Robert Young, left, chief executive officer of Red Hat Software, and Marc Ewing, CTO are shown in this 1998 photo. Red Hat has designed the operating system Linux. Customer demand is growing for computers that run the Linux operating system, a free-of-charge software that could eventually pose a threat to Microsoft’s widely used Windows NT. In the latest endorsement, IBM has joined Dell, Hewlett-Packard and other major manufacturers in selling powerful business computers that run Linux. (AP Photo/News & Observer, Candice C. Cusic)