As much fun as it is to view the world in a “Linux versus Microsoft” way, the reality is that a technology monoculture is less useful than a heterogenous one. Even Microsoft knows this: they’ve made a variety of tepid attempts to support integration with other operating systems for decades, because they know their customers are relying on those other systems. More recently Microsoft has even contributed to the Linux kernel.
So it shouldn’t be terribly surprising that Microsoft is courting Linux developers with its Azure Platform-as-a-Service. Both Ubuntu and SUSE Linux are available and fully supported by Canonical and SUSE, respectively. CentOS is also an option, with support provided by OpenLogic.