Linux vs Windows - Conquering a Windows Based World

Verizon has just announced that Linux will be its mobile operating system of choice, and will start delivering Linux based phones in 2009.  Kyle Malady, vice president of networks, also states that this does not preclude  Verizon from selling phones based on other OS’s, notably the Google Android and Blackberry. A quote from My Malady.

“We’re not adopting Linux to the exclusion of others, and will continue to support an agnostic approach, which is best for customers,” 

I am a current Verizon customer and have been very pleased with the existing service and Blackberry phone.  I can’t wait till 2009 to try out the new Linux-based phone!

Cisco’s new routing platform has the potential to change the how enterprise view their WAN edge and Internet gateways in their network.  The ASR 1000 router debuts Cisco’s new IOS XE operating system which uses Linux at it core.

Cisco’s new Aggregation Services Router (ASR) 1000 platform is a WAN (define)aggregation platform that includes firewall, Session Border Control (SBC), VPN and other core networking features.

It is designed to have the speed and efficiency of a application specific integrated circuit with the flexibility of a microprocessor.

To meet to the demands of phenomenal growth of mobile phone services Virgin Mobile has adopted to the (LAMP) Linux, Apache,Mysql,PHP stack to modernize their infrastructure.  The internally developed solutions are used to process thousands of queries each second. Each text message can generate over a hundred queries and contain more than 500GB of data.

A quote from Joe Morrissey of MYSQL.

 “MySQL Cluster Carrier Grade Edition and MySQL Enterprise are now at the heart of the solutions implemented by the leading industry players. We are delighted about this additional endorsement by Virgin Mobile.”

One of the largest oil companies in the world, KOC, has just installed a Linux Based High Performance Cluster from Sun Microsystems.  The Linux HPC cluster will be used to run reservoir simulation software to increase their efficiency and to help them make faster business decisions. The ROI and improvement went from taking around 5 weeks for a large simulation to just 3 days! A great quote from Ms. Badria Abdul Rahman, Manager, Field Development of KOC

Ms. Badria added: “The Sun cluster has exceeded our expectations and has enabled the entire KOC team to access vital up-to-date information on all aspects of the oil reserves; we are now able to run simulations faster than ever before which has resulted in the development of long term strategies and preparations for the future new wells to meet the production target. It took us almost two years to find the right solution, and after examining the most commonly-used technologies, we opted a solution that out-shone the rest - the Sun Cluster.”

Plans are are also underway to upgrade the cluster to 256 nodes.

The New York Stock Exchange continues to heavily invest in Linux blade servers as it builds the NYSE Hybrid Market trading system.

Reason for choosing Linux on x686 hardware.

• Cost
• Flexibility
• Technology Independence

Covered at the NYTimes

“Rubinow said that Linux is mature enough to meet his needs. The open-source operating system may not have all the polish of Unix technologies with 20-plus years of history behind them, “but it’s polished enough for us,” he said.”

That pretty much sums up what I am finding that a lot of people are also saying about Linux and Open Source software in general.  Its not perfectly polished, but its good enough to get the job done.

Hospital software vendor McKesson Provider Technologies is curing IT bloat by moving 50 of its 70 most popular health care applications to Linux instead of mainframes, thereby reducing cost for hospitals and medical offices. At first it was challenge convincing hospital executives said Simpson. “It took them time to understand that open source is safe, that open source has support”.

“Red Hat estimated that health care facilities that have switched have been able to save as much as 60% on IT costs compared with what they were spending before.”

Perhaps one of the more interesting quotes from the article also came from Simpson.

“Our hospitals aren’t ready yet for Linux on the desktop, but it’s coming” in another three or four years, he said. “If you look at the total costs of hospitals and the pressure on hospitals to continue to lower their costs, it’s coming.”

I have seen this scenario happen time and time again. Its not quite mainstream yet, but will be soon.

Paypal can currently processes nearly $1,571 worth of transactions per second in 17 different countries on 4,000 Redhat Linux Servers.  Not surprisingly, the ability to perform incremental growth by adding additional Intel based servers rather than mainframe step increases tends to keep costs in the thousands and not millions.

“Thompson supervises a payment system that operates on about 4,000 servers running Red Hat Linux in the same manner that eBay and Google conduct their business on top of a grid of Linux servers. “I have been pleasantly surprised at how much we’ve been able to do with this approach. It operates like a mainframe,” he said. “

The mainframe will never be replaced, as new tasks and jobs always seem to find their way onto them.  Nonetheless, it is interesting to see Linux based grid servers providing a clear advantage in certain environments.

Linux may finally hit the mass market thanks to Wal-Mart, PC maker Everex, and startup called gOS.  Wal-Mart began taking order online Wednesday for the “Green gPC” which is made by EverEx of Taiwan and sports a Linux “gOS” which is derived from Ubuntu.

“It’s heavily oriented toward Google’s Web sites and online applications, like YouTube, Gmail and the company’s word processing program, all of which can be used only when the computer is connected to a broadband line.”

The PC will have 512Meg of memory, 80 Gig hard drive, DVD drive, and CD burner.  I can see a huge potential for this PC for children or first time computer buyers or even seniors.  Could this be “tipping point”  for Linux making it into the home? Can’t wait to see what happens with this.

Drive a company into bankruptcy, get a bonus! Can’t say that I’m that surprised given their track record.  Pamela Jones at groklaw.net goes into a lot of detail. SCO 8-k filing is also here on yahoo.

Item 5.02 Departure of Directors or Certain Officers; Election of Directors; Appointment of Certain Officers; Compensatory Arrangements of Certain Officers. On September 13, 2007, the Board of Directors (the “Board”) of The SCO Group, Inc. (the “Company”), approved an increase in the base salary of Ryan E. Tibbitts. Mr. Tibbitts’ base salary will be increased from $160,000 per year to $210,000 per year, effective as of September 3, 2007. In recognition of the significant contributions Mr. Tibbitts has made to the Company, the Board also approved a discretionary bonus of $50,000, net of taxes, to be paid to Mr. Tibbitts.

One of the largest food retailers in Scandinavia has made the switch and is standardizing its IT infrastructure on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.  A quote from Rolf Berge the production manger at Axfood.

 “Axfood has very high demands on availability and performance. We chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux because it is a cost-efficient and safe platform for us to grow on.” 

The one word that caught my attention from the quote was “safe” .  It is different than the standard reasons of “cost-efficient”, “performance”, and “availability”.  We’re all used to hearing those.  “Safe” is how I feel when applications are running on Linux, “Safe” is how I feel about performance and uptime,   “Safe” is how I feel that an automatic update will not crash the machine.