"I hate to admit this, but I wasn't worried," said Forrest Gaston, a consultant managing the project for the state. Despite heavy student usage of the Internet, Gaston's optimism has so far been borne out: "It hasn't been an issue."

Besides Linux's low cost, its relative immunity from viruses, spyware, worms and other malware has long been one of the open-source operating system's key attractions to potential desktop users. Vendors who will be at next week's Desktop Linux Summit in San Diego, Calif. certainly tout it. "

"There are almost no viruses for Linux. Certainly I've never seen one," said Tom Welch, chief technology officer for Linspire Inc., the San Diego desktop Linux vendor and a show co-sponsor.

Jeffrey Jaffe, the chief technology officer at Novell Inc., another show co-sponsor, feels much the same way. In a recent blog entry, Jaffe wrote that since joining Novell late last year and switching to Linux, viruses have become "things of the past." Novell is pushing its SUSE Linux for corporate desktop use.

Even vendors hawking Linux antivirus products admit the platform does not suffer today. "Our product is more used to filter Windows viruses than actual Linux viruses," said Ron O'Brien, an analyst with U.K.-based antivirus software maker, Sophos Plc.