One product (Microsoft Windows) holds a race-is-over market share on the desktop. Why, then, have two significant training vendors (Learning Tree International and the Minnesota Technical College Educators) told me in the past month that their most requested classes have been for Linux?

Linux may, indeed, be the predominant operating system of the future, for server or desktop computers. I'm not ready to devote the space needed to join that long-standing debate; suffice to say that Linux may be positioned to take advantage of some unforeseeable sea change in the OS market. It is the perception of Linux that strikes me as surprising.

Every new product starts out as an underdog, even those that try to define a unique new niche. Linux, however, is unique in the interest and commitment it engenders in IS professionals (and career changers hoping to enter the field). Microsoft and Novell are frequently criticized for the profits that their technical training and certification programs reap, but those programs both emerged after the launch of their operating systems created a shortage of support personnel. Both Netware and Windows were viewed skeptically by the IS community at their initial releases, and that critical analysis returns with every revision.

Linux, despite becoming very well-known more than two years ago, has become nothing more than an experimental novelty among desktop operating systems, and is rarely used for any server application besides Web service. Its growth may have stagnated while still in the single-digit percentage range. Yet people flock to Linux classes, even though its spread in corporate IS, and the corresponding career opportunities, are only a future possibility.

The key to understanding Linux is to realize that it is not really an operating system, at least not the form of Linux, which attracts this disproportionate amount of attention. Actually, Linux is a meme.

Memes were first described by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, in his seminal 1976 book, "The Selfish Gene." A meme is a concept or idea that reproduces by spreading from one person's mind to others. In some ways, they are like a computer virus (though not always harmful) for the human brain. Once a person gets the idea (or a song in their head, or any other infectious concept), they spread it by talking about it or communicating to other people about it. Memes, like particular genes, become successful by competing with other memes in effectively spreading.

Like all living things, a meme's success is a matter of survival of the fittest. Therefore, the most successful memes are not necessarily those with the greatest merit, but those with characteristics that help them get distributed to a great number of "hosts." For example, the anti-abortion meme has an advantage in that it encourages its hosts to have more children, who are likely to be infected. Y2K prophets who predicted doom and the end of the world were carrying a meme (their religion) with a distribution advantage, because sensational predictions, right or wrong, are more likely to be discussed--and spread--than calm predictions, even those which are much more reasonable.

The Linux meme, likewise, has features that encourage its retransmission. It is characterized as a rebellious choice, with an interesting, even sexy, aura, so people who know about Linux (hosts of the meme) are encouraged to talk about it to other people, especially those they seek to impress. It is also described as an alternative--perhaps the only alternative--to Microsoft's dominant operating systems, so Linux is mentioned in many news stories and informal discussions that ostensibly center on Microsoft.

So the remarkable interest in Linux is not, as yet, actually generated by the operating system itself, but by an infectious meme that shares its name. And whether I like it or not, this article itself is transmitting the Linux meme to new, previously uninfected hosts.

Contributing Editor Joe Rudich is a network administrator with the St. Paul Companies in St. Paul, Minn. joe@rudich.com