If you missed the first part or the second part, here is a quick summary. Otherwise, just skip this part.

In this series of articles, I will discuss broad groups of computer users, the ties they have to existing platforms, and the potential attractions of Linux to them. In the first part, I covered two types of home users and argued that neither type cares much about the advantages and disadvantages of different operating systems and, therefore, home users are not a promising market for Linux. In part two, I covered large and small businesses and creative professionals. In my opinion, large businesses are too tied to a big system based in Windows to switch to Linux, but creative professionals and small businesses have much less of a tie to any particular operating system and if there were applications that did what they need to Linux, they would switch.

In this part I will cover geeks, travelers, and schools (originally universities, but expanded to schools thanks to commenter Robert Pogson).

Geeks

I had to include them, but there is not really much to say. This is one case where Linux has already won for the most part.

Travelers

Example: Someone who travels on business a lot and needs to do e-mail, get on the web, and edit Microsoft Office files without lugging a big computer around.

For anyone that needs to travel, Linux has gotten much more appealing in the past few months, even though they may not even know what Linux is. With products like the Asus Eee PC on the market, Linux is becoming appealing, in the form of small hardware and low costs, to travelers. Although the Eee is still quite new, it has a lot of promise to help Linux become an everyday term and an everyday tool.

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After the EU required Microsoft to share some of their documentation on printer/file sharing in 2004 and losing their appeal in September 2007, Microsoft finally got around to doing it, according to ZDNet. The Samba project gave Microsoft almost $15,000 for the documentation they needed from Microsoft to ensure interoperability with Windows on printer and file sharing, which will be given to them through the Protocol Freedom Information Foundation. Samba is the project that makes file and printer sharing with Windows computers possible.

Although it is frustrating that Microsoft cannot just make the required documentation available, now that the Samba team does have the documentation and is allowed to release the code they write based on it so other projects can use their implementation (the documentation itself will remain confidential), the important thing is that from now on Samba and other open-source projects will be able to create software that is fully compatible with Microsoft software.

Further Reading: Samba News Story, CNET News Story