Still the best kept secret?

I'm amazed how many people are still not aware of what Linux is! And I don't mean any Fred (sorry to all Freds out there!) off the street. I mean IT professionals, who come and join our UNIX classes. OK, so it was a Unix Fundamentals I'm referring to in particular; but even then, I would expect a bit more appreciation of the players in the industry.

We give away a Knoppix disk on our UNIX/Linux courses. Frequently people ask - "what's that?". In itself, this is not an unexpected question, after all Knoppix is not a distribution talked about in board rooms. But when I answer: "it's a distribution of Linux, which...." and I still get a follow up "what's that?", then I do despair!