You were right! The Sept. 25, 2002 article by Professor Faulhaber accurately described the state of Linux as a desktop alternative at that time.

Today, however is a different story. Linux migrations progress, as do installs of openoffice, and the march of open standards and interoperability, (in the .odf format for example) paiint a clear path showing the way forward for FOSS.

From my own experience, comparing the current Suse 64 bit OS with Microsoft's current 64 bit offering, there is much hardware that does not work with MS, and the user install experience is much easier. And since Google Earth now runs on Linux, I have no reason to even log into Windows at all...