I'm inclined to agree with the author that it would be a difficult task for Linux to displace Windows on today's corporate desktop. MS Office is especially entrenched in the business world; most new desktop PCs purchased by corporations these days come with Windows and MS Office preinstalled. <FUD> Often unwittingly, many corporations have "standardized" on MS Office. Placing their critical business documents into the proprietary file formats purveyed by Microsoft, these companies place their documents at risk of "bit rot" and place the corporation at risk of later Microsoft extortion (a.k.a. mandatory "upgrades" every two years). Five, ten, or twenty years from now, will these corporations still have access to the documents being created today? Unknown. Has anyone here tried accessing any really old (pre-Windows) MS Word, Wordperfect or Wordstar documents lately? As these old, proprietary programs fade from memory, so do the documents created with them. </FUD> Many of today's corporate computer users are comfortable using MS Office and see no reason to use any competing tools. They have grown to expect that everyone has a copy of MS Office, so they don't even think twice about, for example, attaching nasty MS Word documents to their email messages. Some even think that Microsoft is "the best." Even if your own company is "Microsoft free", it's likely that at least some of your suppliers and customers will expect you to interact with them by sending MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) files back and forth. It's relatively easy to tell a supplier that you won't accept MS Word documents, but it's often not possible (or worthwhile) to impose this constraint on a paying customer. For most businesses, the short-term cost equation favors the status-quo of continuing to use Windows and MS Office. To such businesses, moving desktop users to Linux may look like an expensive and risky proposition. In today's software climate, it's difficult for many businesses to find the political will to get off Windows and MS Office (and thereby break their dependency on Microsoft). For this to happen, someone really high up in the company would need to "buy in" to Linux and "go to bat" for it. (Two rays of hope...) However, Linux does appear to be gaining mind-share among Windows users. One friend of mine recently remarked that he plans to eventually learn Linux so he can set up a firewall and a Gnutella server in his house. In a number of ways, he percieves Linux to be "better" than Windows. In addition, young kids today are more computer-savvy than ever, and are growing up with Linux. As the older generation passes on, it may take a good chunk of Microsoft's market with it. Joel On Thu, 31 May 2001 Bob Tanner wrote: > http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20010531/tc/why_2001_is_not_the_year_of_the_penguin__1.html > > More bad press on linux. > > Am I such a zelot, that I can't see the truth through the blinding light I > believe eminates from Tux? Joel --- Member of the GNU/X/Apache/Perl/Samba/OpenSSH/Linux generation.