Summary: How to explore the need for a migration to UNIX, the pros and cons of such a move, and a general review of the available free versions for your evaluation of its impact on your business.
Many small to medium-sized businesses are seriously interested in convering their IT usage from Windows to a UNIX-based platform. When asked, the main reasons for this consideration are one or more of the following:
Reduction of annual licensing, maintenace, and support costs - Microsoft and other Windows-based applications often are consistent annual revenue generation for these companies, so the need for the end-users to perpetually upgrade or update their software is driven high by these vendors. What was thought to be a low-cost client machine of $500 becomes within the normal three-year depreciation cycle four to five times that amount. Many versions of UNIX are free or low cost, do not require additional licensing costs...and the compatible applications are also free or low cost.
Possible reuse of the existing hardware asset base - The Intel-based hardware platform also has to stay upgraded to keep up with the minimal requirements of the applications and operating system. what used to be a decent PC in three years has to be replaced entirely to be able to run the latest version of operating system and applciations. UNIX's low minimum hardware requirement extends the use of the asset for five years or more.
Better availability of compatible application suites - All of the major productivity suites that are Windows-based now have a UNIX-based version or a similar suite that handles the existing documentation formats. OpenOffice handles Microsoft Office, Adobe has Acrobat for UNIX, GIMP is fully compatible with Photoshop, etc.
Protection against the majority of spam/spy/virus-ware - Almost all the viruses/trojans/spyware that exist take advantage of the "holes" in Windows and Windows-based applcations. UNIX-based software does not have these "holes", and the underlying security is at a higher requirement.
If these reasons sound good to you, here is the list of perceived disadvantages to place against the overall forseen benefits:
Long end-user relearning period - Since it is different, training users to the changes is a lengthy process and large downtime costs. This is false, since both the current versions of UNIX and tis companion application have been made to look and act very much like their Windows counterparts.
Costly IT support for migration and maintenance - Since it is different, there will also be a huge expense for the migration, as well as technical support training, for the existing IT infrastructure. This is also false, since most of the technical support issues listed are hardware-related...not software. End-user support for the compatible applications was found to be similar to existing Windows-based application response calls (for example, how to underline something in Word or OpenOffice's word processor).
Incompatibility with hardware accessories or devices - Since it is different, there wil be no interfacing with Bluetooth cellphones, PDAs, wireless mice and keyboards, etc. Again, this is false, since as these devices appear, much effort is made by the UNIX community (if not the device's vendor) to provide UNIX-based drivers. All of the listed UNIX versions in this analysis are bundled with software to synchronize with a PDA.
Since it isn't used by the majority of the corporations in the world, it isn't "corporate" - Your company, or the corporations you deal with, may already be using UNIX in its central IT services and you don't know it. Studies have shown most of the Fortune 500 corporations either have their IT backbone based in UNIX or one of its children. UNIX has spawned the following "sub-versions": Apple MacOS X, RedHat Linux, Sun Solaris, HP-Unix, IBM AIX, and others.
If this is so, you may ask, then why haven't more businesses migrated to UNIX? The answer from most polls can be boiled down to "if it isn't broke, why fix it?" or "even if it isn't a huge re-learning curve, it's STILL a learning curve." The problem with these excuses are what lies in the changes of Windows within the next year that will probably require totally new versions of all of the software running on your PCs now. With Windows Vista, and the newest version of Office to be delivered within a year, you're looking at a migration and relearning issue anyway -- as well as another hardware upgrade cost.
To evaluate if a UNIX migration is an option for you before this next set of Microsoft and other vendor shifts occur, take a space PC that is your lowest performer (not your highest), and download one or more of our recommended UNIX version installers for some on-site testing. Each of the ones listed below is free and will work "out of the box" with all of the default installation options. Our own comments on our experiences here are listed next to each. We used a stock Toshiba Satellite 1715XCDS laptop (6Gb HD, 192 Mb RAM) and a stock Lucent Technologies Orinoco (silver) 802.11b WiFi PCMCIA card. Both were bought in 2001.
Version of UNIX |
Link to download area |
KAUi Comments |
| RedHat went to "cost" UNIX four years ago, and this is the "free" version's replacement. Requires single CD to burn the set. Lengthy installation, requires Internet connection, and does not provide technical support. | ||
| Sun began providing free versions of the Intel-based Soalris two years ago for developers and "light" end users. Requires 4-5 CDs to burn the set. Installation on the laptop took a full day, and did not recognize the WiFi card. Once installed, ran very slowly. Does not come with OpenOffice, as the others do, but that can be downloaded and installed seperately. | ||
| Novell's migration away from a proprietary server OS to a Linux-based approach meant buying SuSE, one of the initial Linux providers. While the "OSS" version has the SuSE branding, it has Novell's support. Requires 4-5 CDs to burn. Did not recognize the WiFi card as bundled, but drivers were found and added. | ||
| Based on the Debian-flavor of Linux, this single CD set has all of the open source suites, and also has an Educational version aimed at K-6 learning set. Recognized everything and runs much quicker than the others we tested. | ||
| Well-known version of Linux. Requires 14 CDs for the set. Lengthy install. Drivers required some tweaking. Ran out of space in first pass and had to reduce package install list for next try. |
Overall, we found the Ubuntu distribution to be the most flawless and flexible in installation and usage, so you should try it. Apparently Google has decided to use this as their own interal version of UNIX as the basis of their variant, so we will keep you posted.
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