PowerHouse on LINUX

[David Sowder]

On Thu, 7 Jan 1999, Gates, Scott wrote:
>Saying "LINUX is a poor man's UNIX" implies that it is somehow inferior.
>With very few exceptions, I have found that LINUX is as good
>functionally and superior in ease of installation to Intel based
>machines.  I think that is directly related to its low cost.  With more
>'poor men' working on installing LINUX, it's been ported to a more
>diverse hardware configurations than the "RICH" versions. Face it,
>no-one's going to put a $5000 to $15000+ O/S on a Wal-Mart display model
>special. LINUX is more like the 'inmates running the asylum'  Yes, we're
>*crazy*, but we also live here so we know what needs done.

Well, I both agree and disagree with some of the statements made about
Linux in this thread.  I agree with Scott in that Linux does not fit the
negative implications of "LINUX is a poor man's UNIX".  I disagree with
the earlier statement that it is "underground" and has little commericial
support, which I think someone later commented on.  I am personally a very
extensive user of the Linux kernel and associated operating system and
would personally recommend that Cognos give the platform some serious
thought.  I agree with earlier posts that the $100,000 price range would
be over-priced, but then again, this list has had past discussions about
the Cognos products being over-priced in general and I personally I
believe it is in comparison with other products.  Additionally, Cognos
does not seem to be as well known as companies such as Oracle and Informix
in the database arena and thus I was quite surprised to see a news item in
a major on-line news brief talking about a recent acquisition.

The pro's of the Linux platform over any other popular platform are it's
open source kernel and supporting software, which give it the benefits of
greater security, stability, reliability, and "show-stopper" bugfix
turn-around time (several hours).  Linux is has the fastest growing market
share, second only to Windows NT.  Microsoft has even taken note of Linux
and has used it as an argument that Microsoft is not a monopoly.  Linux is
cross-platform to the Intel, Alpha and Sparc platforms, with support for
the Motorola 680x0, PowerPC, MIPS, and StrongARM processors also
available.  In my admittedly limited experience, I don't know of any other
operating system with such wide-ranging processor support, with the
exception of maybe the BSD family.  I recently read that Linux had support
for more hardware (such as SCSI, video, and such) than any other operating
system, including Win95/98/NT.

Some say a con of Linux is lack of support, but that is mostly a myth, as
a Linux won the best support award of a major national industry magazine
in the last year.  This was because of not only the commercially available
support from companies such as Caldera, Corel, Red Hat, and Suse, but also
more importantly, from the user community via the Internet.  Many times,
journalists experimenting with Linux have been quite surprised with the
flood of positive response to questions they've posted to the various
mailing lists and newsgroups.

One con that is oft mention is the complicated install process for Linux.
This issue is being worked on by many of the Linux distributors and even
now users are saying that it's not any more complicated than installing
Windows NT.  My personal experience with Solaris and VMS indicates that
Linux is up to par and in the case of Solaris' installation, superior.

Because compatibility with existing Unix flavors has been a central design
goal, many applications run on Linux without difficulty.  Oracle said all
they had to do was recompile when porting one of their products to Linux.
Linux also supports some binary compatability on several platforms
including iBCS2 on x86.  There is no lack of software for Linux.  I
haven't found very many things that I couldn't get Linux software for,
most of it open source.

Here at the university, almost all of our servers are Linux machines.  Our
Web server, our mail server, our DNS server, and even the machine that
runs this mailing list.  I have machines with uptimes over a year.  One
machine I almost forgot it was there because it ran so well, until network
problem caused me to have to use it to sort things out (it doubles as a
router for one of our buildlings).  The funny thing is that it's not even
running a newer version of the kernel.

Bottom line:  Pricing aside, Cognos would be doing itself a favor in
providing some or all of it's products on the Linux platform.  Considering
the recent press other companies have received when announcing ports of
some of their software to Linux, I would not be surprised if Cognos could
leverage this to easily grow their install base.  This would be even more
true if Cognos used some of the ideas of the so-called "Network Economy"
and released at least a "Lite" version for Linux for say personal use or
evaluation as a free download, much like the Corel Wordperfect 8 Download
Edition.

I'll be answering the original post's questions in a private Email, but
I'll be watching the various news channels for the Cognos on
Linux announcement, assuming I don't see it here first... :)

>> ----------
>> From:  [SMTP:STEWARTM@dteenergy.com]
>> Sent:  Wednesday, January 06, 1999 6:53PM
>> To:  powerh-l@lists.swau.edu
>> Subject:  Re: PowerHouse on LINUX
>> 
>> <<Message: PowerHouse on LINUX>>
>> Go for it Conrad!  If the price of PowerHouse for LINUX is low I think
>> you've 
>> got a legitimate shot at attracting the smaller guys for once.
>> Remember if 
>> LINUX is 'A poor man's UNIX' then 'PowerHouse LINUX' should be for
>> poor men. 
>> ---------------------- 
>> Mark Stewart 
>> Consultants Club Corp. 
>> Windsor, Ontario 
>> Canada
>> 
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--
David R. Sowder                           Primary Address:   davids@swau.edu
Network Manager/Lead Software Technician  HyperNet Related:  davids@hpnc.com
Southwestern Adventist University                           Network Engineer
http://www2.swau.edu/~davids/                   Hypernet Communications Inc.


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