past 30 years I've used Linux, Windows, and MacOS (and even NetBSD) in turn as my primary workstation environment, and my personal home environment. Windows is terrific, until you have to get under the hood to do anything to it other than run for-Windows applications, at which point it becomes a battle. MacOS was much the same, although somewhat better than Windows. Linux was a battle from the get-go, because the desktop just wasn't ready for prime time. Yes, it's gotten much better, but it's still the case that I use my Linux workstation as a multiple-XTerm server with a browser 99% of the time.
The major thing stopping me from making use of this "Linux on Windows" stuff is that I absolutely refuse to install Windows directly on metal.
Let me be clear -- I don't disagree with any of the historical data you quote. Microsoft has been horrible and has not abandoned Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, although it's not as egregious or overt these days. But I honestly don't think they're going to be able to co-opt Linux as you predict. It's just too easy -- and far less expensive -- and most important, mission-critical -- to run Linux natively.
But suppose in 5 years Microsoft does manage to make Linux-on-Windows the default way that the world does Linux software development (Embrace). They will find a brick wall of resistance to the "Extend", unless they're somehow able to co-opt Linux Torvalds and he leads us all off the cliff like the Pied Piper. (Granted, strange things do happen in business.)
The ultimate brick wall is that no one -- no one -- is going to give up being able to run Linux standalone. It's how the internet works, it's how containers work, it's how cloud clusters work, etc. Those aren't Windows computers out there.
So if Microsoft tries to corrupt Linux it simply isn't going to work.
Copying ShadowAce for optional comment. :-)