By R. Scott Raynovich and Polly Sprenger
inux, the freeware operating system, is suddenly
getting attention for more than its non-existent price tag.
After operating servers in relative obscurity since 1991,
Linux is now gaining respect from IS managers, support from
applications vendors, and a share of the commercial market.
Although developers at Microsoft aren't publicly worried about the budget OS just yet, maybe they should be. Many IS managers and vendors are now saying that Linux is both a model of reliability and a viable alternative to Microsoft Windows NT.
In the coming months, a number of prominent applications and scalability features for the freeware OS are due from both commercial and volunteer Linux de- velopers. These advances will contribute to the OS's emergence as a more affordable and manageable PC-based platform for deploying Internet applications, Linux buffs say.
According to Datapro Information Services Group, a market research company in Delran, N.J., Linux was second to Windows NT in growth in major corporations in 1996 and 1997. Datapro research shows that, at this time, Windows NT installations were growing at approximately 45 percent and Linux installations were growing at approximately 30 percent.
With improved multiprocessing and clustering due by year-end and a raft of applications support announcements from vendors such as Oracle, Informix Corp., IBM, and Netscape Communications Corp., users are finding it easier to publicize their interest in what many deem to be a low-overhead platform.
"A lot of the people in the major corporations are under-the-table Linux people," said Gary Nichols, group manager of network administrative at WaveTop, a datacasting company and a division of WavePhore Inc. in Phoenix. "They set it up and nobody knows about it [until] somebody asks them why the Web server is so fast. Then everybody finds out it's Linux."
Like many IS managers, Nichols first deployed Linux on his network covertly. Once the corporate managers above him discovered that Linux could do many of the things that Windows NT was doing in the company--more reliably and more cheaply, he says--Nichols stepped up deployment of the OS on his corporate network. He said that Linux has now come out from "under the table" at WaveTop and accounts for the half the servers on the network, replacing as many as 21 Windows NT servers that were doing the same thing.
NT backlash
Although it is often referred to as a "Unix-like"
system, Linux appears to be benefiting from an NT backlash
movement among network managers fed up with bugs, delays,
and costs associated with deploying Windows NT.
"Linux lets you have a life," said Cole Thompson, an IS engineer at Clorox Corp.'s data center and a MCSE. "I do not like getting out of bed at 2 a.m. to deal with a blue-screened NT server. Uptime and stability are my greatest friends."
Because it is targeted at computers with Intel processors and has roots in DOS, Linux is emerging as a competitor to Windows NT for those looking for a PC-based Internet and intranet platform. Linux users attest to its reliability and manageability.
"I wouldn't have said this two years ago, but I would much prefer Linux to NT in a data center today," Thompson said. "Linux just hums along; it's easy to forget it's there."
These attributes are augmented by the fact that Linux can be downloaded for free over the Internet or obtained inexpensively with support and documentation from a number of commercial vendors. This makes it an attractive product for companies trying to reduce the cost of licensing and managing OSes.
And, users say, the freeware model is valuable in other ways as well.
"[Linux] is developed by talented engineers and programmers on a worldwide basis under in-tense peer scrutiny," said Brendan Rankin, a design engineer at National Semiconductor Corp. in Santa Clara. "From a user's perspective, this means getting quicker bug fixes and excellent support."
An international community of Linux afficionados provides nearly immediate responses through Usenet groups, and having access to code base is helpful too, said Tim Mikesell, IS manager of Denali Alaska Credit Union in Anchorage, Alaska, in an E-mail message. Giving the example of a hypothetical memory problem in an application program, he pointed out, "If I had the source code in front of me, I might be able to dig through the code and find the memory leak. If I had the author's E-mail address, I could write her and beg for help," said Mikesell. With NT, he added, it's hard enough to get the technical support staff at Microsoft to answer the telephone.
Apps on the way
The one thing missing, many users say, is applications.
But not for long. A number of prominent applications vendors, who are announcing product migration to Linux, view the groundswell of support as a great market opportunity or the last chance to circumvent Microsoft's OS dominance, or both.
Netscape, Oracle, Corel Corp., and Informix have announced definite plans to port applications to Linux, and IBM has admitted to experimenting with DB2 for Linux (see "Linux apps gain momentum," below). In addition, Caldera Software Inc. has announced a client version of NetWare for Linux.
"I think the biggest boon for the OS is Oracle stepping forward and porting their enterprise database software to Linux," said Scott Edlund, a Unix systems administrator at The Boeing Co. in Seattle. "Their software is considered the granddaddy of all database software, and with them releasing for Linux, it will open the eyes of big businesses."
Linux developers themselves say that although the OS may not have all the features of commercial OSes, such as Windows NT and Unix, the Linux community is stepping up to deliver the features common to the commercial products.
"Yes, the OS still needs work, but don't they all?" asked Edlund. "Linux ... blows away NT in features, configurability, performance, cost, support, and reliability. What more could you want?"
Linux-oriented software companies such as Caldera and Red Hat Software Inc. are working to deliver some of the things needed to deploy the OS in corporate environments. Both companies include documentation and support with their Linux distributions, which are not available for those who download the OS for free.
According to Erik Troan, chief developer at Red Hat Software, the company is focusing on support and integration of Linux utilities, ser-vices that corporations demand when they deploy an OS. The company, in turn, charges a $30 per-copy licensing fee for the Linux package, which comes on a set of CD-ROMs and includes 30 days of installation support.
"Our work is in taking stuff off the Internet and making it work," said Troan. "There's a lot of source code in a lot of different places. I think support will become a much bigger revenue source for us as people need it."
In addition, Troan said that a number of developers are contributing to the kernel developed by Linux inventor Linus Torvalds. These developers send their contributions into a pool of code that is kept at various sites on the Internet.
Troan said the projects being worked on include an object-oriented GUI, known as Gnome, as well as support for clustering and multiprocessing.
Clusters of support
Linux 2.2, expected by year-end, will increase its
multiprocessing support from two pro- cessors to four, and
Troan said that developers around the world are beefing up
clustering support. Red Hat Software distributes one
clustering add-on, known as Extreme Linux. He sees the pool
of Linux developers, which includes NASA, as aiding
clustering support by contributing their code base back into
the pool of public Linux code.
"There's been a lot of interest in clustering in recent months," said Troan. "It's cheaper to hire a couple of programmers to get Linux to do clustering than to buy a commercial clustering product, which is very expensive."
The expanding free code base might reduce headaches for a lot of systems administrators running NT. Mike Mitchell, a systems administrator for Cold Technology in Blackwood, New Jersey says "canned software" like NT limits the productivity of a network. "It's not about, 'Where do you want to go today?' " he said. "It's more like, 'Where am I allowed to go today?'"