Linux vs Windows - Conquering a Windows Based World

The Howard County Library in Columbia, Maryland has successfully deployed Groovix on 284 customer computers.  Groovix provides a Public Access computing software that turns any computer into a secure public workstation.  The Groovix desktop environment is based on Ubuntu Linux.

“In order to exceed customer expectations and expand access to library collections and services and contain hard costs for software licenses and computer hardware, Howard County Library uses a wide-range of open source solutions on its customer and staff computers.”

The Howard County Library is committed to Open Source software whenever feasible.  What are the reasons for using Open Source? Should not surprise anyone.

• Ease of Use
• Compatibility
• Stability
• Cost Effectiveness

Because of their success, I have a feeling they may become the beacon light, guiding other libraries across the country on the same route.

The worlds most popular open source DB, may have an IPO in late 2007. Covered at BusinessWeek

That small community of open-source stocks may soon be widening. MySQL, a fast-growing maker of database software used by some of the Internet’s most recognized brands, is preparing to file for an initial public offering, perhaps as soon as late 2007. The offering could value the company at between $600 million and $1 billion, according to sources, and inject some pep into a tech IPO market

A large German Enterprise hosting company, ISP Host Europe, that works with more than 25% of enterprises listed on the German Dax has standardized on Redhat Linux.

“We saw a huge demand in the market for highly available web applications at a reasonable price,” said Patrick Pulvermüller, manager at Host Europe.

“The only way for us to satisfy this demand was to rely on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Other platforms suffered from definite weaknesses regarding pricing or service, some lacked in both respects,” he said.

Study was performed by www.watchmouse.com and released on June 20, 2007.

“London, June 20, 2007 – Linux websites have better uptime and load faster than Windows-based websites. Research by WatchMouse, a website monitoring company, also shows that web server platform Apache outperforms the Microsoft IIS platform. Therefore, having a Linux website and an Apache webserver platform offers the best choice for professional web pages. “

German businesses are world leaders in the use of open source at 59%, followed by Great Britain at 48% and US/Canada at 38%. The study was conducted by business intelligence specialists at Actuate.

“The study therefore concluded that Open Source has become a strategic issue for many companies. It also helped that more than 70 percent of those surveyed see open software as the preferred option when new software is rolled out”

Has nothing to do with Linux. Almost fell off my chair laughing when watching it.

This is reported by Gartner and covered at www.vnunet.com.

“More interestingly, the platforms on which databases are being deployed are on the move. While Unix (34.8 percent) and Windows (34.5 percent) continue to vie for supremacy, Linux grew 67 percent to account for 15.5 percent of the sector.”

Since database hosted applications need to be reliable, this information seems counter intuitive to Microsoft claims of Linux unreliability. Judge for yourself.

Redhat Enterprise Linux has just been granted EAL4 Augmented with ALC_FLR.3 on IBM’s mainframe, System x, System p5 and eServer systems This is on par with Sun Microsystems’ Trusted Solaris.

“According to Frye, the certification is “big news for the Linux industry” because it shows that open-source software can be used for sensitive computing tasks. “If anyone had any doubts that you could do this with an open-source operating system, we’ve proved them wrong.”"

One more large software vendor ports their software to run on Linux for the same reason as everyone else; increased security, manageability, and lower total cost of ownership.

“The offering will enable the tens of thousands of growing companies that are passionate about using open source environments to take advantage of Intuit’s award-winning mid-market system while maintaining the increased security, manageability and lower total cost of ownership of Linux.”

Gregg Ferrie manager of information technology for the school district believes it to be the “largest on-the-desktop implementation in Western Canada”.  Also generating interest among British Columbia’s 60 other school districts with their thin desktop client.

They ran into the standard glitches when adopting or changing to a new technology. What was the difference that made the transition successful?

“In the end, an advocate who was both an educator and an administrator, he maintains, made all the difference in getting the system accepted. “

I can definitely see how a advocate within the system who understands the needs, can make the difference between success and failure. Hope we can hear more about this.