If the gossip, born at last weeks Free Open-Source Developers’ European Meeting (FOSDEM), is correct – and it is far from that at present – the increasing ‘commercial viability’ of Linux on the desktop is to be credited with piquing Microsoft’s interest.

Valve’s Steam port and Canonical’s OEM tie-ups putting Ubuntu preinstalled on millions of laptops around the world have all helped to drag Linux out of the fringes of computing. Something that won’t have gone unnoticed by Microsoft.