There is more to computing than Microsoft! If you think you don’t use open source, answer the following question: Do you use Amazon, Google or e-Bay?
If you do, you are using Linux — the most popular form of open source software. Open Source is where the source code is available to the program you wish to use. This means that you have more control if you come to rely on a program and the author ceases to have an interest in developing it. There’s no use trying that with proprietary software companies because they have a road map
and if you choose their software you are bound to it and essentially put your business in their hands.
If you choose to move from a popular desktop to an open source machine that can do a lot more out of the box, it can seem a bit daunting. However we adapt to other changes regularly. If you drive a European car, the indicator tends to be on the right-hand side of the steering wheel. But if you buy a Japanese car the indicator tends to be on the left-hand side. Does this stop you from changing cars? No. You have skills and you adapt to it for the benefit of a
better car. The same can be said for adapting to open source software
Cost-savings and tight security
Value for money is a proposition we all like to feel we have obtained with our purchases. Does value in computing when it is defined as the importance or usefulness of something seem to fall short of the mark for your business in the area of computing? How many hours have you had to deal with worms and virus programs in the last year? How much additional money have you paid out for anti-virus software?
Linux, being open source, can act as anything from a file server or web server, to a desktop, firewall, or mail server with anti-spam and anti-virus software. You can also use it for a desktop system. Linux can deliver many computing solutions limited only by imagination and budget. In addition, the out of the box security is easier to manage. You can just get on with computing in a productive fashion. It removes the ‘upgrade tax’ on your business payable to large companies every time they choose to move the goal posts to get repeat sales.
Office tools for free
What do people in your organisation use from the office suite? Most users use a spreadsheet, a word processor, a presentation creator, a database — all of this functionality comes with Linux at no extra cost! You can even get open source tools that will do all these things on your desktop today all for the cost of a download. These programs interoperate with most of the popular formats that are out there today including with the popular .doc and .xls file types.
Spend a little time with these applications and they will save you hundreds on your next purchase and on every other upgrade after that, after all they are free gratis. Have a look at www.theopencd.org for more information.
Security conscious
You may be told by some companies that produce operating systems and office software that you are a high risk of some kind of macro virus infection with open source. Well the fun news is that there are none out there yet, unlike for their own platform and when the day comes that there are, the anti-virus companies will deal with them just as they deal with the ones that are in the ‘wild’ just as they do today for other platforms.
Want to try Linux?
Go to www.knoppix.de and download it there. Complete systems such as Knoppix are referred to as distros if they contain everything from Apache, a popular web server, to zip, a compression program. The main box set distros available are Mandrake, SuSE and Redhat. The main non-box set version is called Debian.
Paul O’Malley is PRO with the Irish Linux Users Group www.linux.ie
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13/10/04
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