IBM's strategy to push Linux across all four of the main server lines has helped unify it's server groups. More important, Linux has changed IBM's popularity among programmers and has raised the company's profile in a very similar way to what Sun accomplished with its Java software.

Midori uses mostly standard Linux packages. It uses lightly patched versions of the kernel, glibc, and XFree86. The use of busybox, saves space by combining standard Linux utilities into a single executable, thereby saving substantial overhead.

"The Linux movement has always had an anti-establishment and anti-commercial slant. But Linux is not to blame for the IT slump. Certain parties are starting to reap the fruit of their own stupidity and greed".

"Many reporters have even written that Linux needs a unified and standard user interface in order to survive. This argument makes me see red. The day that Linux gets locked into a standard look and feel user interface is the day I begin finding a new OS. One of the main reasons people use Linux is it gives you a lot of choices."

"We are in the business of building communities," says Henri Poole, chief executive, Mandrakesoft, the French software company which publishes the Linux-Mandrake 'distribution', emphasising the essential difference between it and other distributions for the Linux open source operating system.

"It's not something that could be undertaken lightly, and it's not something that is likely to find distributional sponsorship--these guys can't agree on a standard base; there's no reason they'd agree to let their own little package management system get co-opted by a supersystem that wouldn't benefit anyone but users."

"I am impressed by the setup ease of the LTSP. Getting a sound diskless system running doesn't have to consume the better part of an afternoon, and this server/client implementation can be fine tuned to meet various needs."

"When a problem crops up and no solution is offered, one tactic -- though dangerous if your boss doesn't like unauthorized servers -- is to go ahead and use Linux to solve it."

Some Linux lovers worry that it will fall victim to its own success, pulled in many directions and fractured into incompatible versions. Success has brought Linux to the brink of the dreaded specter of fragmentation into multiple, incompatible, versions, called forking. Will this be its downfall?

In a unique case, Bruce Perens, Hewlett-Packard's senior strategist for Linux and Open Source and former leader of Debian Linux, along with some of the top open source developers and executives have been debating what can be done with HP's proprietary Open Mail program.