[usgator]

And on the basis of this they think Linux will generate 30 billion a year within 3 years?

[ShadowAce]

Red Hat != Linux

[Golden Eagle]

That 30+ billion figure is riduculous. Not only does it include mainframe and other hardware costs, it' incredibly inflated since current Linux+hardware incomes are less than $5 billion/year now.

As for the actual software, market leader Red Hat only grosses about $200 million a year I think. #2 Novell, like $100 million, total.

http://news.com.com/Red+Hat+tries+financial+tease/2100-1014_3-5234070.html?part=rss&tag=5234070&subj=news.1014.20

Plus like the Novell link in the post above, Red Hat is always having to restate results to keep their shell game going.

http://www.linuxworld.com/story/45593_p.htm

That last fiasco of restating several years at once is what started this recent nosedive in their stock price, rightfully so.

[N3WBI3]

US, keep in mind 'Linux; Includes sales by IBM, Suse, and even some companies you might not think of. RAIDZONE sells some really nice NAS equipment that will integrate very nicely into a windows domain and youre UNIX environment very nicely (runs SMB, NFS, HTTP, and FTP). YOu can also use iSCSI on it. This company built a fine product on Linux Technology.

Linksys is another companie that uses Linux to make money, every one of those Linksys boxes you see at CompUSA is nothing but a small Linux Firewall with a web interface..