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Sure, you just aren't looking in the right places. Walmart sells PCs with Lindows as the only OS. Walmart has expanded their offering many times since the rollout last year. Many other countries in the world are selling millions of PCs pre-loaded with Linux from differing vendors. Right now I would say the buyers are mainly either cash strapped internet only users or tech savy countries supplying Internet PCs to their people so they can get on-line.

There is already a group of windows clone penguins marching on the windoze monopoly. Try http://www.lindows.com/, http://www.xandros.com/, http://www.lycoris.com/, http://www.libranet.com/ ... and on and on.

RedHat never was after the consumer PC market others were and are. Red Hat just went where their money is, the server market.

Now as far as Novell and SUSE, this is a big deal. When you marry the Ximian desktop and red carpet with the second biggest commecial Linux distribution, then add Novell's worldwide sales and support, things are getting interesting. SUSE currently has offerings on the shelves of most of the big retailers. Consider 60% of PCs sold worldwide don't go through what we would call retailers in the US.

I think what you are seeing is that the 'pay penguin' is making it's market debut as support and upgrades sales. Not as free software. Money is being made in penguinville.

I wasn't a big fan of IBM when they wanted to rule the world of computing and am not a big fan of m$ now that they want to rule the world. Mono-culture in the marketplace is bad, whether it is computers or cars. Market choice rules.

Now as far as Novell and SUSE, this is a big deal.

Decidedly. Novell is positioning themselves for a serious run on corporate accounts with SUSE as the desktop and applications server environments, Netware (still incredibly stable and efficient) for file and print services, and they gave in to the Webserver standard some time ago (either v5.1 or 6.0, I forget) by incorporating Apache instead of something proprietary - they were playing with WebSphere for awhile in there too. Starting at Netware v5.1 it even looked like Linux when it booted up (greenie-weenies inside brackets, that sort of look).

The longterm goal is to offer corporations an integrated computing environment that does not need a license from Redmond. They now have the makings, but the integration part still has years to go, IMHO. In the meantime the marketing problem is still there. It'll be quite a challenge.

Now as far as Novell and SUSE, this is a big deal. When you marry the Ximian desktop and red carpet with the second biggest commecial Linux distribution, then add Novell's worldwide sales and support, things are getting interesting. SUSE currently has offerings on the shelves of most of the big retailers. Consider 60% of PCs sold worldwide don't go through what we would call retailers in the US.
I think what you are seeing is that the 'pay penguin' is making it's market debut as support and upgrades sales. Not as free software. Money is being made in penguinville.

I wasn't a big fan of IBM when they wanted to rule the world of computing and am not a big fan of m$ now that they want to rule the world. Mono-culture in the marketplace is bad, whether it is computers or cars. Market choice rules.

The SuSe/Novell deal is especially interesting with Novell's announcement some time ago that they would be un-bundling the NetWare services from the OS, and in NetWare 7, you would be able to run the network services on either the NetWare OS or on Linux.

However, I do remember the UNIXware fiasco, where Novell actually pitted one of their own products against another! When it comes to taking terrific products and technologies, few companies have been more inept than Novell. Given the history of Novell (having the #1 network installed base, and losing all that market share, buying the #1 word processor program, and letting it die a slow and painful death, buying UNIX and doing nothing with it, except trying to sell it as an alternative to your main product, etc...), this may be what kills Linux completely!

But I hope that's not the case

Mark