It's hardly news these days when RHEL or Suse Linux boots Windows or Unix off a server. And we know that commercial software vendors are paying plenty of attention to commercial open source.

But have you ever heard of a community version of the open source operating system displacing one of the popular commercial distributions? That's exactly what happened in Germany's third-largest public TV and radio station, according to a new report on community Linux by analyst Jay Lyman of the 451 Group.

"Community distributions such as CentOS, Debian, and Gentoo are gaining enterprise respect for quality code, stability, response and, of course, for being 'free as in beer' and 'free as in freedom' (a common open source mantra referring to cost and freedom from vendor or standard lock-in). These community distributions are becoming a more significant market factor with growing enterprise acceptance and use of them," he writes.

Not surprisingly, the opportunity to cut costs is an important driver of community Linux, but Lyman makes an interesting point, noting that a rise in internal expertise -- and a willingness to use it -- is a key enabler of the nascent trend.

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