With the launch of Microsoft's Windows Vista, the days are looking numbered for Windows XP. Every business will eventually have to switch, but not necessarily to Vista. Because an operating system transition is inevitable, this may be a good time to consider Vista's competition - Linux on the desktop.
Dell Computer Corp. recently began shipping some desktop PCs with Ubuntu Linux, one of several popular "distributions" of the open-source operating system. Dell's move is a sign that Linux is entering the desktop mainstream, says Carmi Levy, senior research analyst at Info-Tech Research Group in London, Ont.
"In the very near future, we'll probably see most major vendors have some kind of Linux-based offering," he says.
Linux is "far, far more cost-effective," says Ross Chevalier, chief technology officer at Novell Canada Inc. in Toronto. The company offers SUSE Linux for $60 a year, support included, and "the vast majority of everything you need is going to be included," he says.
That means not just the operating system and Web browser, but also OpenOffice, an open-source alternative to Microsoft Office, as well as e-mail client software and other applications.
Nick Carr, who works in analyst relations at Red Hat Inc. in Raleigh, N.C., the provider of another popular Linux distribution, says software cost is only part of the story. Another advantage is that Linux can run on less-powerful hardware.
"We're using the cheapest Dell desktops we can buy," says Richard Giroux, IT manager at Vancouver law firm Whitelaw Twining Law Corp. Last year, the firm switched the PCs of its 15 secretaries from Windows to Linux. This spring, 30 lawyers and directors also made the move to Linux. Hardware costs are about $300 lower for each machine, even though the price of the PCs included Windows, Mr. Giroux says.
Mr. Carr says lower upfront cost isn't necessarily the deciding factor, especially for small businesses with relatively few PCs. The more important issues are security and management.
Linux is "not only a very secure product, but one that is easy to maintain secure," Mr. Carr says. Mr. Chevalier seconds that emotion, saying Linux is "attacked far less often [than Windows] and has proven to be far more secure."
Linux is the target of fewer attacks, Mr. Levy agrees, adding that a steady stream of Windows security patches is a real issue for smaller firms. "Small business hardly has time to care for an operating system that needs to be patched every week."
Microsoft agrees that security and management are important, but the agreement stops there. Nik Garkusha, a product strategy manager at Microsoft Canada Co. in Mississauga, Ont., claims Windows is more secure because his company has more experience dealing with security attacks. It has had to adjust on the fly, because the company is such a big, frequent and obvious target. He also says Microsoft delivers patches more quickly than the Linux community. And Microsoft says Windows is easier to configure and manage, so it costs less in the long run.
Jeff Neven, director of operations at Homestead Christian Care, agrees. When it started operating five years ago, the Hamilton-based non-profit group chose Linux to save money, but switched to Windows two years ago. Mr. Neven says he has found Windows less expensive to run, largely because Homestead needs less outside technical help.
Windows has long been considered to have an advantage in the range of applications software it supports. Linux has alternatives to mainstream applications, but they don't always work like their Windows counterparts. When Homestead considered moving its accounting work to Linux PCs, Mr. Neven says, the only option at the time was Accpac, a sophisticated package that exceeded both Homestead's needs and its budget.
Compatibility with add-on hardware can be an issue, too. At the Whitelaw Twining law firm, Mr. Giroux had trouble hooking up older dictation devices to universal serial bus (USB) ports on the Linux PCs, though he did find a solution and says newer devices don't have the same problem.
Linux proponents say things are changing. Mr. Chevalier, at Novell Canada, says there are more than 50,000 pieces of Linux software online at SourceForge, with something to address almost any need. And drivers to support a wider range of devices such as printers are multiplying, says Red Hat's Mr. Carr. "That has all really matured dramatically in the past couple of years."
Despite the inroads Linux is making, a mass migration to the system is unlikely, Mr. Levy says. "We are not going to see more Linux machines out there than XP or Vista machines."
For businesses with no Linux experience, the end-user's PC is probably not the place to start anyway. Mr. Carr says the path Linux usually takes into an organization is to start on the PCs of a few technical types in the IT department, then moving to servers and finally desktop PCs.
