It would seem that with the advent of Microsoft's latest incarnation, Windows 8, that many people are reassessing their loyalty to the products of Mr. Gates' company. The latest iteration of Windows is perhaps the least user friendly operating system now commonly available.

People who previously were reticent to look anywhere else other than Windows for their Operating System needs are now casting admiring glances towards the many flavours of Linux distributions (distros). Simultaneously, Microsoft have chosen to stop supporting one of their more favoured releases, XP. With these two actions, MS seem to have handed the initiative to the ever more sophisticated and capable Operating Systems developed under the Linux umbrella.

The developers of Linux have not been slow to realise the potential of this opportunity handed to them by the makers of Windows. Some distros have gone so far as to deliberately mimic the better aspects of Windows XP and Windows 7, thus easing the transfer process for newbie Linux users.

The other great thing about these new operating systems is that, almost to a man, they are free at source. And it is not only the OS itself that is free but each come with large repositories (sometimes in excess of 30,000) of free applications.

The only downside at the time of writing for those of us who use software to trade on the markets is that there is, as yet, a relative paucity of such software within these repositories.
Of course, if the software is browser base, then this is of no consequence.
The future looks bright indeed for Linux!