If the truth be told, Linux should be doing better than it is. Although companies such as Red Hat and SuSE are at the forefront of its adoption, neither have the shrewd business brain of Microsoft. You could say that it is cheaper. You could also say that it is more reliable, less likely to be hacked and has a lot of hardware and software support - something that held the OS back in the past. But users don't care about this.
Users care about support, usability and familiarity.
This is something that only Microsoft can deliver on the kind of scale users demand today. Kernel mustard Only a couple of months ago kernel 2.4 of the Linux OS was launched, but apart from copying Microsoft in its late arrival, there was nothing really spectacular to report. It was released with a whimper rather than a bang, and most people are none the wiser as to the benefits it really brings. Most of the changes were to do with hardware support, for example USB, Intel's 64-bit Itanium, and IBM's zSeries. Other changes include improved performance, support for file sizes up to 2Gb and increased memory support.