Re: Poor people's OS?

From: Ian Northeast (ian_at_house-from-hell.demon.co.uk)
Date: 08/25/03 

Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 14:58:35 +0100

Richard Steiner wrote:
>
> Here in comp.os.linux.misc,
> "Java Böy" <javaboy@zapo.net> spake unto us, saying:
>
> >People say Linux is a poor people's operating system!
> >What do you say?
>
> IBM doesn't sell mainframes running Linux to poor people. :-)

I don't think IBM sells much at all to poor people for that matter:)

> Besides, what does it matter? Most people use Linux for reasons other
> than cost...

I disagree. We use Linux for cost reasons. Not the cost of the software
particularly, but as an alternative to (in our case) AIX which requires
very expensive hardware. Linux runs on all sorts of hardware including
cheap stuff.
The hardware we run it on isn't particularly cheap - our servers cost
between 3 and 30 thousand UKP - about 5-50 thousand USD - but is much
cheaper than equivalent RS/6000, SPARC etc. hardware. Everything we run
on Linux would run equally well on AIX or Solaris (but not the Intel
version of Solaris - some software we need, particularly Oracle, isn't
available) but the hardware would be a lot more expensive.

In the business world everything comes down to cost, but the costs
aren't always direct ones. For instance, using Linux as an alternative
to Windows for a PC file server could be more cost effective not because
it was actually any cheaper to run, but because the better reliability
and increased uptime saved the business money.

Regards, Ian

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