This sounds like over-the-top speculation. Just because their larger source of revenue has shifted to their high-value, high-capital PaaS, it doesn't mean they'

This sounds like over-the-top speculation. Just because their larger source of revenue has shifted to their high-value, high-capital PaaS, it doesn't mean they'll be killing off the Windows platform entirely in favor of Linux. Windows is an operating system that has evolved over decades for the PC and it still outperforms Linux in some very crucial things (like priority hardware support from manufacturers, optimization of hardware, etc.) by miles. It's hard to imagine even if Linux distros fix their glaring lack of standardization, bring about sane package management systems and manage to create bearable user experiences. The writer seems to be treating the porting of Edge to Linux as the first stage of this "phase". This appears quite weird, a rather simpler explanation would be just that Microsoft wants as many people as possible to use its browser. I'm not an experienced programmer but I don't think it's such a phenomenal and revolutionary thing to release Linux builds for Edge, especially considering that it is now based off of Chromium which already has some presence in Linux distributions.