Quote Originally Posted by code_glitch View Post
However look at the kernel - theres IBM, Intel, Sun and every other big comapnys' code in there. Simply because its a more flexible platform - thus it was easier to pay people to contribute to the linux kernel than go out and make an in house product or modify existing alternatives. In this sense, Linux was of massive commercial gain to the R&D teams working all the 'new stuff' coming out today.
This is a speculation. The reason why companies modified Linux kernel was simply because some of its versions are open-sourced, while Windows is closed source and proprietary. I would speculate even further saying that being open source is what made Linux survive against insanely huge market share conquered by Windows.

Although I keep Jason's point of view that Linux is not a commercially viable platform per se, I think being a niche market it does have a sort of market opportunity exactly as shown in the graphs above, by getting support from people be it in terms of donations or contributions.

A little back on topic though, I do consider that Apple makes some rather good hardware; for instance, even though I had doubts before purchase, I find my Mac Mini 11'' particularly comfy and that tiny little thing powered by Core i5 is quite powerful! It is also *very* thin, while still being quite solid. Mind you, retaking our previous SSD vs non-SSD discussion, that Mac Mini has SSD, which hasn't failed yet. The only thing I hate in this thing is Spanish keyboard, which introduced new buttons and triple combinations, and after few months I'm still not used to it. (I'm used to US-based keyboards and many years ago there was no such thing as international keyboard).