" khujifig writes "The Beeb are carrying a story looking at the challenges facing Microsoft in the next few years. This includes a brief description of the M.Home (sans Clippy) which the Beeb describes as "a far cry from real life", and a discussion of the next few years competition for Microsoft. They go on to highlight Linux, OpenOffice.org, the GIMP and Firefox (which Gates himself has used: "I played around with it a bit, but it's just another browser, and IE [Microsoft's Internet Explorer] is better,"), and look Apple in relation to Longhorn. Not as bad a read as I was expecting. Their summary: Microsoft is under 'attack' on all fronts, and either needs to innovate or die. "Why use Microsoft if you have a broadband connection and combine Firefox with powerful web services like Google's Gmail?."" It should be said, tho', that articles like this have been written about MSFT for a long time - and there's still billions in their war-chest."

• yeah, this is where the OS zealots get out of control sometimes. First is that just using Firefox and Gmail isn't an option for all (most?) people. Second is that almost all large corporations are under attack all the time. Microsofts position isn't much different from IBM, GM, Boeing, etc. Of course if they mess up Linux might be there to eat it's lunch, but if Boeing messes up Airbus will be there and if GM doesn't pick things up Toyota will be there.

As I've said before, if Microsoft goes south it's not going to be general open source linux that wins, it's going to be Red Hat or Suse or some other organization which packages up linux and offers support. That's why I don't see it as a big "win" like others do. Companies don't want to support an entire OS even if they can edit the kernel. Who cares? I know I wouldn't want programmers who worked for my company spending all day writing kernel patches when they could be working on my own companies software.