Another day, another show of support from Microsoft for the open-source community. A forthcoming update for the PowerShell utility in Windows revealed this week will introduce the ability to manage Linux services from the native command line interface using the Secure Shell protocol and Shell session (SSH). That ends decades of a backhand in which Microsoft has refused to support the most popular command-line editor of its OS rival

Redmond has quietly accepted Linux as a fixture in the enterprise since Satya Nadella took over the reins from Steve Ballmer, who referred to his open-source rival as “communism” and “cancer” throughout his career. This update is the latest of the company’s increasingly creative efforts at shaking off that legacy.

Microsoft has previously released the code for its popular .NET development framework with a pledge to port the project onto Linux and later introduced a command-line client for managing Docker containers, which can currently only run natively on the free operating system. The change to PowerShell is in many ways a continuation of that move that extends support down the stack.

That means administrators will not only be able to manage their containerized applications from Windows but also the underlying hardware. That kills two  birds with one stone, taking a common user request off Microsoft’s checklist while addressing a trend that will only become more important as developers continue flocking to the lightweight virtualization technology, which will come built-in with the next version of Windows Server.

Customers can expect more announcements along the same vein as the upcoming release moves closer to general availability. As for when the new Linux support becomes available, the general manager of the PowerShell engineering team, Angel Calvo, stated in the blog post announcing the update that a time frame will be provided in the “near future”. Until then, administrators will have to make do using existing third party options such as PuTTY that already work with Linux.