If you're a techie entrepreneur creating a big e-commerce site, you may decide to buy a high-end Unix box to accommodate the volume and processing demands your bean-counters have projected for you. You'd run Sun Microsystem's Solaris software on it to power your Web server and e-commerce applications.
Or, you could opt to save a little venture capital and run Linus Torvalds' free operating system (and its accompanying free server apps) on a cluster of commodity Intel PCs.
The Linux OS is well-suited to small- to medium-sized operations, and is increasingly being used in large enterprises that would have previously considered Unix the only option. It has taken hold in Internet and e-commerce businesses, making the decision on whether to use Unix or Linux not as cut-and-dried as it may seem. A few years ago, the decision on whether to implement Unix or Linux was a no-brainer. Linux was an interesting academic project, but most people didn't consider it an option for a serious, commercial enterprise. How can it be that good if it's free? Isn't it just a toy for hackers and college students? But the maxim "you get what you pay for" doesn't really apply in the open-source world.
With major software vendors porting their applications to Linux, the OS has entered the mainstream as a viable option for Web serving and office applications and as a growing force in e-business (see Penguins running wild.)
Linux or Unix?
So when do you use Linux, and when do you use Unix? There are indeed some circumstances where Unix is the obvious choice, and Linux just won't do. "If you are talking about very large, massively symmetric multiprocessing systems, systems with greater than eight CPUs, you do need a full-blown Unix," says Jeremy Allison, Samba Team Lead at Fremont, Calif.-based VA Linux Systems. The current Linux 2.2 kernel does not scale well past four CPUs in a multiprocessing environment, but Allison says that the 2.4 kernel will scale significantly better--up to at least 16 CPUs. The 2.4 kernel, currently in beta, is due for final release in the first quarter of 2001.
Allison adds that a proprietary Unix system is probably better suited to a massive, single-box data center. "But there aren't that many applications that actually need something that large," he says. Moreover, many applications that do require mega-processing power can achieve that power through clustering, which both Unix and Linux do very well.
The notion that software should be free is one that is highly critiqued within the technology industry. Free, as in the idea that users can obtain the source code for any given program, and modify and redistribute it as they like. Currently most all software produced is proprietary in nature. Corporations pay developers to create proprietary software that they then obstruct (so that no modifications can be made), and sell (to turn a profit). Richard Stallman has been fighting the idea of proprietary software, and specifically software ownership, for decades. Stallman holds the stance that software ownership is a detriment to society, and stifles innovation, education, and social cohesion.
I was very interested in computers and technology as a child, both playing games and building fake parts for them. Still in elementary school, I was fascinated by these computing machines, spending hours on end working with DOS to satisfy my curiosity. Around my middle school years, Windows became graphical, and I found interest in even more computer games with even greater experiences and capabilities. Windows was the dominant operating system at the time, but I was soon to find there was a whole different world out there of operating systems. While out on vacation in Washington, DC, my Dad and I were able to meet with the local Tech Fanatics group, HackDC. It was here where I discovered Linux. Linux, an alternative to Windows, immediately grabbed my attention when I saw it in use. It appeared to me as something that only the extreme computer users even heard of. Upon my return home,
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Then came Linus Benedict Torvalds. At the time he was a sophomore majoring in Computer Science at the University of Helsinki, his hobby also included computer programming. At 21 he found himself spending most of his time toying with computer systems, trying to see what he could do in order to push their limits and increase their functionality. The key missing in his tests was an operating system that had the flexibility craved for by professionals. MINIX was available, though it was still just a stu...
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