As usual, the beginning of this year saw plenty of rallying calls by the Open Source community saying that this would be the year when Linux takes over the desktop. As there were last year. And the year before that.

I'm sorry to disappoint but I just don't see it happening. The most positive outcome is the 'beginning of the end' but even that requires quite a stretch of the imagination.

Whatever its faults, Windows Vista is stable, has a host of useful utilities that people need such as parental controls and is very familiar. And let's not write off Windows XP just yet either. Support is going to continue for many years yet, and there are still new computers available with XP installed.

Linux has made great strides in the last few years but it still often seen as being hard to use. The reality is quite different for the most part but reputations like this are hard to shift. Think of how often the Mac and Linux camps complain about Windows instability when what they are really referring to is Windows 98.

The other problem is the wide diversity of Linux distributions. Distrowatch.com has a chart for the most popular one hundred Linux distributions. That's daunting for me and I've been using Linux for years now.

Finally, choice of operating system has as much to do with the available software. OpenOffice can fulfil most Microsoft Office tasks but there are times when the alternative just won't do. As I found out the hard way when opening a planning sheet in OpenOffice Calc once.

I also enjoy playing around with music creation software, such as Magix Music Maker and Studio, and Ableton Live (download the demo here), which keeps me on Windows. Or Mac at a pinch.

I'm sure that Linux will continue to gain ground throughout the year as long as distributions like Ubuntu keep up the good work they've been doing. But Windows is going to dominate for some years yet.