Why use Linux?

What is it that you want to accomplish? For the home users wishing to have no use of the command line, well maybe you should stay with that Redmond company. You'll get to pay considerable amounts of money on software upgrades. Since 1986 I can roughly estimate a grand total of $12,000 in hardware and software expenses. That's as an individual. I know many others that have spent considerably more. I've spent less than $200 on Linux upgrades since I first installed Slackware in 1994. ( Well honestly I've spent a few hunderd more on several good books ). One of those expenses was the RedHat 4.2 distribution in 1996. Last year I spent $79.95 on the ApplixWare office suite. It does everything that Office standard edition or Lotus SmartSuite can do. I've been upgrading packages and kernels since. My linux systems dial the internet and I can use Netscape to browse the web, read and send mail and converse in the newsgroups. In 1998 a version of RealMedia's RealPlayer became available for Linux. The Linux desktop has advanced in leeps and bounds.

What does your company spend on hardware and software over a 5 year period? What if I told you that your old "give it to charity" 486 system could likely be upgraded with sufficient RAM and disk space to act as an IP firewall to the internet. That would allow all your co-workers to access the internet across the LAN to the rest or the world wide web. Or may that same 486 could be a file and print server for your other Windows and Unix systems. How about that once top of the line Dell Pentium 133MHz in the closet? Let's make it a Web server or an FTP server. Once again with sufficient RAM and disk space it could do both. This just the begininng. A newer Pentium II system might not break the bank if you don't have to continually spend money on OS upgrades over the next five years. Who's to say that maybe, with the right presence on the web, your small company could grow fast. And those die hard machines that got you started just can't keep up with the demand. Linux now supports SMP ( that means multiple processors ). Linux is also available for other non-Intel based platforms. How and when you reach your goal is up to you. Keep it inexpensive and simple.

Several large companies have jumped on the Linux and the GNU bandwagons. Netscape, IBM, Oracle, Informix. Just follow some of my links above to catch the wave.

Hardware and Installation Experiences

I've installed RedHat v4.2 and Slackware v3 on 486 systems with as little as 8MB RAM and 532MB of disk space ( 500 MB primary partition and 32 MB swap partition ). Currently my 486/100Mhz system has 36MB RAM, 1.1GB primary partition and a 64MB swap partition running RedHat v5.2. There's also a 1GB Win95 partition. I have an Intel EtherExpress NIC, a SoundBlaster 16 and a VESA Diamond Stealth 64 video card installed. There were no incompatibilities installing or setting up any components. The system does nothing more than act as a networked workstation.

My Pentium® 120MHz machine has 64MB of RAM, 1.1GB primary disk space, 64MB swap space and a /home partition of 1GB. This system has a PCI Intel EtherExpress NIC, a SoundBlaster AWE32, a PCI Diamond Stealth 64 and an Iomega JazJet PCI SCSI adapter connected to an external Iomega Jaz drive. There's also OS/2 Warp v4 and Win95 partitions on this machine. Again, there were no incompatibilities installing or setting up any components. It runs as a Samba file server, and as a print server to an HP DeskJet 660C printer.

My Pentium II® 300MHz machine has 128MB of RAM, a 6.4GB disk partiioned as 2GB primary, 120MB swap and the remaining 4GB+ as a /home partition. This system has the PCI Intel EtherExpress NIC, a Soundblaster 16 and a Mattrox Millenium video board. It runs Apache web server, FTP server and as a print server to an HP DeskJet 890C printer. Hopefully someday I'll get the correct options specified in the kernel recompile for it to act as an IP maquerading gateway.

Last Updated: December 3, 1999