Oh. Man. Here at IBM, Linux has become something of a religion, albeit a religion worshipped in secrecy. IBM is trying to push Linux as much as it can, but it has to do so very carefully, because it doesn't want to anger Microsoft too much, seeing as how practically 90 percent of the PCs within IBM are running variations of Windows. I think IBM is still a tad miffed that Windows overshadowed its own OS/2 product way back when.

Don't hold your breath, though. Linux still lacks a lot of the proprietary functionality that Windows has, such as media players and such, to say nothing of the fact that a lot of PC games out there haven't even begun to think about Linux support. Firefox I don't know as much about, but I do know Internet Explorer honks the royal jeeper, to borrow a Berg-ian turn a phrase.

Linux' problem is that it's still geek heaven; nobody has designed a Linux implementation that non-geeks can use. You have to LOVE twiddling with software to be able to use it at home.

They also need to develop a decent font-rendering engine. You can always tell when something's been printed on a Linux system - the type is jaggy and pixellated.

It's a shame, too, because when it DOES work, it's a kick.

Been running RedHat for over 2 years now at home and am not a geek.

What Linux suffers from is a lack of device drivers by camera/scanner/peripheral makers. These only seem to be written for Micro$oft.

As I have heard it Micro$oft is soooo 20th Century and Linux is the future..

I don't mean to get into the whole Apple vs. Windows thing, but Mitch mentions " nobody has designed a Linux implementation that non-geeks can use." That is true but misleading. The Mac operating system is indeed a Unix implementation that non-geeks can use, it's just not a Linux implementation that non-geeks can use. And the underlying Unix of the Mac OS, called Darwin, is open source and based on the very secure BSD unix. Linux and Darwin are pretty close relatives. Now I know Linux runs on everything and the Mac OS runs only on Macs and there is less software and everything everyone always brings up. But at the very least, Apple has shown one can make a very user friendly Unix implementation with all the bells and whistles like media players and so forth. And as for device drivers, every device seems to just work on a Mac, and I believe this is because they simply pick up public domain Unix device drivers.

I know, Apple's user experience rocks in all the ways that it traditionally does not for Linux (or Windoze) users. It's built on the old OpenStep kernel, originally from NeXT, which was the coolest OS AND user experience I've ever dealt with. I still have a NeXT black slab (I need a monitor!), and it was by far the most usable UNIX system ever, and Apple only improved on it (largely).

However, Apple is not cheap; Linux is. That's the beauty of Linux - you can get a machine going for virtually free...

...if you know how. Which is the clinker.

I used to hold out high hopes for DME, which was trying at one point to replicate OpenStep's user experience. Sadly, it seems they quit when they got the chrome of the OpenStep UI copied.

I think this comes down to a fairly fundamental axiom: 'The prototypical Fortune 500 CIO want's a help desk with the OS of choice.'
'Nuff said? Yeah, sure, you can get help desk for linux, but is this company you are contracting for services also a Fortune 500?

It's a very safe prediction that Microsoft won't always hold the position of dominance it does today. But its dominance now is still over 90% for operating system and browser, and probably also for office software (word processing, spreadsheets, etc.). There's no reason to think Microsoft won't stay on top for some time to come. If we don't talk about Microsoft all the time, it's because we take it for granted as part of the infrastructure.

Actually, font rendering in Linux is much, much better than it was. If you're using a relatively modern distro you shouldn't have to deal with jagged fonts - all your TrueType fonts should plug right in as well.

Since I bought an iBook, I've been a convert. It was much cheaper than Dell's ultralight notebook, does everything I want it to, and has the best OS on the planet. If I had the cash laying around, I'd be getting a Mac mini to match...

I still like Linux, but MacOS X is UNIX done right...

Since nobody else seemed to address Mitch's point, let me take a stab (BTW, I agree w/most of the other comments; this response is written on Opera on a Red Hat 9 system. I tried an early version of Firefox, but, like Mozilla (no surprise), it kept going into infinite loops and bogging down my machine)

I think if Microsoft is doomed, it's doomed in the same way that IBM was in the 80's. And I don't think that's a prospect that the folks in Redmond fear much at all.

severalfold commissioners?Richards?proclamation nine Whiteleaf .