“Investors seem to have an insatiable appetite for companies
connected to Linux, a free computer operating system that some see
as a challenger to Microsoft Corp.’s Windows. Shares of the first
Linux company to go public, Red Hat Inc., have risen more than
2,000 percent since it went public in August.”
“All for an operating system that skeptics see as too
difficult to use and too limited in its capabilities to really
compete with Windows on personal computers and Windows NT and Unix
on larger servers….“
“But fans say Linux will gain a bigger following as developers
look for a simple, lean operating system to run small consumer
devices and the simple computer servers that run small Web
sites.”