  We study the existence of positive solutions on the half-line $[0,\infty)$
for the nonlinear second order differential equation \[
\bigl(a(t)x^{\prime}\bigr)^{\prime}+b(t)F(x)=0,\quad t\geq0, \] satisfying
Dirichlet type conditions, say $x(0)=0$, $\lim_{t\rightarrow\infty}x(t)=0$. The
function $b$ is allowed to change sign and the nonlinearity $F$ is assumed to
be asymptotically linear in a neighborhood of zero and infinity. Our results
cover also the cases in which $b$ is a periodic function for large $t$ or it is
unbounded from below.
