Have any of you been paying attention to the developments in Linux lately?  I work mostly in a Windows environment, since that is where most of my user base is.  They want windows applications, I'll give them windows applications.  But looking forward to the power in HTML 5, I think I will soon be able to give them those solutions completely inside a browser.  What does this have to do with Linux?  The latest server versions of Linux can be completely upgraded without requiring a reboot.  Imagine going from XP to Windows 7, without rebooting.  You can't completely do that yet (The operating system may not need to be rebooted, but to upgrade the windowing environment you would need to restart your window manager, which to a user would almost look like a reboot).  But the direction is there.  People have been predicting that "This is the year of Linux!" for over a decade now.  This is not the year of Linux.  But the direction that Linux is taking, combined with the power of HTML 5 (If they ever get it finished) is the start of a new way of doing things.  Throw in the added competition from Google's Chrome OS, and Apples iPad, and the landscape starts looking a bit different.  I am not planning on giving up support for Microsoft Office any time soon, but I am planning on adding tighter integration with Google Docs and Open Office.  I am definitely working on eliminating my reliance on any specific operating system.  The desktop battlefield has been drawn, but the war is becoming irrelevant.  The applications will completely bypass the operating systems and will be written for the browsers.  Once that happens, operating systems will be selected for the features people want in an operating system, not for the applications that they support.   I suspect that 24 months from now, we will actually have a choice of operating systems for the desktop.