The best and (IMO) only realistic way for open-source software to become pervasive and widespread in desktop computing is for the current trend of incremental progress to continue, fueled primarily by word-of-mouth. Each time someone uses Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, Thunderbird instead of Eudora/Outlook, Gimp instead of Photoshop, or Open Office instead of MS Office, the concept of open-source software gains a little bit of traction. Each time one of these substitions results in a positive experience for the end-user, that end-user's peers will be that much more likely to hear about and use open-source software themselves.

Another good method is to distribute CDs such as The Open CD or Open Source Free CD, which are collections of useful and fun open-source software packages. This is a great tool to accompany word of mouth, in that one can say "I love OpenOffice, and here's a legal, free CD that gives it to you without having to wait an hour for it to download."

On the network side, m0n0wall is an excellent open-source router/firewall/access point solution that can dramatically improve the price/performance ratio for a small-to-medium sized organization's firewall/router needs. It's not something that can reasonably be deployed by a non-techie, but it's something that a techie can use to obtain amazing functionality (with excellent usability) at a much lower price point than proprietary/commercial equivalents.

Graham