I think your impressions of Microsoft are out-of-date. We've been successfully using Azure resources through "Azure for Research" grants. My world, is the world

I think your impressions of Microsoft are out-of-date. We've been successfully using Azure resources through "Azure for Research" grants. My world, is the world of Linux VMs, Docker, and OSS and I find Azure to be a good fit for our research needs. (I never touch any Windows OS, if that's what you are worried about.)