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Was it because the march on the server space continued at a relentless pace? Because there were big announcements around desktop installments? Because there was finally some realistic perspective about the threat from SCO, or the threat to Microsoft? However you look at it, the penguin's tux has never looked more pristine or ready for business. So here we'll take a stroll though the last 12 months that sharpened the creases and quickened the pace of the Linux-based platforms.

January
The year kicked off to an announcement from Microsoft that became a refrain for the succeeding 12 months: Microsoft's argument that Windows is more secure, cheaper, more reliable etc ad nauseum, if you choose the right scenarios, configuration, workload and research groups: Redmond's 'Get the Facts' campaign.

SCO launched into 2004 by opening fronts across the globe, promising litigation and licensing for its Unix intellectual property claims worldwide. Novell, having completed its SUSE buy, announced it was joining the ranks of Linux vendors offering indemnification against such claims.

Then at New York's Linuxworld show, SCO ruffled Novell's new Linux plumage, filing its 'Slander of title' lawsuit, alleging that Novell's claims of residual ownership of elements of Unix had damaged its bid to license the platform.

Other tidbits for the month included the formation of the 'Desktop Linux Working Group' by the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), SCO mails US members of Congress with its complaints, and puts a $250,000 on the head of the MyDoom author responsible for a subsequent DOS attack that took down SCO's website.

February
Signs of the resurgent interest in Linux blossomed in February when French Linux vendor Mandrake announced it had a business plan that would steer it out of bankruptcy protection.

SCO-wise, we saw it dropping key complaints in its case against IBM around trade secrets, but adding another that IBM had been selling Unix-based products even after it had terminated IBM's licence.

In the PR war, the OSDL argued that Novell throwing doubts as to SCO's claims gives Linux users every reason to wait until the case is settled before agreeing any licence. Advice which, come SCO's quarterly results, many took wholeheartedly. For its part, Novell refuted SCO's claims saying it was impossible to claim damages if you can't establish ownership of the thing you claim is being damaged.

But despite the chatter over Linux, shipments showed that business was buying into the platform with gusto.

March
SCO was still the chatter of the IT classes at this juncture. The company's quarterly results showed its Linux campaign was costing it dearly. It paid out $3.44mn, while licensing revenues crossed the line at a piffling $20,000. But with its coffers freshly stuffed from Microsoft and Sun licence fees it maintained its aggressive stance, launching suits against DaimlerChrysler and Autozone.

Yet Linux marched on: IBM and HP announced they would pre-install various flavours of Linux on servers and desktops, and Mandrake shed its bankruptcy chains and was listed back on the Euronext exchange.

April
Lindows, a popular Linux distribution with home users, fell foul of the Redmond beast over the use of the name Lindows. Although both sides had won and lost battles over the trademark in courts around the globe, Lindows decided the bills were escalating and called it a day, changing the product name to Linspire.

A new SCO scandal also erupted this month when VC backers BayStar announced that SCO had broken terms of the investment agreement that stocked SCO with $50mn. In short, they wanted their money back. Not so, said SCO, but BayStar maintained that it was unhappy with the behaviour of senior management and its continued focus on Unix products rather than its IP claims.

May
Major news this month as Red Hat formally returned to the desktop market. Although it had ceased work on the standalone version of Red Hat the previous year, the new version was not a replacement in any way. Instead it played to the growing demand from businesses for centralised control over desktops that can be locked down, monitored and updated en masse.

But as Linux garnered gravitas, May threw up some odd and humourous stories around the platform. First, SCO scooped an award as top influencer for fear uncertainty and doubt, and Linux Torvalds admitted it was Santa and not he that built Linux.

Linus also made the headlines this month launching the developer certificate intitiative - a bid to document the provenance of code submitted to the project to avoid SCO-like litigation in future.

June
June saw BayStar bowing out of its involvement with SCO. Whatever its issues, it had evidently decided it would have a hard time getting back its investment. Instead it agreed a deal worth $13mn in cash and about

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$10mn of common shares (at the then current value of $4.81) - about half the initial $50mn investment.

With Sun's quarterly launch queued up, it was inevitable that McNealy, Schwartz and co would take to their blogs, podiums and wherever anyone would listen to make earth-shattering statements. This time Schwartz said Sun will open source Solaris.

The increased interest in Linux from the public sector was evident when the French government announced it was considering making a switch to the platform.

And at the back end of the month, Sun announced that Allied Irish Bank had signed up to use its SUSE-based Java Desktop System across all desktop systems.

July
The most fondly remembered headline for the month for Linux enthusiasts will surely have been DaimlerChrysler's nearly complete victory over SCO, having the majority of the claims thrown out, bar an issue about tardiness.

Also this month Red Hat said it was to change the way it accounted for its subscription revenues to a daily basis. Although the company maintained that this would have no effect on the amount of revenues recognised, investors grew jumpy, particularly with the recent and sudden departure of CFO Kevin Thompson: shares dropped 20 per cent.

August
Lots of news this month. A company founded to protest Linux users against the SCO threat and similar reviewed the kernel and found 283 potential patent violations. Yet the biggest patent holder of all, IBM, promised not to press its patent portfolio where they were infringed upon by open source products except in defence.

Novell meantime launched the first enterprise server using the latest 2.6 version of the kernel. And Sun claimed that the upcoming version 10 of its Solaris operating system would be able to run Linux applications natively.

September
In contrast to August, September was relatively quiet. SCO announced its results showing just how much its licensing and litigation strategy was costing it, and what poor returns it was acquiring through it.

Linux big guns signed up to a common standards base to counter concerns of fragmenting Linux distributions that possibly wouldn't be compatible. And the city of Munich, having stalled over a switch to Linux due to patent fears, finally made the jump.

October
Red Hat put its hand in its wallet this month to purchase Netscape from AOL, while Novell followed Red Hat and IBM in its patent promise not to assert its patents against open source software except in defence. Dell also agreed to preload SUSE on its servers, putting it on a level field with Red Hat.

But the highlight of October was surely a UK Government report that recommended public bodies to consider the use of open source, complete with case studies vindicating what most Linux enthusiasts had been saying for years regarding costs, performance and security

November
This month Novell officially launched its enterprise class desktop product, although the centralised management and update services won't be ready until next year. There was also a twist in its case against SCO: the minutes of a board meeting the day before the sale of Unix appeared to conclude that there were indeed elements of the platform that Novell intended to keep hold of.

Mandrake, not long out of bankruptcy, announced record revenues, putting it well on the way to turning a profit for the year. Red Hat opened its first office in China. And Novell's financials showed how SUSE was performing - pushing the company into the black.

December
This month saw Poland in a last minute dash to prevent an EU Directive on software patents being rubber-stamped without the concerns of worried developers and Government departments being taken into account.

And SCO's quarterly financials still showed no sign that Linux users were flocking to buy a licence, while the legal costs continued to overshadow the initiative.

2005...?
What of the future? Certainly we can expect to see the current trends continue: further penetration into the public sector, increased use in higher performance workload scenarios, and with one rather highly-anticipated trial coming up, SCO, SCO and more SCO. But for the platform rather than politics and business, who better to ask than GNU founder Richard Stallman?

When we interviewed him at the beginning of the year, he told us his fears that non-free software may begin an insipid march into Linux-based software.

'We face the danger that the GNU/Linux system will degrade into a hybrid of free and non-free software, whose free portions will be of little use on their own. The goal of using a computer while living in freedom may be completely lost,' he said.

The more success Linux finds in the commercial market, the greater that risk may be. As major vendors look to piggy-back the 'free' operating system with their own proprietary apps and services running on Linux, such a risk will become a reality. Worse still, the idea of choice, of a community of developers building myriad 'free' and open source programs is also at risk. The danger here is that what will be sold into the commercial world is a homogenised stack of proprietary applications.