HK wrote:

Why would IBM or anyone else want to force a hobbyist kit OS like LINUX
on its employees' desktops?

All my company's EDA CAD tools have been running on redhat
Linux servers and desktops since moving from Sun/Solaris
boxes several years ago... more bang/buck and just as stable.

http://www.synopsys.com/
http://www.cadence.com/
http://www.mentor.com/