Linux at work (real world)

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Kevin McLauchlan reports: <<A Friday-afternoon bull-session with our IT crew
revealed that they are actively beginning to look into the possibility of
getting Linux onto the corporate desktop.>>

I can't speak about Linux from personal experience, but I can say that
everything I've read suggests there's a tough learning curve with Linux for
those who don't already have Unix experience, and that you should carefully
investigate the support community before committing to one version of Unix
over another. Hacker friends who have played with Linux (both Red Hat and
Suse) have loved it, but on the down side, they spend hours tweaking it
trying to get it to work the way they want.

In addition to Linux, you should carefully look at other alternative forms
of Unix before committing; many of these have been around for more than a
decade, and are thus more stable and secure than Linux. PC Magazine recently
(Nov. 27/01 issue, p. 89) published a short review of BSD (Berkeley Software
Distribution) alternatives to Linux, and they look like serious contenders
for your time; OpenBSD, for instance, sounds like a pretty sharp product
because of its reputation for being "the safest OS in the world" (according
to PC Mag), something that is increasingly important in this day and age.
Check out their online archives at www.pcmag.com for details.

And to borrow an advertising slogan, "why not do both?" With a little
planning, you can run both Linux and Windows on the same computer--though
probably not at the same time. This would let you use Windows applications
when you have to, and Linux the rest of the time, thereby using the right
tool for the right job. Worth a thought?

--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
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