WILL Windows 7 from Microsoft kill desktop Linux as some technology pundits predict? The notion seemed so absurd that I initially dismissed it as a gimmick by writers hoping to draw readers to their Web sites.

Then I thought, if these people were talking about killing Linux, then Linux must be making serious inroads indeed. After all, only a few years ago, the free and open source operating system was itself being touted as a Windows killer.

But today, even the most rabid Linux advocate will tell you that this has not happened. In fact, most industry research says Windows is still used in 9 out of 10 computers?hardly in danger of being killed anytime soon. So why bother trying to kill Linux if it has only 1 percent of the market?

The answer, of course, is potential. User-friendly distributions of Linux such as Ubuntu hold tremendous potential as a replacement for Windows for a number of reasons: 1) They are more secure; 2) They use hardware resources more efficiently; and 3) They are free.

Nor is this just theoretical. Two weeks ago, I wrote about how Xavier School, an upscale preparatory school for college, is saving millions of pesos by dumping Windows and replacing it with Ubuntu. While this kind of migration is still fairly rare in the Philippines, it is increasingly happening elsewhere.

? PC World reports that Russia is considering the development of a Linux-based alternative to Windows. This comes on the heels of a pilot program to replace Windows with Linux in schools in three Russian regions.

? A ?free the penguin? initiative aimed at increasing Linux adoption in American schools and universities has attracted 70 schools from 29 US states. Omni, one of the companies behind the program, says it has installed over 20,000 Linux desktops in more than 3,000 US schools.

While all this is happening, Microsoft has never been more vulnerable. Windows Vista, introduced in 2007 as the cutting-edge successor to Windows XP, has been a miserable failure. Market analyst Gartner, in fact, blames the Vista debacle for Microsoft?s recent announcement that it would lay off 5,000 employees.

In announcing the job cuts, Microsoft acknowledged that revenue from Windows declined 8 percent as a result of weakness in the PC market and the continued shift to lower priced netbooks.

This last point is germane because up to 30 percent of netbooks ship with Linux, not Windows. This means lost licensing revenue for Microsoft, not only for Windows, but MS Office as well, in a fast-growing market. And because netbooks need to be cheap, it?s likely that Microsoft charges hardware manufacturers less for Windows licenses on these machines.

All this explains why Windows 7 is important?to Microsoft. The operating system, expected late this year, is supposed to run acceptably even on netbooks. Initial reviews of a pre-beta version have been generally favorable, no doubt contributing to this talk about killing Linux. The contention of these articles is that Windows 7 is much better than Vista, and Microsoft will spend millions of dollars to promote it, so people?including erstwhile Linux users?will jump at the chance to use it.

In their rush to proclaim Linux on the desktop doomed, however, the Windows fanboys fail to take into account the following:

1) Linux is free, Windows will never be. Even if Microsoft wizens up and charges less for Windows 7, it will still be more expensive than Linux. In a bad economy, that could be critical.

2) People don?t like being forced to upgrade?and paying for the privilege. Longtime Windows users have grown accustomed to being compelled to upgrade to the latest version and paying for it, because Microsoft would no longer support the older version. But Vista has made many people realize that they don?t need to play this upgrade game. On Linux, they don?t have to.

3) The open source community is vibrant and strong. It is simplistic to believe that the community of developers and users that power open source will abandon Linux on the desktop simply because Windows 7 is better than Vista. Time and again, we have seen how open source projects deliver good software on time. Compare this with Microsoft?s track record of buggy software delivered late and you will appreciate why Linux on the desktop won?t go away.

4) Linux is still safer. There are no viable viruses on the Linux platform because it is a hostile environment for malicious software. The same cannot be said for Windows?not even Windows 7.

5) Hardware vendors have tasted independence. The advent of Linux on netbooks has given manufacturers a taste of freedom from Microsoft?s operating system monopoly. It is unlikely that they will give that up, even if Windows 7 is good.

6) Marketing dollars are no guarantee for success. Just ask the guys who launched a $300-million advertising campaign with comedian Jerry Seinfeld and Microsoft boss Bill Gates to revive the sagging fortunes of Windows Vista.

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