Okay when I first saw this thread I said to myself "Carl don't get into it. This threat could take up *days* of your time". But after reading 

follow ups I know I won't be able to sleep if I don't have my say. Okay 
One Micro$oft will *NOT* lose. okay did that sink in because. Linux 
won't lose either. They're playing *completly* different games. 
Micro$oft is trying to control the world of computing (and if they keep 
diversifying I'll just end that at "the world"). Linux is trying to make 
the best OS. Belive it or not. You don't need to own the Desktop market 
to prove that you have the best OS and Linux isn't really about proving 
anything to anyone anyway. I've always hated how the media pits us, the 
Linux community, against M$; but what I hate even more is how we've 
started listening. So let me say for the record That I have *zero* 
interest in having a computer that looks, feels, or in any other way 
resembles M$. I want a system BETTER than anything M$ could think up. 
And see that's where Linux excels. It gives us a choise. It gives us the 
opportunity to say "I don't like how that does this.Or how slow this is 
going. And we can *do* something about it. Linux was made by programmers 
FOR programmers. We are *NOT* trying to take over the world. There is 
still plenty of room for netBSD, FreeBSD, OS/2, BeOS , OSX, Solaris and 
any other OS out there. And while I would happly dance over the grave of 
M$ when it finally does die. (notice that *all* other OSes are getting 
closer and closer to *nix). I have no inner need to see Linux as the 
number one Desktop OS. I feel pretty confidant that Linux will be the 
biggest embedded OS. With the money IBM is throwing at Linux and the 
fact that Sun, and Oracle will soon be following. The fact that the 
internet was made for *nix. and still runs better on it. Are all just a 
*few* of the reasons why Linux will continue to be a better OS while M$ 
continues to take over the world. There will always be people who will 
use computers like an appliance. I wish OSX luck in grabbing a huge 
portion of that market. But then there are people like myself (and I'm 
sure most of this list) that uses their computers for tools to create 
things the world has never seen before. You just can't do that the way 
it needs to be done in a M$ world. Therefore there will be more 
developers leaving it. More system Admins refusing to guantee a system 
that has to use M$. And yes more home users willing to give up the easy 
way to have freedom. Freedom isn't "free" it never has been it never 
will be. The cost? You have to RTFM you, have to join groups like this 
one. You should want to contribute back.  BTW I *finally* got my mp3s 
working with my soundcard. It took me awhile. But I now know more about 
mp3s than I even knew there was to know. And you can bet that someday 
that's going to come back to my community. While Linux continues to 
develop smarter and smarter programers who contribute back to it. M$ 
develops dumber and dumber computers users (I'm not name calling I'm 
just saying that they learn less and less about computers with each new 
version). Who couldn't contribute even if they wanted to. And that M$ 
will *never* be able to take aways from us. Let M$ run scared its about 
time that something is doing that to them. But that doesn't mean that we 
have to chase them. if we keep doing that we'll always be behind them 
and I have zero interest in that.

Carl Parrish