This is not some death curse on the Linux desktop environments, nor the "traditional" PC platform. The market is not done with this niche yet. Yeah, I said it: niche. Because very soon, I believe, most consumers are going to use computers they carry in their pockets and purses--and nothing else.

"LINUX IN NETBOOKS and notebooks I don't think is ever going to happen," Lenovo's world-wide competitive analyst, Matt Kohut, has said in an interview, remarking that the open source software would never attain anything more than niche status as an OS.

What's more stable than a rock, faster than a spinning disk, more powerful than a Windows system twice its size, and able to leap platforms like no other operating system? Surprise! It's Linux. It's also recession proof. Can that be true? Yes, and here are the 5 reasons why...

As niche supercomputer-maker SiCortex works on the next generation of its line and watches the IT marketing machine gearing up for Intel's impending Nehalem-based Xeon EP, the company says that Chipzilla isn't moving in the right direction for high-performance computing (HPC) workloads.

If anything the sudden appearance of Moblin has proven, beyond any doubt, that corporate support is essential if linux — and the open source community — is going to survive beyond a very very small niche.

Adblock Plus, an easy-to-use free addition to the Firefox Internet browser that deletes advertisements from Web sites is still a niche product for the niche browser. But it is potentially a huge development in the online world, and not because it simplifies Web sites cluttered with advertisements.

The vast majority of students use Windows, with a small selection using Mac’s and a very niche number using a Linux variant. But what good is it if you are going into a working environment and they don’t use the software you’ve always been used to?

WHILE THE GLOBAL recession may have many down in the dumps, it's apparently good news for Linux, with market research outfit IDC claiming it's going to come out of the crunch a winner.

Lofty oil prices. Sub-prime mortgage woes. Financial companies (Citigroup, Etrade) stumbling badly. Ouch. Ouch. And Ouch. Whispers of a potential recession ahead continue. That made The VAR Guy wonder: If the U.S. heads into a recession soon, are open source companies better positioned to weather the storm than their closed source counterparts? Let’s take a look.