"If you want to sell more computers to the home market, sell more computers to the enterprise market." That was how a Gartner research analyst answered an inquiry from a representative of a tier-three PC company in October 1995. Makes sense, doesn’t it? If I stare at a Dell computer on my desktop all day at work, Dell will most likely be top of mind when I’m in the market for a home computer.

I was thinking of that Gartner moment when I visited one of those hip Apple retail stores and watched two IT professionals go ga-ga over the new iMac personal computer. I asked them what they thought of the machine.

"All things being equal," the first responded, "I would rather have an iMac on my desk than a clunky PC." Then the other IT pro chimed in. "But all things are not equal. We are a Wintel shop with no room for iMacs in our organization." Just before we parted, the first IT pro mentioned something about moving servers to a Linux environment. And that got me thinking: That’s how Apple can make inroads into the enterprise market.

Apple should make a special iMac model for enterprises that runs a Linux client OS. In the process, Apple would increase its share of the home market as well. Efforts to make an advanced, easy-to-use graphical user interface for Linux?most notably those made by former Apple software evangelist Andy Hertzfeld and Eazel’s Guy Tribble?were ahead of their time. Eazel and its graphical file manager product called Nautilus failed because of market conditions, not product conditions. The enterprise was not ready for broad-based Linux in 1999 and 2000.

But thanks in part to the long IT spending drought, Linux’s market appeal to CIOs and the enterprise is high.

Some say it would be fairly simple for Apple to get a version of Linux to run on the new iMac. The challenge remains in the graphical user interface (and all the back-office stuff like drivers, plug-and-play and networking). But it can be done.

Steve Jobs, if he is serious about making Apple into a feared technology power, should round up the old Eazel players, pay them hoards of money and announce the new iMac Linux machine at this summer’s MacWorld Conference & Expo.

I wager there are millions?if not tens of millions?of former Mac users like me who would welcome the move. And buy more Macs for the office and home.