Yeah I've used bouth latex and lyx on linux, even the old Corel Word Perfect Office EqEditor was based on latex, you'd write the equations in code, but what if your friend, employer or profesor (can happen) need to read and review your document, thesis and so on, some of them have't heard of tex and how the hell wuld they make eny changes or sugestions on a M$ windows machine, latex documents need to be compiled to a dvi output before they can be read or printed, and as far as i know there is no way back, math type 5 is compatable with M$ Equation Editor that has been around sence the 16 bit vesions of office and windows, and as I mentiond Corel's new EqEditor allso suports it, as well as Sun's Star Office-Open Office.