>This brings up an interesting side issue. If MS is broken up this week, and the development tools are divorced from the OS, is it possible that we may see Visual Studio for LINUX at some point?

Well, maybe, the reason that the tools are Windows only is for ActiveX and COM and all that propiertary Windows stuff. I'm guessing it would be far off, and I'm sure the Borland tools would be a better choice than what we can expect from the first MS offering on a new-nonMS OS.