5.  Amiga

What it was: A line of personal computers originally sold by Commodore in the 1980s and early 1990s. (Yes, I know Amiga lives on, implausibly, as an operating system–but it’s no longer an underdog. Today’s Amiga is an oddity.)

Underdog to: PCs–and, to some degree, Macs. Maybe even the lowly Atari ST. Basically, any computing platform that sold better than the Amiga did, or seemed like it might do so.

Notable virtues: Exceptional multimedia and mulitasking, starting in an era when most computers didn’t do multimedia and multitasking; a pioneering desktop video machine.

What made it an underdog: Nine letters: C-O-M-M-O-D-O-R-E. The company may have sold more computers than anyone else in the 1980s, but it didn’t really know what it had in the Amiga. If you were a fan of the platform–and I was–you generally harbored a nagging suspicion that Commodore was trying to murder it through lousy advertising and boneheaded strategic moves. (The company itself died in 1994.)

Random factoid: In 1993, the Amiga spawned the Amiga CD32, which Commodore claimed was the first CD-based gaming console.

4. Linux

What it is: An open-source operating system initiated by Finnish student Linus Torvalds in 1991.

Underdog to: A closed-source operating system called Windows.

Notable virtues: Solid; modest hardware requirements; safe from Windows security issues; infinitely customizable; can be tailored to run anything from a server to a cell phone; the original shining example of how an open-source community can change the world.

What makes it an underdog: I mentioned Linux started out as the personal project of a Finnish student, right? By the time it attracted the attention of folks other than hardcore nerds, it was the late 1990s and Microsoft had made sure that Windows was utterly entrenched on desktop PCs. Also, while Linux long ago got about 90 percent of the way to being an operating system so intuitive that just about anyone can use it without much training, the last ten percent has proven to be a major challenge.

Random factoid: Linux’s omnipresent penguin mascot, Tux, was designed by Larry Ewing as an entry for a 1996 Linux contest. It didn’t win.

3. Betamax

What it was: Sony’s videotape format, which made quite a splash in home VCRs starting in the mid-1970s.

Underdog to: VHS, the competing format championed by JVC–which was originally supposed to play underdog to Betamax.

Notable virtues: Every serious video aficionado I knew back in the day favored Betamax. (Which didn’t stop me from buying a VHS recorder when I plunked down my money in 1985.) Beta had better picture quality; it had hi-fi sound first; the machines were well engineered. I know folks who still pull out their players from time to time.

What made it an underdog: I’d pin most of the blame on running time–Beta started at an hour, and while it later increased, VHS (which used a larger cartridge) was always a step ahead. I remember the era when some prerecorded movies came out on one tape for VHS but required two for Beta. And far more companies made VHS players than Beta ones, helping to popularize the format and driving prices down. Betamax had a successful low-key second life as a professional standard, but it became an underdog so quickly in the consumer market that it remains a synonym for “superior technology beaten by inferior rival” to this day.

Random factoid: Betamax’s great achievement may have been legal rather than technical–when Disney and Universal sued Sony over its VCR’s potential for copyright infringement, Sony won, establishing consumers’ right to timeshift TV broadcasts. We could use a similar victory or two today in cases such as this one.

2. AMD

What it is: The world’s second-largest manufacturer of x86 microprocessors and related components, with around 11.5 percent of the overall market.

Underdog to: Intel, the inventor of x86 and the company whose products hold most of the other 88.5 percent of the market.

Notable virtues: Has sometimes made processors that trumped Intel’s offerings in performance (the original Athlon and Opteron come to mind); even when it hasn’t, has provided competition that has played a huge role in increasing the technological sophistication of PC processors and driving down their price.

Why it’s an underdog: AMD would tell you it’s at least partially because of unfair tactics by former partner and eternal archrival Intel (which it sued in 2005 on anti-trust grounds). New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo apparently agrees. Other factors: Conservative consumers and corporate buyers who believe (mistakenly) that there’s something inherently more compatible about an Intel chip than an AMD one, and the fact that Intel CPUs are by far the most lavishly-marketed components ever to sit inside a computer. And maybe the fact that AMD’s core business is making chips compatible with the x86 standard that Intel devised means its DNA is that of an underdog.

Random factoid: AMD produced its first Intel-compatible processor in 1975, so 2010 will mark its 35th anniversary as an underdog.

1. Mozilla Firefox

What it is: An open-source Web browser based on the code that originated with Netscape Navigator, the most popular browser of the mid-1990s.

Underdog to: Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, the default browser on Windows PCs and still the browser with the largest market share by far.

Notable virtues: Simple to use; thousands of extensions make it amazingly customizable; impervious to an array of hacker attacks that target IE weaknesses; excellent support for Web standards; boasts innovative features such as the AwesomeBar. Also–and this is why it’s our #1 underdog–it performed an enormous service to the Internet-using people of the world by rebooting browser competition years after it seemed that IE would reach as close to 100% market share as it’s possible for an application to achieve.

What makes it an underdog: It started out feeling like an extreme underdog, since IE’s marketshare was so monopolistic and other attempts to compete with it (such as the earlier incarnations of Mozilla) had flopped. Even today, it’s an underdog–it has a long way to go before its market share surpasses IE’s, and even highly successful open-source projects must rely on the work of volunteers.

Random factoid: Firefox was originally going to be called Phoenix. Then trademark issues forced Mozilla to redub it Firebird. Then further copyright issues led to it becoming Firefox–a much, much better name than either Phoenix or Firebird.

There you go. Let the debate begin..

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