Linux or Bust

Linux, an old idea that has new tricks. Many in the corporate software world did not like because in truth, they knew it would work.  An Idea of many, the igniter of one, the initiative of many, with availability to all.   Linux took the idea of cheap and free and made it profitable.  Linux was an idea whose time had finally come.  Gone are the days of high price software.   With a few courses and some home work, you can build a fully functional Unix/Linux application that would rival anything the big guys can come out with.   Unix was very good at work, but due to it's cost and requirements, many work alcoholics could not use it at home, thus Linux was born.  The father of Linux is  Linus Torvalds  Which bears his name ( somewhat ). He used the power of the people ( other programmers, hackers, etc ) to put together a operating system that would work on their home PC's. ( Intel's, AMD, Cycrix, etc ).  With these chip being much cheaper than the average motorala chips for Sun and HP,  and Linux having the same look and feel as Unix itself,  like the old saying, in time it took to the computing world like a duck to water. Even though there our several companies out there selling Linux.   Red Hat seems to be the official company support by Linus.  Cadera and Susex are other Linux distributors that provides good kernels as well.  Even better than the operating system is the idea on the license.   No one person can capture Linux, make changes, and have exclusive rights to it.   It was designed to be shared as cheap as possible.  Now some of your pros out there are saying cheap my eye,  I seen it as much as a hundred dollars.   Yes true, but look what you get with it.  In most cases you get about 150 - 200 programs that do just about everything.  These programs are from people who had and idea and just wanted to put it in the Linux hat.  There is one I like so much I wrote to the owner and asked for an upgrade.  No problem, within 3 days I had my upgrade for 15 bucks.  I sent $18.50 and he sent me back my change.  Try that with Microsoft, Sun, HP and the rest. The latest version from any of the companies runs between 30 and 60 bucks and believe me when I say they are packed to the gills with software.  The $100 system is a full fledge server that rivals NT, with a ton of software to boot.  If you have a requirement and you are thinking about writing code for it.   Don't, there might be something in the Linux package just waiting for you to discover. So far I like what is going on with Linux.  I started with the Cadera version (1.3) running on a system at home.  And I have the Red Hat ( Server 7.0 ) running on another server.  There are pros and cons with each so far but I am leaning towards the Red Hat.  The X windows system is the bomb.  Microsoft Windows never looked this good.  The latest Red Hat has a new look and feel with GOME (  Graphic Network Object Environment  ).  GOME has the ability to control just about ever aspect of the systems.   The patterns and realism that can be used will only be limited by your imagination.  Linux is fast, real fast.  As fast as Sun? Mighty close,  any takers on that?  RPM  ( Red Hat Program Manager ) is another feature that will make installing software much easier.   Currently the Red Hat at the office has several people on it who are training and getting use to the feel of a Linux/Unix system. So far they can not tell the difference between Unix and Linux. All and all I think Linux biggest challenge will be the corporate world.  Yes the one who don't know S from S.  It is hard for them to realize that someone has developed something against all the rules.  But they will come around.  How do I know you ask?  You know also, the power of money. When they finally see that a Linux system cost 85-95% cheaper than a Sun or HP.  They will get on board and quick.  Some are starting to now.  What are you waiting for? UPDATE: Well it looked like Linux has now dominated the big business world to a point to where it is hard to see how business was able to function before it crashed on the scene. Windows may be the king of desktops (and that is a debate with Mac OS) but the server world belongs to Linux. Like everything else in this world, there are several flavors of Linux. They mostly all do the same thing, just a little different in operations and price. For example, I recently purchased a Linux HP server with Linux Mint on it for under 50 bucks. It has become my web server. Now you dont even need a full box server. Linux now comes on a host of NAS drives where you can store your music, movies, photos, programs and a host of other items as easy as you were putting them on your hard drive of your desktop system. So my network consist of Mac OS as my desktops, linux as my servers (web, mail, NAS, etc) with back systems in places to protect the files. You wont find a better server than Linux.