The dour mood on Wall Street has dragged three Linux company stocks below their initial public offering prices, and others aren't far behind.

Sure, recent events -- a sagging Nasdaq, a flaky Linux sector and a fairly sordid inhouse melodrama (see Linuxcare chief leaves under cloud) -- have all acted in unison to push the once can't-miss prospect from the IPO launching pad back into the repair hangar.

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The next question is, of course, why Linux has succeeded where the others have failed. And that question might best be answered by considering why the failures have happened, and why Linux might be an exceptional case.

"We sell both the Red Hat operating system and the Corel Linux OS bundle and, between the two, they are matching sales of Windows 98."

The most efficient and stable operating system ever created would be nothing without applications. Maintaining a large variety of applications in a corporate environment can be challenging to say the least, however, Linux has some wonderful features that can help to greatly simplify this job.

Instead of being a marginalized OS championed only by a few fringe wackos, it's clear that Linux is now a major player in the vast computing world--and it's also clear that Linux has a bright future, because Open Source is now a very viable model in the corporate toolkit.

So will it take 30 years for Linux to be adopted? No. Not even close, for several reasons. The first is that Linux is not a new technology. The second reason is simply price - cost of use for Linux is so low that it will eventually be used everywhere, on all sorts of systems.

Linux emerged as the fastest growing entry-level server operating system during the fourth quarter of 1999, with Compaq taking the lead in system sales.

Americans may prefer Microsoft, but international computer users are finding solidarity in Linux.