SubscribeR W Freight Services has implemented pc’s running Linux onto their network Guy Willis explains the benefits.
 There has been much talk recently of Linux and 'Open Source' software, and its benefits to business. But what exactly are they?I recently researched and implemented a network of PCs running Linux, which gave us several advantages over our previous equipment. Prior to the new network, operations staff used 'dumb terminals'. These are text only, monochrome screens, which were used to interface with the UNIX server, running our freight software: FCL's ForwardOffice. www.forward-comp.co.uk This meant that the staff did not have desktop access to the internet, word processing or attachment email. All of these services were provided on shared Windows PCs. A Linux PC solution meant that I could put all these services on everyone's desktop, but at a far lower cost per user than if I had chosen Windows. Furthermore, there are security and reliability benefits. Linux is open source - this means that anyone in the world can view the source code, the instructions that make up the operating system or program. And, provided they have the necessary programming skills, they can fix bugs and make improvements. This means that there are far less bugs than in a closed source operating system or program like Windows, where only a few hundred or thousand programmers are looking or them. Some useful Linux links: |
The security benefits come from the fact that Linux is a UNIX-like operating system, and as such the administrator has a far tighter and finer grained control over the network and users than in a Windows environment. Also, whilst Windows viruses are numerous, UNIX and Linux viruses are rare, dramatically reducing the chance of infection and the cost of protection.
Finally Linux is free. A company may choose to pay for technical support, but we decided to provide this in house. Other than the cost of one set of CDs, or the bandwidth to download the CD images, the Linux operating system costs nothing and comes with a free office suite www.openoffice.org and thousands of other useful programs.
In fact, the only thing we had to pay for was the hardware and a low cost terminal emulator program to provide the original functionality of the dumb terminals on the desktop of the new PCs.