>Mundie is right in his definition of a stable OS. He is wrong in his claim that such stability is 10 years away. I experience that stability now.

You said that occasionally Linux has a difficult time recovering from a crashed app, resulting in the operator performing a key stroke and relogging in to the OS.

>But, if the "vision" is that not even apps will crash, that is only a dream.

The apps will still crash; the OS and the machine should be left completely uneffected and recover 100% gracefully with the user knowing or detecting any system instability.

I believe thats what a "compeltely stable machine" is. You admitted Linux is not there yet either.

>NT and W2K's hardware certification programs was a step in the right direction, but it has the disadvantage of limiting the hardware W2K will run on.

When XP comes out, see if you can get a copy at work, and try some of this stuff out. Its a great OS.