Home
News
|
A few years ago Microsoft decided to lure Novell's Platinum resellers
to Windows NT. They flew as many as would come to Redmond (all expenses paid)
for a multi-day pitch and entertainment. Things went OK until a Microsoft
executive got up on the stage and told the audience a single Windows NT server
could replace as many as 6 NetWare servers. The atmosphere just froze up, and
remained hostile for the remainder of the event. The Novell resellers
realized they were being lied to on a massive scale.
How could Microsoft commit such a blunder? Easy- they were used to
talking to the computer press and corporate top executives. The press never
questioned anything they said, and top execs just eat up pie in the
sky promises. They were simply unprepared for the reactions of a
knowledgeable audience.
(Hit your Back Button to Return)
============================
The U.S. Postal Service declared itself an "all Windows NT" house some
years ago - but they now sort all the bulk mail on
over 900 Linux clusters
scattered around the country - at less than half the cost of the next cheapest
solution.
Way over budget, the production of the movie Titanic
couldn't afford a supercomputer to do the high end rendering, but an Alpha
based Linux cluster did the job just as well at a small fraction of the cost.
Here's an article by the people who did the job,
Digital Domain.
Linux clusters are now finding extensive use for complex pattern analysis,
especially in the field of oil exploration.
Conoco and
Amerada Hess are already running their Linux clusters, and
Royal Dutch/Shell is
setting up an even bigger one.
(Hit your Back Button to Return)
============================
While there are dozens of Linux distributions, only these few are
significant to most business users. For a comprehensive list of Linux
distributions, check out
Distribution Watch
Red Hat Linux - Red Hat is the
leading distribution in the United States, by a wide margin. Red Hat as a
company is very skilled at marketing and and has always had the complete
support of the Linux enthusiast community - though that may be changing a
little.
Red Hat has recently decided to discontinue its low cost consumer and
small office products to concentrate on its advanced server products.
Development of the low end distribution will now be done by
Fedora Project, a
community project, with cooperation from Red Hat.
Red Hat's server products come with a paid annual support contract,
priced depending on your needs ($350 to several thousand) and the version
you purchase - but you don't have to stop using the product if you don't renew.
Automation Access supports Red Hat Linux.
SuSE - formerly a
German company with a strong U.S. presence, has been purchased by networking
leader Novell. SuSE, the leading Linux distributor in Europe, pioneered
mainframe Linux with IBM and has been selected by Sun Microsystems for their
Linux desktop program.
Unlike Red Hat, SuSE is continuing with it's low cost Personal and
Professional distributions. It also has advanced server products fully
competitive with other Linux server distributions, and a corporate desktop
package as well.
The SuSE distributions are of very high quality, and they have a large
development team that is also the primary developer for the United Linux
server distribution, a cooperative effort by SuSE, Turbo Linux, Conectiva
and Caldra.
Features of SuSE Linux include Yast, an easy to use installation and
configuration program, and a vast quantity of open source titles included
in the package. Automation Access supports and recommends
SuSE Linux. 
Debian - is very popular with
Linux enthusiasts. Debian is produced by volunteers, not by a commercial
company, and maintains a very high degree of Open Source purity.
A Debian specialty is ease of upgrading and ease of installing application
packages. While not often chosen by business people (it has no marketing
budget whatever) it is often introduced into a business by Linux enthusiasts.
This is not a problem, it is a high quality distribution.
Linux Mandrake -
specializes in easy installation and ease of use for desktop applications
and simple servers. Originally it was a cleaned up variety of Red Hat, but
has since gone it's own way.
Mandrake was the first distribution to really cater to desktop users, and
has established a substantial following in the U.S., France and elsewhere.
Xandros (was Corel Linux)
- is based on Debian and was originally developed by Corel as
a platform for Corel WordPerfect Office for Linux. When Microsoft "invested"
$150 million in Corel, development stopped and the products were sold off.
Xandros concentrates on Microsoft compatibility, so Xandros Desktop Delux
($99) includes CrossOver Office so it can run many Microsoft products,
including MS Office 97, 2000 and XP. This makes it an excellent transition
Linux for shops currently licensed to run Microsoft Office. Xandros Desktop
Standard is $39.95 and a server version is in development.
Turbo Linux - This distribution specializes in
clustering (both performance and fail-over clustering) and Oriental language
support.
Originally a California company, TurboLinux was sold to a Japanese firm
since its major markets are in Japan and China, but the product continues to
sell in the U.S. for its clustering features. Many other distributions don't
have fail-over clustering yet.
Lindows - This
distribution is designed for low cost consumer PCs and has little place in
the business office. To make it "easy to use" like Windows, it compromises
security by encouraging users to always run with root privelages and no
password, and makes other compromises. Users running as root is the #1
Unix/Linux no-no and makes Lindows as much a security risk as Windows. As
Linux becomes more popular, more hackers and worm writers will target it.
SCO (was Caldera) -
This was our favorite distribution as Caldera Linux. The company has been
since taken over by new management and renamed SCO Group, and the
Linux product has been discontinued.
SCO Group currently sells the old SCO Unix products they acquired
from the Santa Cruz Operation (the real SCO). These products are hoplessly
outdated with market share dropping like a rock - the company's real
product is now stock price manipulation, a campaign of ill considered
litigation against perveyors of Linux and threatened extortion of users of
Linux. None of this is likely to succeed.
Automation Access cannot support this sorry company in any way. For
complete details, se our editorial
SCO - Death Without
Dignity. 
Red Flag Linux - the distribution favored by the
government of Communist China, which has declared Linux the official
operating system for China due to the cost of Microsoft products and
the probability they contain "back doors" for American spy agencies.- IBM Linux - IBM considered their own distribution but
prudently decided not to. IBM supports Red Hat, SuSE and Turbo Linux
distributions.
- Microsoft Linux - a mythological distribution some
people are sure Microsoft is developing so they can take over the Linux
market. Although Microsoft uses some Linux, and certainly studies it
intensively, developing and releasing a distribution just makes no sense.
(Hit your Back Button to Return)
=============================
The City of Largo Florida is successfully migrating its entire computing
environment from primarily SCO Unix servers (there are some Windows NT and
AIX servers also) to a primarily Linux environment using the KDE 2 desktop
(KDE screen shots).
All the city's workstations are easily maintained
thin clients rather than normal PCs, and
applications are displayed on them using XWinows. For the Windows NT
applications the city is using Citrix Unix Integration Services so they
can be used at the XWindows thin clients without actual Windows workstations.
Given Microsoft's current licenses and upgrade policies, the NT
applications will be costing a fortune. The city expects the savings from the
new Linux based system to total in the millions.
The project is now well into conversion and the workstations are running
the KDE desktop from a Linux server. The server is a Dual 933-MHz Pentium
machine with 3-Gigs of RAM and an 18-Gig hard disk. It has proven it can
support the city's peak load of about 230 simultaneous users (they in total
about 400 workstations).
Software used by the city, and the migration plan are detailed here
(note that OpenOffice is the Open Source version of Sun's StarOffice):
- (All) WordPerfect 8.1 (on SCO) -moving to- OpenOffice on Linux in 2002
- (All) GroupWise 4.1 (on SCO) -moving to- Bynari-Insight on Linux in 2001
- (Recreation) Oracle (on SCO) -moving to- Linux in 2002
- Excel/Powerpint/Access (on NT) -moving to- OpenOffice on Linux in 2002
- (Financials) Progress (on SCO) -moving to- Progress on Linux in 2002
- (Police) Informix (on AIX) -moving to- Informix on Linux in 2002-2003
- (All) Netscape, DAIM, Everybuddy - running on Linux now
- (All) GIMP, Adobe Acrobat - running on Linux now
(Hit your Back Button to return)
=============================
|
Linux - Expansion Pages