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Re: Explaining Linux
On Tue, Feb 29, 2000 at 11:05:13AM -0000, R.A.Fletcher wrote:
> My friends and I have been talking lately about Linux, and it has
> lead to some pretty heated debates. Simply put, they have never
> used linux, they are used to Windows and see no reason why they
> should change, and hence anyone else like them.
They sound like the people who wouldn't move to micros because
they were inferior to mainframes. Did anyone read the article
from Bloor Research recently, which had a fairly even-handed
view of the Linux versus NT debate? If the use of Linux is
growing, there must be some explanation for it. Why are companies
like Silicon Graphics and Hewlett Packard giving up their own
proprietary systems and moving to Linux?
> They presume
> that Linux only has advantages for the technically minded and will
> be useless to the average user. They accuse Linux of being harder
> to use, having less software and being less dependable as, since
> its free, there is no accountability like there is with Micro$ofts
> products.
How valid is the argument that 'Linux is harder to use' when it
comes from someone who has never used it? It certainly has different
software -- 'less' is arguable. I know some fairly 'computer-illiterate'
Linux users. If it does what you want, MS might be what you should
stick to. But you can't tell whether Linux is better unless you
try. As to dependability, I think there is very widespread agreement
among impartial observers that Linux is far more dependable than NT.
For example, the Bloor report say:
To be accepted as an operating system for enterprise use, the
downtime caused by the OS should be minimal. This means...
that the OS itself should be exceptionally stable, and here
Linux is miles ahead of NT, whose frequent breakdowns are
almost legendary.... In the space of one year [during which
Bloor ran two test systems], linux crashed once because of
a hardware fault (disk problems)... Windows NT crashed 68
times.
It is worth noting that support for Linux is generally better than
that for MS, and that without paying anything! If you know where
to ask, you can get an enormous amount of help. And if you want
to pay for it, companies like Red Hat, Linux Care, Caldera, and
others offer serious professional support.
> How can I explain that when I tell someone about Linux its
> because I think it may benefit them, if not educationally then
> financially?
If you are a company, unless you are a very large company, you will
probably decide that Linux is the best way to run critical services,
even if up to now you will probably also decide that some MS product
should run on your employees' desktops. Also it seems that if you
want one machine to perform several functions (e.g., file server,
web server, print server, mail server), then Linux is the way to go.
With respect to desktop applications, I think it's a matter of
taste. I tend to use Linux because for some things I need it, but
there is nothing I need or want to do for which MS systems are
required.
I support multi-boot machines for teaching, so I have probably done
more NT and Windows installations than many of you, perhaps a couple
of thousand altogether in the course of a year. You'll find that
keeping a MS box up-to-date, clear of junk, patched with the latest
patches, and with a wide variety of packages installed is no easy
job. We buy our hardware in batches, so it tends to be almost
identical; why then does a particular package work on seven machines
out of twelve? We've had problems with NT and networking cards, as
well as with NT and video cards. MS is not completely a garden
of roses!
-- Owen
LeBlanc [at] mcc.ac.uk
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