Linus Torvalds thinks that Linux is rapidly winning ground against Microsoft Windows in the battle to dominate the world's PC desktops.

In a rare interview, the open-source operating system's creator said: "I think Linux has a very strong future on the desktop, actually. Linux already has a quarter of the web-server market or more, so in certain markets Linux is very strong today. The desktop, obviously for a lot of reasons, is a very interesting market."

Torvalds, speaking on Cisco's website, predicted that the desktop operating system landscape would be very different in five years' time: "The reason I think Linux actually has a chance - and why I feel in five years, the situation will be different - is that Linux kind of works around the market.

"A lot of people are very interested in desktops, so a lot of people will be working on all the applications going on the desktop, making it look nice. And you can really see the changes that have been going on in the last few years."

Throughout the interview Torvalds was measured in his comments about Microsoft. But he did criticise Windows' reliability, saying that "everybody complains" about the OS.

"I know a number of Windows users who hate the system. They curse how it crashes, that you have to save every time before you print. Everybody complains. They're still happy because they're used to it. Right?

""That's why Microsoft is so successful. Microsoft doesn't even need to improve Windows that much because they still have 100 million people who are comfortable with it," Torvalds said.

"They're very good at marketing," he added. "The bad part about it is that it does have a huge market share. And that means that it can be lazy, sort of. They don't have much competition on the desktop, which means that they have very little incentive to really fix some of the problems Windows does have."

Torvalds admitted that he initially came under fire from people who did not understand his decision to make Linux source code freely available, rather than marketing it commercially: "People really hadn't gotten the idea of open source.

"People said, 'Why did you do that?' Especially in the United States, but also in Finland. People just did not understand the concept of creating a program because you like programming, and they did not understand the concept of hey, sure, I like money, but on the other hand I'm a programmer, I'll get paid. It's not as if programmers go hungry in this world."

On a lighter note, Torvalds said he liked the quote from USA Today which suggested that the only similarity between him and Bill Gates was that both of them are "about the same height".

However, the open-source guru added: "To get where Bill Gates is today, he needed to be the business guy who knew about technology. I was the technology guy who had no clue about business.

"Well, I've seen a lot of the businesses grow up around Linux. So, I comment on business when people ask me. But, quite frankly, I'm still clueless."