It's powerful. It's open. It's free. That's why this Unix is entering corporate IS.
Jim Mohr
What would you say if you were offered a graphical OS that has the ability to run on both a low-end 386 and the fastest Pentium Pro, handles most of your DOS and Windows 3.1 applications, connects to anything on your network, and is free?
No, nobody's going to sell you a bridge to go along with this OS. But Linux offers all these benefits, and every day more IS departments are deploying it, despite (or, in some cases, because of) the fact that it's not backed by a huge corporation. In addition to its modest hardware and software requirements, Linux bears a Unix heritage, which makes it powerful, and it's backed by hundreds of developers who take the advancement of the OS seriously.
These compelling reasons have created a dedicated Linux following among individuals worldwide, but in the corporate world Linux is not always a simple choice.
It lacks the breadth of commercial third-party applications that OSes like Windows NT and Solaris have in their support. There is no central authority to call for technical assistance. And because it's Unix, many people consider Linux arcane, to say the least.
But every day, developers and evangelists are moving Linux forward. As they do, more corporations are taking a serious look at an OS that, until recently, was something hackers played with at home in their off-hours.
To Deployment
The first reaction many IS people have to using Linux ranges from surprise to disbelief. "How can you possibly consider it for a critical server?" is the traditional rebuke. Even a year ago this would have been valid, but now Linux is proving itself at organizations such as Kodak, the McMurdo Air Force
Base, Southwest Airlines, and Xerox.
Despite its low price, Linux is not an unleaded version of a commercial Unix. But cost is one of the last things people mention when talking about Linux's benefits. Reliability is one of the first. If your system crashes, productivity will plummet whether you have a $20,000 Sun server or a $2000 Linux-based server.
It was as an Internet server that Linux first showed its reliability. For most people setting up Internet servers, Unix is the preferred platform. More than half of all Web servers run Unix, and 10 percent of them run Linux, according to Harald T. Alvestrand, creator of the Linux Counter. Linux's Web popularity is due in part to the Web and FTP servers that come standard with it. In addition, Linux offers some built-in firewall and proxy capabilities.
"A free, powerful Internet server has attracted a lot of attention," says Dan Merillat, system administrator at ISP Access Orlando (Orlando, FL). "With the number of small Internet service providers [I
SPs] multiplying, Linux jumped to the forefront. Small ISPs need to be able to spend their money on hardware, not on overpriced software, upgrade contracts, and service contracts."
Small companies often need something more than what a commercial OS provides out of the box. Yet they might think that a major vendor isn't going to make a change to its OS just for them. "When you buy from the large corporation, you get whatever they're selling. If you need it customized, you're out of luck," says Mike Black, principal engineer of Computer Science Innovations, a software development firm. "With Linux, if you need customization, you can get it." How? Virtually all of Linux's developers are active in Usenet newsgroups and read them for suggestions and ideas about how to extend Linux.
Black says his company grappled with a project that required putting 16 IP addresses on the same box. Windows NT 3.51 limited him to five addresses unless he wanted to hack the registry. So, Black rolled out a solution with Linu
x.
Linux isn't
used solely
as an Internet server for small companies. Brian Talley, a systems consultant for Eastman Kodak, brought Linux into Kodak's Photo CD project. Because Linux offered the same capabilities as the high-priced Unix that Kodak was using at the time, he ended up saving Kodak over $10,000. When Talley later took a job at Xerox, he brought Linux along with him. He installed it on a notebook, which replaced a Sun workstation, thus saving Xerox an equivalent amount of money.
Southwest Airlines runs myriad OSes. It implemented a statistical analysis system based on Linux. Meanwhile, Design Science Labs, a Berea, Ohio-based Linux consulting firm, runs every aspect of its business -- from customer databases to accounting to its Web server -- on Linux.
Sixt Rent-a-Car (Munich) uses Linux to run 230 machines throughout Germany. When asked about the German tendency to buy purely by brand name, MIS manager Horst Effenberger replied, "We wanted something that provides
the best value for our money, which was accomplished by implementing Linux."
Not All Roses
That's the good news. Now the bad news: Linux has a dearth of shrink-wrapped applications. Businesses won't find Linux versions of Microsoft Office or Visual Basic. Nor will they find a wide range of personal information managers or other desktop productivity software. Moreover, there are dozens of DBMSes that do not run on Linux.
But IS managers can use three office productivity suites with Linux -- two from Caldera, one from Red Hat. Caldera Internet Office Suite ($349) includes FlagShip (a Clipper clone), NExS Spreadsheet, and WordPerfect. Caldera has also released its Solutions CD, which contains the same products as the Caldera suite, plus the Linux version of CorelDraw, tool builders, scheduling and task management software, and a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) editor. Red Hat's entry,
ApplixWare
($499), includes Applix Words and Applix Spreadsheets.
Beyond
those three productivity suites, you can fall back on Linux's DOS and Windows emulators. The DOS emulator enables you to load Windows 3.1. The Windows emulator (an implementation of the Windows Application Binary Interface, or Wabi) allows you to run some Windows 3.1 applications from within the X Window System. (Note that Wabi currently supports only the Windows 3.1 API, so applications that need Win32 won't run.)
If you're interested in running Linux as a server for Windows clients, you're in luck. Using the SMB protocol of Windows networks, Linux can act as both a server and a client to Windows machines.
Still, the number of business applications available for Linux is much smaller than that for Windows or even other dialects of Unix. Until more software developers begin porting their applications to Linux, the choice is limited, and it looks as though it may stay that way for a while. Fortunately, there are lots of tools to create your own applications.
Every
Linux distributio
n
comes with a treasure chest of programming tools, from basic shells to Perl and even full-blown C++ compilers -- something you normally pay extra for with commercial Unix versions, such as the one from The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) and, of course, Windows NT.
Getting Support
What about the concern MIS managers share over the fact that no one company is standing behind Linux? If something goes wrong, whom do you call for technical support?
Anyone who's spent an hour on the phone waiting for technical support from a large company knows that even the major players don't always offer the best assistance. In fact, support for Linux can be at least as good -- and as qualified -- as that from most large software vendors, because the people supporting the OS are often the ones who wrote it. Several Usenet newsgroups address Linux, and most of Linux's developers read these groups. And their e-mail addresses are available in the source code. Since they use the same hardware themselv
es, they are anxious to learn about bugs.
The problem with Usenet is the response time. If you have a crashed system, you need information immediately -- you can't afford to wait even the few hours required when posting to a newsgroup.
Another common complaint about Linux -- which is also valid for all dialects of Unix -- is that it's not easy to learn. If you're coming from the point-and-click world of Windows, the command lines of Unix can be intimidating. This is compounded by the fact that there's little standardization in either the Linux software or its documentation.
Free, But Worth a Lot
You get what you pay for, and since Linux is free, it can't be worth much. Right?
Wrong. Russell Coker, director of Virtual Computers, an ISP, points out that if you believe value depends on the amount of money you spend, you'll regularly pay too much for your computing resources. "If your competition makes more sensible decisions, then you won't be able to compete," he reasons.
Company
-------
Linux version
Web site
E-mail
Caldera
Caldera Open Linux
http://www.caldera.com info@caldera.com
Craftwork Solutions
Craftworks Linux
http://www.craftworks.com info@craftworks.com
Debian GNU/Linux
Debian
http://www.debian.org debian@debian.org
Delix
DLD
http://www.delix.de
delix@delix.de
InfoMagic
Slackware
http://www.infomagic.com
info@infomagic.com
Red Hat
Red Hat
http://www.redhat.com
info@redhat.com
S.u.S.E. GmbH
S.u.S.E. Linux
http://www.suse.de
info@suse.de
Walnut Creek CD-ROM
Slackware
http://www.cdrom.com
info@cdrom.com
WorkGroup Solutions
LinuxPro
http://www.wgs.com
info@wgs.com
Yggdrasil Computing
Yggdrasil Linux
http://www.yggdrasil.com
info@yggdrasil.com
Company
Contact
Access Orlando
http://www.ao.net
Accessone.Com
http://www.accessone.com
American Group of Companies
http://www.amer-grp.com
Blitz Datentechnik
http://www.blitz.de
Caldera
http://www.caldera.com
Centurion Services
http://www.infomatch.com/~centurion
Cistron Internet Services
http://www.het.net
Computer Science Innovations
http://www.csihq.com
Craftworks
http://www.craftwork.com
CymruNET
http://www.cymru.net
Dataden Computer Systems
http://www.dataden.com
Design Science Labs
http://www.dsl.org
Jammin Internet Services
http://www.jammin.net
Just Computers
http://www.justcomp.com
M-Tech
http://www.m-tech.ab.ca
Obsidian Systems, South Africa
http://www.obsidian.co.za
PCkS Associates
http://www.cnj.digex.net/~pcks
Red Hat
http://www.redhat.com
Webjack
http://www.webjack.com\
WorkGroup Solutions
http://www.wgs.com
screen_link (52 Kbytes)
One of the office suites for Linux is Red Hat's ApplixWare, which includes a word processor, spreadsheet, mail client, and HTML editor.
Jim Mohr is a system and network administrator for Kaeser Compressors in Coburg, Germany. He is the author of SCO Companion: The Essential Guide for Users and System Administrators (Prentice-Hall, 1996). He has also written The Linux User's Resource, to be published this year. You can contact him at
100542.2677@compuserve.com.
Linux in a Gray Flannel Suit
