Dear Linux Magazine Reader,

Our new, smaller economy is bound to hold surprises for all of us. One of the best parts about a surprise is speculating on what that surprise will be. Because we know we don't know anything, we can all just guess, and then we can all debate about whose guesses are the most insightful.

An optimistic thread running through the open source community is that the downturn of the world economy might actually be good for Linux. This viewpoint holds that, because Linux is less expensive (actually free) and because it is more efficient to administer and support – despite all the infomercials to the contrary, IT departments will turn to Linux to make up for budget shortfalls. Although some of the enterprise-ready Linux distros such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop aren't as inexpensive as the rest of the Linux variants, when it comes to an overall package of efficiency, reliability, and security, you have to like the chances of Linux.

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