When most open source projects are started, they are usually started out as a hobby. Money isn't on their minds. Some open source products make only enough money to cover costs, the developers of these just continue to work on them for fun.

Other open source software starts off without the goal of making money, but they turn into very profitable businesses. Last year Google paid Mozilla, the makers of the open source browser FireFox, $80 million dollars for using google in FF's search box.

Another example is MySQL. MySQL is the most widely used database system on the internet, this site is powered by it, and it's open source. MySQL offers two options: You can download the source of MySQL and edit it for free, but you have to make your changes open to the public. Large corporations don't want to make their code changes public, so they can buy a license.

Why hasn't linux become mainstream? I don't really know for sure, there are probably a few reasons, but I think I know the main reason. Windows is commercial, Microsoft has the money to market, they have the money to go to PC manufacturers and have windows preinstalled on computers. If both Linux and Windows where commerical, Linux would without a doubt be the most used OS.

To have a dual boot windows/linux computer, you'll need two partitions. One for windows, one for linux, then install the operating systems on both. When you turn on your computer, it will ask which OS you want to load. You could also have just windows installed, and use a Linux LiveCD.

Hardware support, for my computer anyway, is great. I have a laptop, and I was able to easily get drivers for my graphics card and wireless card. The drivers for everything else where already included in linux.

The future is hard to predict. My distro of Linux blew windows vista out of the water years ago, but with microsoft's marketing power I predict windows will be on top for a long time.

Luckily however, with a program called Wine, which comes with most version of linux, I'm able to run a lot of windows only programs. The only thing I found I still needed on linux was my games, and I'm able to run them under wine.

I have had some problems trying to dual-boot XP and linux... whenever I tried it ( I was installing Linux on a second harddrive) the MBR in XP would get corrupted-- and I'd end up starting over.
That was a couple of years ago-- I think I could get through it, now. I just wanted to warn BluesMatt to be careful.

Perhaps Nathan has a trick to avoid this ?

I've never tried to install Linux on a different hard drive then the main boot drive. Not really sure what could cause it. A way that should probably overcome this is to install linux on your main hardrive on another partition. If you can't do that, try to create another MBR with the Windows XP recovery console if it corrupts.

That was how I fixed it the last time... a friend said to disable the Windows drive in the Bios or physically unplug it before installing Linux. Then re-enable and reboot. You should get a choice on which to boot from, then. I am going to be trying this soon-- I'll let you know how it works.