A move to build PCs without Windows

But that may have changed. Linux programmers have recently been working to make the software more user-friendly.

Avron Barr, a principal at Aldo Ventures in Palo Alto, Calif., and former co-chair of the Stanford Computer Industry Project, notes that children in developing countries are using Linux. If an 8-year-old kid in the Philippines can use a computer that runs on Linux, there's no doubt that an average computer user in the US can too, he adds.

The State University of New York at Buffalo hopes that is the case. In early September, it unveiled more than 2,000 computers running Red Hat Linux. So far, 5 percent of the school's computers use Linux.

And at this summer's US Open tennis tournament, the laptops courtside ran on Linux.

Testa's firm has switched entirely to Lindows machines – no glitches so far, he reports.

But achieving widespread acceptance of Linux will not be easy. Consumers who own lots of programs already up and running in Windows will face high switching costs.

For its part, Dell computer has yet to see much increased demand for Linux from people whose computers operate with Microsoft software.

"In our eyes, it's not Microsoft vs. Linux," says Wendy Giever, a spokeswoman for Dell in Austin, Texas. Instead, she says, "we are seeing demand coming from businesses who run their big computers on a Unix server and are moving it onto Linux."

"The mind-set currently belongs to Microsoft, and it will take a large chunk of effort to change that, especially in the very short time-frame." says Tony Lock, a senior IT analyst at Bloor Research in London.

Indeed, a recent Business Week survey put Microsoft as the world's No. 2 brand, behind Coca-Cola. Supplementing its name-recognition: a trove of gifted programmers, over 25 years of industry experience, and billions of dollars to invest.

Peter Kastner, an analyst at the Aberdeen Group, thinks that Robertson's and Sun CEO Scott McNealy's hopes of 10 to 20 percent of the market for Linux are inflated: "I have been out on a limb saying 5 percent of the market could be on Linux a year from now." Though, he says, "5 percent of a 100 million PC market is huge."

Robertson wants to prove even the optimists wrong. "We are still in development right now," but he is confident that Linux machines will eventually overtake the market.

"Cellphones cost about 200 bucks to manufacture, and they are given away for free," he says, alluding to the price of a Lindows machine.

He even thinks it likely that soon "each person [will have] their own computer." For free. And running on Linux, he might add.

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