Is Linux Right for your business?Posted by Avijit on August 21st, 2010 Linux is a operating system like Microsoft Windows, MAC OS X, Unix and BSD, the maindifferent between Microsoft Windows and Linux is ? Windows is a commercial and proprietary operating system; to use Microsoft Windows, you need to purchase the software media including the user license. On the other hand ? Linux is an open source operating system supported by different companies and worldwide volunteer programmers. What open source means? In short, you can obtain the source code from the Internet; you can modify, redistribute and customize it according to your needs. Hopefully this is the one of the main reason of its popularity. Linux starts as a hobby project in the year 1990-1991 by Linus Torvalds, a student of Helsinki University. Later on ? that?s become a history. Now a day it will take its own part in the software industry. Unlike Windows, Linux have several distributions, means different group of developers and companies build their own Linux based on the same source code. They added different window manager, software, office management software games and security software. How to obtain Linux ? in maximum cases ? all the Linux distributions available from their official web site, some others will provide the media free of cost or by exchanging a small amount of money. What are the benefits of Linux? - it is a most economical choice of your organization. You can build and run your own application on this platform without any cost. Generally Linux comes with all standard features like ? Office management, web browser, e-mail client, graphics program, file managers and many others. - You can use Linux as your server operating system, where as, in case of commercial software, you need to purchase the server version of the commercial operating system such as Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows 2003 and Windows 2008. - Linux is not resource hungry, means you don?t need Very high cost hardware to install Linux. Rather, Linux is the best for older hardware. Usually 256 MB of RAM and 4 GB of hard disk space is enough for any standard Linux Installation. - Linux is a very stable and secure operating system. It is free from viruses, although, there are several anti-virus programs available for this platform for enhanced security, but they are also free software. - You can also run lots of open source software such as ? business accounting, HRM, help desk system, payroll system and many more? - Finally, Linux is a multi-tasking operating system, means you can run several applications simultaneously. Like it? Share it! More by this author |