| Tobias DiPasquale on Mon, 16 Dec 2002 16:21:39 -0500 |
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On Mon, 2002-12-16 at 08:31, Paul wrote: > What would happen if we turned around the equivalents issue? What does > Linux offer which other OS'es do not, and which businesses and regular > users would benefit from? And why does it have to be equivalent? What > about better or sufficient applications? Well, OSS server software is unarguably some of the best and most popular of it's kind: - Apache is the largest installed-base web server on the planet (65% of all web servers are Apache). - BIND runs about 99.9% of the DNS servers on the Internet. - Samba allows you to access Windows shares more efficiently than Windows itself. (which is not really surprising) Same with netatalk. - JBoss is fast becoming the most popular EJB container, and is as fully-featured as the (very expensive) commercial offerings from BEA and IBM. Also, Tomcat is the official J2EE reference implementation. - PHP does everything that ASPs and JSPs can do, and is free. Also, it goes without saying (but I'm saying it anyway) that the development tools are superior to other OS's dev. tools. Visual Studio is nice if you can't keep track of your own project files, but the OSS development tools allow more power and a better security model for generating code. Also, kdevelop and Qt Designer and GLADE and other such tools close the gap that M$ and Borland previously had on RAD dev. tools. Basically, what OSS/Linux offers that other OS's do not is functionality for free. These apps are every bit as good or better than their commercial equivalents, but they cost nothing to obtain. Thus, they lower the financial barriers to entry in the Internet-connected business world. "Clicks-and-mortar" companies especially benefit from OSS because they significantly reduce the cost for a part of their business that could potentially be a non-starter. -- << Tobias DiPasquale >> UNIX Software Engineer http://cbcg.net/ Attachment:
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