As many people have pointed out in the past, Linux is still not for everyone out there. Having said this, I believe that distros like Linspire, Xandros, and Simply Mepis prove that it is ready for the home user, today. Once you get past the proprietary software hurdle, there just isn’t much that Linux can’t do these days.

The drive to Linux and other open-source platforms presents a host of benefits. Without the need to purchase software licenses for Windows, Unix or Solaris, the funds saved can be substantial.

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“Licensing costs is a huge savings,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, an analyst at Gartner Inc., in San Jose, Calif., adding that the money not spent can be reallocated to the purchase of additional servers, boosting performance and uptime.

Scott Rafer, CEO of Feedster Inc., a San Francisco-based search engine company and syndicator of XML Web content, agreed. “We buy white-box servers, pay less for them and get support from the actual people who put those systems together for us,” Rafer said.

While that strategy might not be attractive to a large corporate user who insists on brand names, it makes sense for smaller companies and startups with limited budgets, he said. “We don’t want innovation. We want reliable, boring systems that cost less—that way I can buy more of them.” Feedster’s platform of choice is Novell Inc.’s SuSE Linux. “We were willing to pay for the peace of mind that Novell provides with its highly supported SuSE environment,” he said.

But Hewitt does not recommend that every IT shop stock up on Linux, Apache or MySQL. “There are lots of shops that are totally Windows-based; moving to Linux would simply be too much of a change for some. If their needs are being met with Windows applications and services, there’s no need to rush to Linux,” he said.