There are some great new technologies emerging for the Linux desktop, I think that as time goes on we will not only see the usage of Linux as a desktop increasing, but I think it will threaten Windows and OS X, plus the technologies will most likely be much better implemented. After all OS X is based on Unix and Vista leans on heavily on it too.
Take a look at this jaw dropping video showing just what is possible through the use of Beryl and XGL for the Linux desktop.
I’ve been doing a lot of research lately into hosting Rails apps on Virtual Machines and just who to do that with as a hosting provider etc. I’ve setup a couple with Media Temple which is pretty easy since they have the new Plesk control panel for easy setup and management. However with MT they only offer CentOS 4 and some of the commands we are used to in a default CentOS installation are missing. In particular YUM must be compiled from source and I had a heck of a time setting up Java. It took some crazy startup options that I’ve never had to use before to get the JVM to run without throwing a fit.
So in my quest to find the right hosting provider I’ve come across slicehost.com. They cater to the developer community with some great forums, chats, & blogs. They offer Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, and Fedora distros for your VM at some incredible prices.
Also you can find some great tutorials on how to configure your VM at usefuljaja.com.
Ubuntu seems to be shaping up as the go-to distro for running Linux on the desktop. This is a great link outlining how to create screencasts on your Ubuntu desktop using OS tools.