The first thing that might dissuade you is Linux is not easy to understand. Unlike Windows there is no current definitive version of Linux but instead a bewildering number of flavours, each with their own user interfaces and bundled applications.
That should be a recipe for chaos, but in practice, there are a relatively small number of distributors who gear their offerings for the business market. These include Red Hat, Mandrake, Caldera and Germany’s SuSe. None of these companies sell the programme itself but they sell added-value services such as product support and business friendly packages that include essential add-on software. In the Linux world, these packages are known as distributions.
These distributions are what have transformed Linux from a plaything for techies into a heavyweight business tool. Once, Linux had a reputation for extreme user unfriendliness.: installing it was something to be attempted only by the foolhardy or those equipped with computer science degrees. Now, the main distributors have ensured that the software can be installed easily, straight from a CD.
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If you can accept these issues, there are significant gains for your business. To date, Linux has made its biggest gains in the server market where it stands against the likes of UNIX, Windows 2000 and Small Business Server.
Mark Littlewood is a product marketing manager at Sun Microystems. The company ships Linux with its server products. Why? Because it is less likely to crash than its Microsoft counterparts.
“Linux is based on Unix - which was designed as an operating system for network servers,” he says. “It is inherently more stable than Windows and much less likely to crash.”
Dave Jenkins, partner alliance manager at Linux distributor Red Hat agrees, arguing that the key to the product’s stability is the fact that source code is available to everyone, including a worldwide community of “open source” programmers who leap on upgrades, testing them for stability problems and also security flaws.
“If a Linux programmer writes 10,000 lines of code and there are 150 lines of errors, these will be patched very quickly.” He says. The same applies to security flaws.
Subhi Hashwa, operations manager of e-Corner, a Scottish internet caf and business centre, based at Waverly Station in Edinburgh confirms the stability of the product. “We have been running Linux on three of our servers for three and half years and we have only had three hours downtime,” he says.
Given that most of you are probably running PCs using Windows operating systems, the question of compatibility arises. Is it possible to use to use Linux servers in conjunction with desktop PCs powered by Windows and compatible software? Mark Littlewood, of Sun Microsystems, says that in terms of key server functions, the answer to that is an emphatic yes.
The key to that is add-on software bundled with the distributions. For instance, the majority of business-focused Linux server software packages come with an application called Samba. This is a file and print application. In true “just like it says on the tin” tradition, this enables you to route printing jobs through the server and save and retrieve files on and from the server. It will happily “communicate” with Windows PCs. Similarly, a Linux programme known as Send-Mail can be used to replace Microsoft exchange as a mail serving programme. Any functions involving internet protocols - notably web page serving - will also be perfectly compatible.
