Red Hat is still looking to expand beyond its traditional market of tech-savvy companies into a more mainstream world nearly a year after the open source vendor first declared its intentions to woo conservative customers away from rivals Microsoft and Oracle.

When we talk about the Linux market, it means different things to different people. While much of the industry in 2008 stagnated or even receded, Linux revenues grew 23.4% to touch $567 million. The top selling server OSs came from Red Hat and Novell.

Is it reasonable to raise the question "does X still matter?" when the X in question is in use among nearly two-thirds of the target users under discussion?

Software company Red Hat Inc (RHT.N) reported a 7 percent rise in quarterly profit onWednesday, bucking an industry trend of declining earnings, as margins widened under the scrutiny of its cost-conscious CEO.

Firefox, the open-source web browser, is close to overtaking the rival Microsoft product, Internet Explorer, in Germany, but Firefox still lags well behind in the rest of the world, according to market data Monday.

Despite the worst recession in decades, Linux giant Red Hat added 600 employees to its rolls during the 12 months that ended Feb. 28, and the Raleigh company anticipates more hiring going forward.

So here we are, entering another year- and no doubt at some point during this year, more than one person will declare it the "year of the Linux desktop". Of course it won't happen and those who consider themselves free software opponents will soon let us know. Some things will never change. That said, is there any reason to suspect it might be different this year?