Yes we are certainly investigating Linux. A few challenges lie in front of us to address, but we are working towards resolutions. We've built prototypes over the years for Linux and Mac (OSX).

One challenge is supporting, and keeping up with, the many flavors of Linux operating systems and more so, their file systems -from Reiser to EXT2/3, etc... - a good overview of file systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_system

The other hurdle is integrating defragmentation into kernel level code. With Microsoft we accomplished that by co-developing an API so defragmenters could act as user-mode apps, greatly simplifying the defrag app and making it far safer and reliable for online operations. This can certainly be done in the Linux world, but it is a bit of a challenge.

The last hurdle is one that seems to be working itself out, and that is where does Diskeeper make its money - unless we can convince our developers to work for free ;-). Linux is, of course, open-source and technically "free" - though you pay for other things like support, etc. In the past it has been less accepted to "sell" software in an open source space. Business models are often different in this market. I believe that the open-source arena is more adapt to support software sales at this time, and we can always explore other revenue models.

That said, I strongly anticipate we will be in the Linux space and a contributor to its progress.

digress: As a general statement, Diskeeper is becoming more active as a partner in the software/hardware world. We've had alliances with Microsoft for a long time, but are adding more partners and actively pursuing contributing to industry consortiums and the like. I strongly believe that the collaboration these groups offer gives customers/users the best options and technologies, and we want to do our part.

As for Linux defrag products, I don't know of any at the moment. I was aware of one other company offering a beta for Red Hat EXT2 several years ago, but as EXT2 faded from prominence, that product seems to have faded as well. EXT2 has some freeware (one I remember testing included a use-at-your-own-risk clause from the developer!). EXT3 may have one by now -last I looked the consensus was to revert to EXT2, use a freeware tool and then revert back.

If you do a search, you'll likely come up with a lot of freeware products -just be cautious. Personally, I'm not an advocate of using freeware on a business machine. On my home PC, on my own time and with a reliable back-up; maybe.