I like Linux - I regularly use RedHat and I like Ubuntu - especially as it plays nicer than Windows does with an old Fujitsu box I have. On the flipside, I happen to think that it has a whole raft of faults, mainly around usability and ease of maintenance compared to Windows.

What really hacks me off, not too mention a hell of a good number of dare I say it, 'moderates' who are happy to see a world of Windows and Linux (so long as it does the job, I don't care if it runs on bloody Sinclair Basic!), is the near fundamentalist fervour raised by the open/closed source argument. When the open source zealots stop wasting time ranting about the evils of Microsoft and/or closed source, some polish can be added to a great number of apps.

The problem is, there are too many 'me too' open source apps. Some (MySQL, Apache) are as good, if not better than closed source equivalents, while others (OpenOffice) are absolute pants.

So get real, boys and girls: use or develop whatever software works for you in a given circumstance, be it Windows and MS SQL, or RHEL and MySQL. In some circumstances, they'll operate together (a good number of opensource firewalls and proxies protect Wndows clients, after all).