Microsoft's Sam Ramji slammed the door on virtualizing Microsoft's newest desktop operating systems (XP and Vista) on Linux yesterday. In a speech at LinuxWorld, the director of Microsoft's open-source software lab claimed that "we haven't seen significant demand for Linux applications on the desktop or for desktop virtualization on top of Linux."
Specifically, Ramji was referring to feedback from enterprise-level customers and its Interoperability Executive Customer Council. However, one has to wonder why Microsoft is blowing off the enthusiast community. There are plenty of Linux users reading Maximum PC in print and online, for example, and Linux is getting a greater market share at the desktop level in both the enthusiast and corporate markets. Dell, for example, started bundling PCs with Ubuntu in late May, and Lenovo has just announced it will start preinstalling Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 on its T-series notebooks starting in the fourth quarter of this year.