Computer Careers Book
Monday, November 01, 2004
Linux
This updates the article at:
Linux for Not Yet Teches
When I wrote that article some 3-4 years ago, I echoed
the assumption that the open source operating source was
Microsoft's biggest nightmare.
The battle is still joined. Linux has made definite
inroads on Microsoft's turf, and now is big business,
but is still a long way from knocking Microsoft off as
king of the hill.
I figured that Linux would be increasingly popular with
businesses looking to save money.
However, as you can learn in great detail on Microsoft's
web site, there are still costs involved in changing to
or adopting any operating system, including Linux, and
some independent studies back up Microsoft's claim that
Linux is actually more expensive than Windows:
Compare Linux costs to Windows 1
Compare Linux costs to Windows 2
Of course, it's also true that some of the increased
costs are simply due to the general unfamiliarity of Linux
compared to Windows. That is, most people in most
businesses will have some experience using Windows
and therefore not need basic training.
However, put in Linux and even long time PC users will
need to start at Square 1.
This would not be a problem if Linux were better known.
Some major players are backing Linux and the open
source movement in general.
IBM's Linux business had revenue of $2 billion in
2003 and expects to increase that by 50% in 2004
Hewlett-Packard made $2.5 billion in revenue from Linux
products and services in 2003. Its new notebook computer
comes with Novell SuSE Linux installed.
Novell, the former proprietary networking king -- overthrown
by Windows -- has bought up SuSE Linux.
Many larger companies are replacing their
expensive Unix server operating systems with Linux,
but this is only logical since Linux is basically
an open source version of Unix.
The United Kingdom's Office of Government Commerce
says that open source software is better than
Windows for public use.
Windows still dominates the personal PC market, since
it is on 95% of all PCs around the world. However, Linux
recently grabbed the (distant) #2 spot from MacIntosh.
There are significant obstacles to widespread adoption of
Linux for personal PCs. The first is lack of support.
It's one thing for an operating system to be the darling
of techies who both hate Microsoft and love to
tinker around with new technologies for the sheer love
of it.
It's quite another thing to be useful to those of us who
just want to use our computers for fun and business. We
don't want to analyze or improve the OS kernel. We just
want it to work. And when it doesn't, we want to be able
to call somebody who'll tell us what to do.
There's also the interoperability issues. All Windows
program can work together, but Linux programs can be
designed for only one version of the operating system.
So a program that runs on Red Hat won't necessarily
run on Caldera.
