According to a story by Linux Insider, Mozilla is working on creating a new application to take any web applications without re-coding and make the user experience more like that of a regular application.

For Linux, as well as other non-Windows operating systems, these kinds of applications and the move to web applications could greatly speed adoption. One of the main issues with changing your main operating system is the applications that you use everyday or need for your job, and if you could use those effortlessly on any operating system it would not only speed the adoption of operating systems such as Linux, but also increase competition in the operating system market for all operating systems, because it would be easy to switch to whatever operating system you want.

An interesting Slashdot article points out that as the price of hardware falls the “Windows tax” (the price of Windows) will become more obvious to the average user, potentially convincing them to move to Linux or another free alternative. It is true that as hardware prices fall the “Windows tax” will become a bigger percentage of the cost of a PC, but currently this will not be apparent at all to the average user in most cases. If PC makers make it clear how much you are paying and let you switch to Linux as one of the options, then I think this article is exactly right.