The VAR Guy was flipping though his Sunday morning paper when he spotted an article about Ubuntu Linux. He took a few more sips of coffee to perk up and make sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him. Sure enough, Ubuntu had made the leap into the mainstream media — earning coverage in Newsday, the eight largest newspaper in the nation. Has Ubuntu reached its tipping point with consumers?

What the argument over the names often boils down to is philosophy, not just attribution or credit. GNU was created with software freedom in mind. Linux, in its genesis, was proprietary until it adopted the GNU GPL licence and then became mainstream.

Alongside Red Hat and Novell's recent pulling away from the consumer Linux space, some are not confident the operating system (OS) will be ready for the mainstream market anytime soon.

MIDs (mobile Internet devices) may be the channel for Linux to reach mainstream consumers in Asia, according to an analyst.

Lots of different companies are investing and promoting linux. Dell, Asus, Intel, Apple, are just a few to mention who have poured lots of money into the development and adoption of linux. Despite their best efforts, linux is still not adopted over OSX and Windows by professionals and average users. Why?

After more than 5000 complains of costumers about Vista in a month of time, the Dutch Consumers’ Counsel decided to talk with Microsoft. The goal of the negotiations was to give consumers the possibility to downgrade from Vista to XP if consumers had serious complaints about Vista.

Thanks to Canonical and its success with popularizing Ubuntu Linux, there has been an astonishing influx of new Linux users. This is one of those good news -- bad news scenarios; the growth is wonderful, but it also brings a growth in user demands, and a carryover of bad habits from the closed, proprietary software world.

In a recent article on Desktoplinux.com, Kevin Carmony, former CEO of Linspire, reported that he has switched to Ubuntu. In the same article he also said that as Linux becomes more mainstream there would be a consolidation of Linux on the desktop. By this, I presume he meant that only a few of the big Linux distributors would be vying for the desktop space through OEM deals.

Despite the Linux and Ubuntu netbook craze, I think there is a simple reason why Linux is not a mainstream solution for most users — yet. Let me explain.