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An Open Source Tipping Point?
jg21 writes "Over at LinuxWorld there's an article arguing that open source will be propelled to market predominance by the same disruptive mechanism that brought Sony, Microsoft, and others to be market leaders at the moment. 'The improbable is possible - leaders have been dethroned in the past,' writes the author, who is also apparently the producer of an upcoming documentary entitled, 'The Digital Tipping Point' to be released in September 2005. The story refers to a corroborating article from South Africa and to Clayton Christensen's Seeing What's Next which backs up this general idea."
From http://www.linuxworld.com/story/46891.htm?DE=1 There's an article in there somewhere. Here it is:
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Rumors of Microsoft's Demise Are Premature...But Not Unthinkable
"The improbable is possible - leaders have been dethroned in the past"
October 29, 2004
Summary
Penguinistas have long loved to ruminate over a beer about the potential reversal of market share between Microsoft and companies offering open source solutions. But such ruminations were often left to discussions at the pub or the local LUG meeting because in a corporate business setting, even the most die-hard Penguinistas might be cautious about being thought of as wacko - at least in North American and European business settings.
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Penguinistas have long loved to ruminate over a beer about the potential reversal of market share between Microsoft and companies offering open source solutions. But such ruminations were often left to discussions at the pub or the local LUG meeting because in a corporate business setting, even the most die-hard Penguinistas might be cautious about being thought of as wacko - at least in North American and European business settings.
Software market watchers are now taking more serious assessments of the penguin versus butterfly competition, as Microsoft matures and Linux continues to put large growth numbers on the board.
The more vocal observers' voices in this choir are typically located outside the United States. For example, Tectonic, an online open source magazine based in South Africa, recently quoted Novell SA systems engineer and business manager Allison Singh as going on record that Microsoft's Windows juggernaut will become an operating system for niche tasks while Linux takes over the mainstream desktop and server roles. According to Tectonic, Singh forecast that users who need specific applications written for Windows only will stick with the OS, but for most other users, the rapidly evolving Linux desktop will become the standard operating system. Here's the link for that story: www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=324.
But wait! Tectonic calls itself "Africa's Source for Open Source
If the sleeping giant that is America's small business community goes for Linux (possibly as a result of being introduced to the open source concept by Firefox), Bill has a really big problem on his hands.
Maybe MS has already recognized that the OS is a commodity product, and they don't care if linux succeeds. MAybe MS has already put the OS on a low priority, recognizing better ROI from office or integration of entertainment. In the long run, all technology becomes a commodity, and only monopolies (att ) or truly exceptional companies (ibm) who can reinvent themselves. can command high prices for more then a few years. So, in that sense,the demise of MS is inevitable. My dad always used to talk about the linotypers union: in the 40s and 50s, they were gods: nothing got printed without thier ok. today ?
I had whiterock networks and luminous networks reps in last week. They were demoing their new oc-48 gear. I made comments with both groups asking why an open source browser with a java plugin was not certified with their webgui. I asked the other vendor why they did not have a client server software for linux or freebsd.
I told them windows was unacceptable and solaris is not what we use. (Although the soft switch uses dual sol servers for the db.)
anyway. complain loudly to these vendors that they
need to support what we use in the data center.
I've seen many articles like this in the past that suggested there was some "boiling point" at which Linux / OSS / Free Software would be unstoppable and would take off like wildfire. They are fun to read and dream about, but they don't reflect a realistic view of the software scene. Linus has often said that Linux on the desktop would be a long, tiring battle. I agree. We will never hit a point where Windows will suddenly be rejected and open solutions will become the de facto standard. I think we need to fight for every % of market share we get. It won't be easy but -- to be honest -- I find the challenge pretty damn fun. :)
It could happen that MS will become a niche player, but if I had to bet money, I'd bet on MS surviving with a large market share. There's jsut too many people who have budgets to justify, and the one thing that Libre software can't help you do is squander money.
See what I've been reading.
This is almost as bad as posting Roland Piquepaille submissions.
It happened not too long ago in the video card arena....Voodoo anyone?
I don't doubt open source will dominate in many areas, but I doubt it will overtake Microsoft anytime soon unless there's a major shift torward software compatibility and enhanced intuitiveness for Windows users.
For instance, I'd switch my Mother to Linux just to degrade her chances of a virus, but 3 or 4 little games she plays; Kyodai Mahjongg (this isn't normal mahjongg) Bubble Shooter (There's a similiar one, but it's got a ways to go to catch up to Bubble Shooter), Bookworm, etc. aren't available on Linux that I know of.
The other issue is that, people are comfortable with where to go & what to do when there's trouble brewing in Windows. In Linux, even veteran Windows users are often at a loss.
If you do something wrong installing video drivers in Windows, you get a smack on the hand by the OS forcing you to 640x480, where you have to deal with what you did. Make that same mistake in Linux, and without knowing what file to edit in a command line editor, most Linux newbies are looking at an OS reinstall. That's way too harsh and unfortunately, drives users right back into the open arms of Microsoft.
Heh a blunder
My Tech Posts on Twitter
Call me ambivilant, but so what? I find it irrelevant to wonder whether Linux or open source software in general will perhaps have the greatest market share at some vague point in the future.
The fact is there's a lot open source software available that solves problems now and solves them well. I use it exclusively at home and at work because I like the general philosophy and more importantly because it gets the stuff I need to do done.
Whether or not Microsoft lives or dies or becomes a smaller company is (for me at least) not important. This may not be true if your business relies heavily on Microsoft products and/or apis.
Desktop Linux has just published this article: The Best Free Desktop Linux . . . and how to make it better
:)
This is a great article that shows what a Desktop Linux could do. It's a great piece for Linux advocates to forward to people who'd like to switch but think that "Linux is way too hard to install and use".
0$ price it's very hard to beat, I expect that the forces of the economy will swipe MS away as soon that people realize that they could do with Linux the same things they do with Windows (only more secure and cheaper) . Good times ahead
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
its going to be brought about by Brazil, India and Germany when they hire a couple guys to sit down and hack some software to deploy linux to their COUNTRY.
/w unified userdb for nfs, samba, ftp, web, shell and a powerful web admin system. good outward scalability. i mean, hell, dragonfly bsd might have a better chance than linux when you think of how far there is to go. ;)
linux remains a very difficult thing to deploy. there are going to have to be better tools for centralized system management before linux can roll out and roll over microsoft. corporations arent the place to foot the development of these rollout-configurators, countries could concievably be. in the end, everyone will benefit.
i'd say when a country doesnt have much difficulty doing installing linux, microsoft is going to have a hard time justifying themselves. thats a long way to go though; we're talking automagic kerberos+ldap
Myren
Look at the UI. Look at the applications. The basic look and feel hasn't changed significantly since 1995. Almost every new technology "innovation" has been either bought or copied (poorly) by Microsoft.
OSS' growth has been more viral, more grassroots, more innovative than the top-down "we know better than you" approach that Microsoft has successfully imposed on its users in the last 5 years. It is with this suppression of innovation that Microsoft has directly spawned and contributed to the open-source revolution!
On another note, after 10 years on Wintel, I switched to Macintosh recently. After 5 minutes inside of OSX, I experienced more innovation and creativity than I had on Windows for as long as I can recall.
Thank-you Microsoft for helping me switch to truly useable applications.
I am a consultant with many small business customers. A few are pondering the use of Linux (I charge more for monthly maintenance of Windows systems because they take more of my time). But there are a few obstacles which completely prevent a few of them from using Linux (these are sufficiently small businesses not to have any dedicated servers).
The largest obstacle is that many of these businesses depend on vertically targetted web sites and programs which may not work on Linux. Yes, we could get many of these to work probable with Win4Lin or Crossover. However, the uncertainty and supportability is an issue.
But other clients of mine are already committing to Linux. In one case, we saved $20,000 for a customer in license fees alone, not to mention the support costs in network simplification by using Linux-based VPN appliances rather than an equivalent on Windows. In another case, we have a very successful Linux desktop deployment. In another case, we have a customer thinking about switching so he doesn't have to pay me to swing by every month to run a spyware/virus scan.
It will happen, but slowly.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
MS is faced with a problem. Their major money makers are Windows and Office, both of which are facing rapidly maturing competition from open source alternatives. They can continue to try to grow their market, but it will not be easy (must combat piracy in the third world, and expand the markets for those two products elsewhere). Their other products and services are two small to deliver the revenue that Microsoft and their stockholders expect.
So what happens as Linux and OpenOffice expand? The cost of bringing Windows and Office to market is astronomical, and the cost to produce each unit is very small, so each sale lost hits Microsoft surprisingly hard.
This quest to expand the market shows up in Media Center and Automotive editions of Windows, and in the new services which come as a part of office.
There is a problem. I have learned that if you "innovate" for the sake of innovation, your ideas will be only useful to a few, and the good enough solution takes over. I don;t see a unifying strategy for Microsoft anymore. Disclaimer: I am a former Microsoftie.
I see Microsoft as going down surprisingly quickly. It won't take long once the tipping point is actually reached (maybe with Linux hitting 10 or 20 percent of the desktop).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Just look at Firefox - it's currently the subject of an enourmous grassroots movement. SFX just signed up over 10,000 people in 8 days for their New York Times ad. FF has been downloaded over 6.8 million times now. People are taking notice; there have been discussions here on /. estimating the "geek" usage at 90%. And I wouldn't doubt it.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
I'm sorry to say that Linux will not win over Windows as long as you can't play new games like The Sims 2 or do simple things without opening a console. Yes, I know that DirectX is closed-source and I know that Linux is a very smart OS. But Linux is way to hard to learn and configure. I've tried many times to convert to Linux and everytime I'm missing a game or simply don't want to read the telephone sized FAQ's. Doing simple tasks like changing screen resolution should not involve opening a console and typing in obscure commands. I know I'll get modded down, but seriously Linux guys. Face it, Linux is to hard for normal users to use. Mom users like their puzzle bubble and surfing the web with Mozilla, but as a Joe Smoe user I can only say that using Linux for everyday tasks is still way too hard and I don't want to invest years just to learn Linux when Windows simply work with a click of a mouse.
Not sure if you are trolling. But anyways....
:-)
Businesses tend to be risk adverse, which is generally a good thing. This means also that they are afraid of change. So this slows down Linux quite a bit.
Home users tend to stick with what they use at work. So until Linux takes over on the corporate workstation, it will be a slow tough fight.
All that being said, I think that Linux will kill windows. It will just be a slow process until a certain market share is reached. At this point application compatibility will be less of an issue. But progress is occuring much faster than some people realize: Linux is certainly killing proprietary UNIX (as is Windows), and the fate of OS X is uncertain, though I suspect that it will slowly be open sourced bit by bit, and they may slowly subsume eachother.....
Consider that 5% of the PC's which shipped last year ran Linux (mostly Linspire and Mandrake). Even after you count those where Windows was later installed, that was still up to three percent of *new* PC sales. Yes, Microsoft's monopoly has begun to collapse already. This year, maybe, it will be more.
Linux is already causing Microsoft real headaches in a few very key markets such as internet server and embedded system markets. The real beacheads are business web application development, desktop, and groupware now. But it is a slow process at the moment and will be for some time. I do predict though that it will be a fierce war for the desktop by the time Longhorn ships.
BTW, Linux has been good enough for the desktop for the last 5 years. It is just getting better
Also, Microsoft's last year of record profits was the year XP was launched. This is to be expected. But their market share is another question-- how do you measure market share? In dollars? If so then the slow demise of proprietary UNIX and Netware gives Microsoft greatly inflated numbers. If in deployments, then the simple answer is: we don't really know what real numbers are because we have no good way of measuring them.
Now, is there a tipping point? You bet. At a certain point, people won't write their business web tools for IE only (as Safeco does). Vertically targetted tools will be available for Linux, etc. and all basic productivity tools will be open source. At this point, I expect Linux useage to take off much faster.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Most of this article just extrapolated corporate WishThink. The "inevitability" of the end of MS blissfully ignores the dependence of hardware manufacturers at one end, and the GUI-dependence of users at the other. Nor is the OS a done deal, and most of the "commoditization" of office apps is still Microsoft OS-based, whatever the attractions of OpenOffice/StarOffice.
I can't hammer this point enough: MS has a gatekeeper mentality because it IS the gatekeeper. That is what needs to change. If MS could shoot down the GPL, it would not hesitate to sell an MS shell over a linux core, if it can justify dumping the NT asset. Okay, that's two if's but they're realistic if's. Otherwise, MS will stay put and strong-arm everyone.
What linux needs is shrink-wrapped POS systems. Shrink-wrapped accounting/stock-management. Take out those dependencies and you'll get a huge slice of market share.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
Open source has two main strengths:
1. quality
2. easy fixes/improvements
The minor successes so far I think are clearly due to quality: Even mainstream technology enthusiasts can recognize that Apache, Firefox, and a few other tools are super-solid and finely-tuned applications.
But appreciation for a specific application does not translate into success for open-source as a whole, because it does not engage the user in the paradigm of open source.
But someday, the second strength of open source will become more evident: The ease with which it can be fixed and improved, and by this I mean improvements that are personal and specific to the user, something that is still very rare and unappreciated.
Consider, for instance, an average user of a mail program muttering to him/herself "I wish my email program could set off my alarm clock if I get an early email from work in the morning..." Suppose that person could post $100 improvement fee to a website, where it might be merged with similar requests from other users and leads to a new extension to be developed by an independent developer...
This idea is often discussed, but it is still only in its infancy. However, I believe it is critical for the success of open source, because it both engages the user in the OS philosophy and also allows a viable financial model to exist for mainstream software companies to participate in the OS revolution.
How can we make this happen?
While watching american casino on discovery last week I seen a tech converting a slot machine to take coins instead of dollars. He started up the machine and the camera panned to the screen. The first thing that appeard on the screen was?
....
lilo loading
The slide has already begun!
Got Code?
Was that OS and productivity software, or just the OS? I've had customers save considerably more just on the productivity software.
But I think we'll get the whole package when it comes upgrade time. When staff are already using OSS productivity and browser software replacing the OS isn't all that hard.
This may sound strange but one customer was all hot over Linux when he found out his employees couldn't install Weather Bug. I suppose a good consultant would have told him he could lock the Windows users down the same way, but it was such an insightful moment I didn't have the heart.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I work for my local school district as a PC tech. We have 12 primary, 2 secondary, 1 high school, and a central office. All network traffic from the primary and secondary schools plus the central office is routed to the high school over ISDN lines to the high school. There we have 4 T1s.
All of our schools except for the high school have always had slow internet connections due to the ISDN line. We don't have the budget to install T1s for all of our buildings. In the past I had suggested using a Squid proxy at each remote building to save on traffic going to the High School. He said he had never hear of this "Squid" thing and asked me about it. I told him it was a free proxy web cache server that runs on Linux. He sounded interested until I mentioned the words free and Linux. Instead my boss, after I warned him many times, decided to buy an underpowered 3com webcache appliance and put it at the high school. The appliance was rated for a medium sized business (100-500 computers) Our district has over 3000 computers, 1000 of which are at the high school. Even at the high school this device is not adequate. As a result, network performance has not improved anywhere and has decreased at the high school due to the bottleneck. Did I mention the cost of this device was $11,500.
After one of the computer labs of the high school was upgraded we had a surplus of 30 350 Mhz computers. During the summer we are usually installing new labs and installing new servers because all of the childeren are gone. Since all of the labs and servers and been installed there wasn't much more for me to do. My boss asked me to strip down the 30 computers and save any usable parts. I was to then recycle the parts that were not needed. I asked my boss if I could use 14 computers to test software on. Without questioning me he said yes.
For the next week I installed Trustix Linux on the 14 computers along with Squid, configured as transparent, and Sarg. Originally each computer had 128 MB RAM and a 6 GB hard drive. I decided to up the memory to 256 and install a second hard drive in each computer. One drive has the OS installed on it and the other drive is for the cached content.
After testing each machine I installed them at the schools. School started and the proxies worked great. My boss got a call from a Principal at one of the secondary schools. He asked how our department came up with the money to upgrade our network. My boss told him we hadn't upgraded anything as far as the network goes. He told me about this call during lunch that day and I told him it was because of the Squid proxy servers I had installed over the summer. He said to me with a confused look on his face, "Oh, ok. Well next time you want to install something let me know first." After lunch I showed him Sarg. He was impressed with all of the information available. I think in the future he may be more open to open source software. (Firefox will be my next project!)
If you have read to this point I thank you. The lesson I learned from this situation was that free open source software is looked down upon by some IT managers or those who make the final decisions. The common wisdom by some is since it's free it must not be good. This concept is hard for a Linux user like myself to grasp. I knew all along that a free and scalable alternative was available but my boss still decided to buy the 3com because it was expensive. It must be good if you have to pay for it right?
The huge stock buyback/dividend they just paid off will have reduced their cash reserves to very little in the end.
now... what will happen to Microsoft? Will they survive?
Yes. But it will look very different from Microsoft today. Reminds me of a paper and rubber company called Nokia and a company like Montana Power (which now makes computers). Personally, I think Microsoft will become a media company, but that is just wild speculation.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The only example I know, is my friend's mom, she's someone that is medical program cdrom install happy. That women aquired so many different apps, looking at here windows program menu was going to make my head spin. It all looks like generic software packs offered at a clearance discount from places like SAMs or the TV.
I guess where I'm going is that, MOL doesn't work here, because all this crap she bought is for Windows, and I don't need to continue this paragraph...
OTOH, a lot of these resources and crap applications are being turned into internet accessible apps where the browser is the platform. I tried Turbotax Web with either Mozilla or Konquerer (I can't remember), and it worked great. As others have said, the more of this that goes on, the more irrelevant the underlying OS is.
I don't see the threat to MS as so much the linux threat, rather than the OSS threat, as it is many OSS apps like apache and firefox that run fine under windows but happen to be crossplatform and standards compliant among other things.
We all know linux has many advantages given certain circumstances, and overall it keeps getting better. There are plenty of problems that still need to be addressed, but at this point, a tipping-point is at least plausible.
Personally I'm too much of a wimp to push MOL, but I think things will only get better, in part because so many companies and individuals are working to escape the MS monopoly and provide a viable alternaive. Strangely enough, it seems to be working.
I disagree. They could ALREADY sell a MS shell over a *BSD core, just as Apple has. Linux is not their only option, the BSDs are incredibly robust and advanced operating systems and MS wouldn't have to fight the GPL. I would argue that it would be even be an easier transition than using Linux since it's developed by a smaller and more centralized authority rather than total bazaar style development.
I would suspect the reason is applications; Microsoft is making money hand over fist on the current 9x/NT based systems, so why try to fix a system that's already pulling in more dough than the corporation knows what to do with?
Secondly an adoption of a core that was once open source means that without serious overhauling that current *NIX-compatable sources will be (relatively) easy to modify applications to run on "Windows POSIX Edition" That means more applications will be available to your competitors.
Apple had something to gain from this: they have small market share and were switching to a new kernel in OS X, losing their old applications, but started out with a significant boost because *NIX sources were not terribly difficult (relative to *NIXwindows ports) to coax to run on OS X. Microsoft would be doing the opposite, it would be opening a bunch of vital applications to "alternative" operating systems, making them far better competitors and far more lethal to their dominance.
Individual people are starting to get really annoyed about Windows. You hear them kvetching all the time, "My computer screwed up again", "My email's all messed up", "I think I've got a virus or something, my PC's acting funny"... You hear it at work, you hear it on the web. It's a much bigger deal than all these "business pundit" types imagine. People will change the way they do things to avoid aggravation, no matter WHAT they're told to do by Microsoft or the tech pundit of the week.
Prediction Number One:
The people who will adopt Linux first are actually the home users everyone thinks will go last. The reasons are easy enough:
1. It's free.
2. It's easy enough to install and the UI is familiar enough for them to use it comfortably, especially with KDE. Plus, it does everything a home user typically does (word processing, web browsing, email) much better than Windows would.
3. It's free.
4. There is a LOT of info online about how to do Linux-related things, and people are getting used to Googling for information. This is true despite the constant assertion by techno-snobs that Joe Sixpack is too stupid or lazy to do this. Maybe they forgot to tell Joe.
5. It's free.
6. Unlike a business, there's no boss to tell you that you can't switch to Linux.
7. It's free.
8. Home users will feel cool and hackerish using Linux -- they'll feel they're clued in to something, hip and different. People DO care about this. It turns 'em on, and makes them look cool to their friends. Social capital -- don't underestimate it.
9. It's free.
People are going to say this is bullshit. But look how many people are picking up Firefox. It's clear they have the initiative to try new things when they're annoyed enough. And they're definitely annoyed.
Prediction Number Two:
People with enough money to buy a Mac are going to switch to Mac OS/X in larger numbers, faster, than the x86 crowd, because of the "cool" factor. Most artists, writers, etc, already use Macs. They're very trendy computers. And the more rich/popular people use Macs, the more regular people will see changing to something different as an attractive thing. So Mac use will foster eventual Linux use among people who can't afford Macs.
Prediction Number Three:
The holdouts will be organizations which are averse to change, which move glacially. Governments, for example. Individual departments might switch over, but as a whole, it'll be slow going. I know MY shop will be among the last to change over. There's a whole cultural pro-Windows bias there. I see any transition happening on the server-side first, because we're already running some unix boxen and that transition would be the easiest. We're talking far backend, not middleware or frontend, here.
Some private companies might be slow to switch over, too, because of their investment in custom software, and their lack of Linux-related expertise. THIS transition is going to be very painful.
So, here it is in a nutshell:
Rich/affluent people: Mac OS/X on fast machines.
Regular people: Mostly switching to some form of Linux, whichever gets buzz for being easiest to install and manage.
Techies: Linux or OS/X depending on relative wealth. Maybe both in lots of cases.
Small, fast companies: Linux or *BSD.
Large, cautious companies: Windows for many years.
Government: Mixed bag.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
... is that one day they'll be right, and everyone that said it in the past will suddenly be thought of as prophets. If you back enough new trends, eventually you'll pick one that hits the big time.
I've paid for it 3 times, that's enough. Where can I get the latest version for gratis?
http://cygwin.com
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Run a small business, just got a couple of P3 Compaqs quite cheap.
:-)
Decided thats its time to push Linux to the great unwashed masses, so installed Mepis on the P3s - took about 20 minutes (maybe 10 clicks of the mouse , did the user name thing, didn't really have to think about it).
Handed over to the sales guys. Told them - this is your userid, password; this is for web, this is for text documents (you know, Word). Leave.
An hour later the guys show up on MSN, doing their stuff. No complaints. No questions. No support.
Maybe Linus is wrong about the Desktop market - can't expect him to be in the know about EVERYTHING.
I think the most important aspect of Linux growth is that it does not seem to have ever gone down. Linux has gradually grown year after year. Now that it is much more mature, it should continue to do the same. Even if it maintains it's present rate, it seems likely that Linux will achieve at least significant market share, if not dominance, in many of our lifetimes.
Also, the article does not mention that growth rates are almost always exponential. If Linux continues to grow market share like it is, it will begin to grow at a much more rapid rate. The reason for this is word of mouth. Linux share is now in the 3-4% range. That means 3 or 4 people out of 100 use it (on the desktop). That means chances are that the average person doesn't know anyone who actually USES Linux. But once you hit the 10% range, that's 1 in 10 people that use Linux. Suddenly many more people know someone that uses Linux, and many will probably be willing to give a try. Suddenly you're shooting up to 25% share and you're in the trend/fad range. At this point momentum will usually swing completely in your favour. Not are you the trend, you're comeptition is looking poor for losing so much share. Chances are that at this point, market share will flip-flop and the underdog will be the leader. The Desktop OS market isn't like most other markets where there is a lot room for competition. It's very much a single product dominated market. It will likely always be that way. If GNU/Linux succeeds, however, it iss likely to also share a fair amount of success w/ other open source OSes like BSD.
I am afraid that is simply not the case Most PC's are bought by companies fitting out their offices with servers and general purpose desktops.
In fact, it is widely beleived that the PC as a gaming platform is declining due to rising problems with piracy and the market dominance of consoles such as the Gamecube, PS2 and XBox by an large offer a much better return on investment than PC games.
DirectX games do not rule the world. DirectX is a facilitator for games. It doesnt matter whether a game uses Direct3D or OpenGL its the game, and its gameplay that matters most. Also you might have noticed that many of the next gen card manufacturers (NVidia & ATI) are offering OpenGL support in addition to DirectX. You might also notice that many of your favorite 3D games have a video setting for OpenGL. This is something you will find more and more often as it is much easier for software developers to write a Crossplatform/console game using an Open/Crossplatform 3D graphics library than it is with a closed one such as D3D.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp