Hardware believe or not will probably be what changes things, multi core processors are coming, already supported by linux, not by windows, windows is JUST releasing a 64 bit OS well after the linux kernel for 64 bit was already around, the switch to multi core means eitehr some ugly patching or a complete rework of windows and its philosophy, linux can make the switch in just a week or two I believe,it does multiprocessor now, unless the instruction sets for the new CPU cores changes too, even with a big change like that, linux runs on anything now including macware, another architecture is no big deal.