effectively proprietary Dell Linux
I have had the feeling that Linux has been teetering on the brink of the same problem that beset UNIX last century, when several proprietary flavours of UNIX evolved, making development, portability and interoperability a real pain.
On a different note, I recently tried an experiment to see if I could configure a laptop for work with Linux (Kbuntu) as the OS. Most things I could set up to work (after a fashion), but I was completely stopped by the VPN solution. Yes, I could get a VPN client, but the gateway enforces software compliance, and BlackIce is not available for Linux - yet (I know, it's in Beta, but a very limited Beta).
And while many of our corporate apps have been developed for browser-based access, they only work properly with IE6, not Firefox etc.
Still, it's about 80% there!