The Open Source thing is good, Linux is the way it is because of it. And Microsoft will never be able to fit into that culture, no matter what they may say. In my opinion, Microsoft has very serious problems. I for one, think that when Linux has become more mature, in terms of ease of installation for the newbie, and more mainstream Windows applications have been ported, then MS is toast!

I read an article that said both Corel and Lotus are planning to have their office suites ported to Linux by the year's end. If that happens (Corel has already ported it's word processor), and there's some kind of "meeting of minds" between the major players in the Linux distro market (Red Hat, Caldera, SuSE, et.al.) to gain some commonality in the install and upgrade procedures for Linux, that could shield the average user from some of the complexities of the OS, then I think Linux can be declared ready for prime-time!

It's not quite there yet, but with just a little more tweaking, it will be. It already has the stability, which is a huge issue with the corporate IT types. Put plainly, they are sick of NT and its infamous Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD).

I truly believe that if Microsoft doesn't have a largely bug-free release of NT 5 (or whatever they call it these days), then there will be an awful lot of people who are just going to tell them where to stick it!

Another article I've just read, informed me that Microsoft is trying to charge US$89 for the "bug-fix" service pack for Windows 98. That's just what I mean! They release something that has so many bugs that they should never have released it in the first place, use the paying customer as unpaid beta testers, and then expect you to pay for the privilege of installing the bug-fix that you helped develop... insane!