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By Jason Boshears

Technology Editor, Computer Times

Linux seems to be the new buzz word in the Information Technology industry. It seems that not a day goes by now that I do not hear it mentioned. Are you thinking about migrating away from Windows to the Linux world? Hopefully I can answer some of your questions and help with your decision.

Linux is an open-source Unix clone that can run every computer device from your cell phone to the largest supercomputer. The original Linux kernel was written in 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Since then, its popularity has snowballed in size largely due to its open-source nature.

Here is a very brief summary of the way the open-source General Public License (GPL), which Linux uses, works. A work of software written under the GPL has its source code freely available for all who use the software to see. Programmers are free to use code that others have written as long as the code they write or modify that uses the open-source code is also made available. It is against the license to build on or modify the software and not contribute back your modifications. It is "software socialism" if you will: the work of many combined for the good of all. The possibilities of this system are huge. A new computer program can be written or modified quickly using code that others have contributed rather than writing the code from scratch. New features can easily be introduced, and bugs can be found and fixed quickly by a large group of people. Security experts from all around the world can audit the code to make it more secure, and novice programmers can look at the code to learn programming techniques.

Linux differs from Windows in many other ways than just the licensing. It uses a different file system, different commands, a different user interface, and many different applications. The security of Linux is unquestionably superior to Windows. Microsoft has recently funded "independent studies" by consulting groups to show otherwise, but these should be questioned based on the source of the funding for the studies. Linux has a proven track record with security, and when vulnerabilities occur, the time to release a fix is much quicker from the Linux community than from Microsoft.

Linux is also more stable than Windows. Although Windows stability has been greatly improved with recent versions, it still gives blue screens periodically. The modular nature of Linux does not allow a bad hardware driver or Internet browser to crash the whole system. This greatly increased security and reliability is why the Defense Department, the National Security Agency, and countless large Internet vendors depend on Linux to keep their mission-critical computing infrastructures running and secure.

Linux is also more scalable than Windows. Both Linux and Windows have versions which are designed to run embedded devices such as cell phones and networking equipment. The speed at which the two run on a PC is also similar. However, when you get into larger systems with many processors, and huge disk arrays, the differences are much clearer. With Linux, you can link many individual computers together to form a larger system that all works as a singularity. Windows does not have near the scaling capabilities that Linux does, and its file system is not as suited for huge files distributed between many devices, like databases for example. The superb scalability of Linux is a main reason that more than 75% of the world's supercomputers now run Linux. This scalability also allows Google to get the computing power it needs to run their massive search engine and how the movie studios animate whole movies using computers.

Also, another major advantage that Linux has is its cost. Many fine Linux distributions are available for free (see links at end of article), but all versions of Windows cost money. The savings you can get from Linux can amount to tens of thousands of dollars or more if you want to roll out many workstations on a network or build a clustered computer. If you are manufacturing a PC, you can market your product at a lower cost and give people a computer who cannot afford the high cost of licensing Windows. Embedded devices can obtain the same functionality at a lower cost than a similar device running on an embedded version of Windows.

Although Linux excels Windows in many important areas, it is also lacking in many as well. Installing Linux has gotten much easier with newer distributions, but it is still not as easy as Windows. Configuring Linux often involves editing hard to find text files, or recompiling the kernel to install devices (if the devices even work under Linux at all). I personally enjoy tinkering with computers and doing things like that, but it is definitely something I would not recommend to someone who does not have the time, patience, or computer savviness to learn a new system and a new way of doing things.

Application support for Linux also needs to be improved. Most popular commercial software packages are not written for Linux. There are many open source alternatives, but in most cases these are not nearly as good as the commercial version available for Windows. There are some emulators which attempt to run Windows programs and games under Linux, but these are far from perfect, and Windows applications generally do not work under Linux. Most newer applications written for Windows XP do not install at all or have large parts of them broken and unusable when you try to run them through one of these emulators.

Although Linux certainly has its advantages over Windows, it certainly has its disadvantages as well. Linux is perfect for many embedded devices, servers, and clustered computers, but it is not as suitable for most people on the desktop (not yet anyway.) Linux is becoming more user-friendly and easier to configure all the time. The power of open-source will lead to better quality open-source applications, and more commercial software vendors will make Linux versions of their software as the demand increases.

If you want to see what Linux is all about, there are versions of Linux that can be run entirely off a CD, such as Knoppix, Mepis and Ubuntu. When you are done with one of these 'live versions' of Linux, just eject the CD and your computer will return to how it was. These special distributions can be very useful to repair a system that will not boot up off the hard drive also. Linux certainly has a promising future and will soon give Microsoft much needed competition in the desktop operating system arena.

Here are some links you may find interesting:

General information and courses on using Linux

http://www.linux.org/

Free 'live versions' of Linux that will run off CD

www.knoppix.org

www.mepis.org

www.ubuntu.com

An overview of Google's network topology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_platform

Top 500 fastest supercomputers

http://top500.org/

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