Slashdot has a vigorous discussion going on about "Expanding the use of XML in Linux?" Opinions vary from "XML sucks" to "just like the Windoze Registry?" to "XML? Hooray!"

A lot of the XML community uses Linux, and there's considerable cross-fertilization. (Even before the arrival of XML and Linux, a lot of the SGML community used Unix.) The LinuXML project is an extreme example, which uses Linux as a reference platform and plans to move communication between Unix processes from ASCII text to XML. Similarly, Henry Thompson of the University of Edinburgh HCRC spoke in his presentation at XML Developer Days of building 'fat' XML pipes between UNIX applications.

Many Linux tools run in cross-platform environments, including Python, and Java, which David Megginson (creator of the SAX Java API for XML parsers) reports works quite well for him (even 1.2) in Linux.