Shopping for a home computer involves more than just choosing hardware — buyers must also pick what kind of operating system they want to run that new machine.

And for most people, that's long meant choosing between Microsoft's Windows, which runs on PCs, or OS, the system that operates Apple's Macintosh.

For the last two decades, there have been few challenges to the battle between Windows machines — which overwhelmingly dominate the consumer market — and pricier Macs. Unix, standing separately as an operating system for servers as well as university and large corporate computer systems, was simply far too expensive and far too difficult for the average computer user.

Enter Linux, an operating system created by Finnish university student Linus Torvalds as a hobby.

Once only a toy for geeks, Linux now is vying for a place in the consumer operating system market. While Linux long has been used by hardcore computer enthusiasts to improve their machines' performance and to protect from viruses, a new user-friendly generation of the operating system is ready to offer its services to the average user.

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