Microsoft as ever are playing the Borg strategy - assimilation. Over the last year they've collaborated with various open source folks such as Firefox and they've toyed with opening bits of the source, but their real aim is compatibility at a price.

A subscription stream for software locked into their OS is what they've been heading towards for a while. Doing deals with Linux distributors is only designed to get the open source community paying for MS licences.

I recently ditched Vista (and freed 20GB in the process) in favour of Ubuntu. I honestly couldn't see anything in Vista I needed that wasn't available for free through Ubuntu. The only shame was that that the hardware manufacturers only sell you a machine with the stuff on it. Since the move, it's much faster and is totally stable - absolutely no regrets.

The stanglehold on the hardware (drivers having to be reverse engineered for instance) is what limits the expansion of OSs such as Ubuntu but that will change.

Personally I just got fed up with paying for MS to slow down my machine and fill my hard drive