MIT has a thriving Linux community. Their support groups are efficient and encouraging. And they satisfy the needs of specialized research oriented applications with Athena. They are a model of how a university-sized Linux user community, can be managed.

As I took my seat on the subway, I noticed a clean-cut young man intently scanning a series of complicated equations in a workbook. There was no text and the guy looked like he was easily calculating the answers in his head.

I remember saying to myself, "Yup, this is MIT and I bet that guy has a Linux laptop in his backpack."

Rob Reilly is a consultant, trend spotter, and writer. He advises clients on portable computing, presentation technology, and business process integration. He is also a contributing editor for Linux Today. You can visit his web page at http://home.earthlink.net/~robreilly.

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