As I said, my first thought was "great - maybe this will push other consoles to consider Linux as a viable alternative." But then I thought of all the downsides to this.

First let me say, there are no downsides to Linux that I can see. I have various flavors of Linux running in my home doing various things, from Debian to Ubuntu to Fedora and Red Hat. In fact the only non-Linux computer I have in my house is my son's computer - he prefers Windows.

I've never had a virus in any of my computers, nor has anyone been able to penetrate my Linux firewall in the 4 or 5 years it's been operating (with only a few reboots at that - I think the longest my firewall ran without a reboot was 15 months).

But there are concerns with open source. Mainly that it is just that - Open. That means, if the Wii is to run open source, or even a modified version of open source, it will be cracked in no time. After all the code base is readily available to anyone.

While it would be great to have the ability to add programs as you see fit - don't like the Nintendo web browser? Simple - replace it the Firefox, or your other favorite browser. But it can't be that easy.

For one it would make it so much easier to then crack the system and run pirated games. They'll run into the same problems as the Dreamcast did - every single title playable via "backup" with our without a boot loader.

Not only that, but then you could also run emulators and play your favorite old non-Nintendo titles, or even (shudder) convert it to, say, a Windows Media Player. A $250 Wii based Windows Media Player is a heck of a lot cheaper than anything else out there.

So will the Wii run Linux? I don't know for sure but I think it'd be a heck of a gamble on their part. On the other hand, I hope so because I'll be buying one for sure, not just for the cool technology but also because within hours of teh Wii being released I'm sure I'll find pirated games all over the web.

But I guess only time will tell...