Recently microsoft admitted Linux has went ahead of them, and they need to get their act together, But no matter what they do now, Linux will always have the advantage, the wide varietyof flavours for everyone!

Ah, the dreaded slashdot. I have had a brush with them in the past. They twist everything you report into your own noose.

Microsoft's realized for couple years (there's a whole series of leaked internal documents from MS about it) that Linux is a serious threat, along with all open source and GNU... First because it's free, and threats their "revenue streams" and secondly because it's better.... Hard to install, not much software, but then that's what all computers where like in the early days. Biggest Threat to Linux right now isn't Microsoft, it's SCO
(see: www.slashdot.com)

Linux is pretty good, but requires a little configuring. Microsoft has an advantage because even children use windows.

I went to a Windows 2003 roadshow, and the Microsoft spokesman, said they are trying to revert the situation with the new IIS. They know Linux and Apache are better.

What's interesting with Linux as a competitor is that its sales and distribution model is very different from conventional software businesses. The software itself is a free download, and you only pay if you want premium support. It's gonna be a tough battle ahead, I reckon.

Kinda like buying a new car you're only allowed to drive at the dealership.

It's crap like this that pushed me into Linux to begin with. I'm delighted every time I read an article stating that more internet/ftp/whatever Servers are running Linux than Windows - and that more people are trying Linux than ever before.
It's a lack of viable competition that makes companies like MS think they can get away with doing anything they want to.

Try Linux!

They are treating the linux community as a serious competitor:

MS legal threat derails Foxpro on Linux demo ? The Register