Dear davijohh,
Thank you for hanging tight while I researched your question and prepared
my answer. Here are the goods.
Evaluation of Red Hat Linux 9.0
===============================
History
-------
The Linux operating system is an open-source offshoot of the UNIX family
of operating systems developed at Bell Labs in the 1960s and refined in
later decades by academic researchers and developers, most prominently
those at the University of California at Berkeley. Linus Torvalds,
a student at the University of Helsinki, Finland, originally began
development of Linux as a school project and as a way of bringing UNIX
to desktop computers without licensing fees.
Wikipedia: Unix: Free Unix-like operating systems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix#Free_Unix-like_operating_systems
IBM: developerWorks: History of Linux
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/library/it-schenk1/schenk1.html
Today, Linux has grown to become the most popular alternative to
the Windows platform sold by Microsoft. It is also a paragon of the
open-source philosophy, which says that software should be free: users
should be able to acquire it for free, developers should be allowed to
freely modify and inspect its code, and enterprises should incorporate
it into their products as they see fit under the condition that the
results remain equally free.
Development of Linux is driven partly by the enthusiasm of volunteer
programmers and partly by the profit motive. The tens of thousands of
skilled software developers around the globe who inspect each line of the
Linux source code, making corrections and additions every day, ensure that
the operating system is stable, secure, and constantly improving. Then
there are several large corporations, including IBM, Sun, and Novell,
who would dearly love to unseat the Microsoft near-monopoly, putting an
end to the financial and engineering inefficiencies that come with it,
while giving them the opportunity to build a revenue stream from providing
service and support for open-source systems and applications.
Eric S. Raymond: Keeping an Open Mind
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/openmind.html
Wired News: MySQL Profits From Open Source
http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,62369,00.html
Availability
------------
Strictly speaking, Linux is not an operating system but a kernel. As its
name suggests, a kernel forms the core of an operating center. It is the
part of the system that is always running. The kernel manages memory,
schedules processes, and generally offers a layer of abstraction between
computer hardware and developers who want to write applications. A kernel
doesn't do much on its own. It is the addition of programming-language
compilers, text editors, a graphics server, and a windowing system that
makes into a full-fledged operating system. Indeed, it is difficult
to evaluate any operating system without taking into consideration
the selection of end-user software available for it, including word
processors, web browsers, digital-camera driver interfaces, and
shoot-'em-up games.
The lower-level tools that accompany a Linux kernel, which are very
useful to developers but not so much to consumers, are almost without
exception those issued by the GNU project. For this reason, some elements
of the open-source movement insist that we speak of the GNU/Linux
system. However, Linux alone is still the more frequent appellation.
Free Software Foundation: Richard Stallman: Linux and the GNU Project
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html
The consumer software built on top of the kernel and the common
development layers is provided by various developers, companies,
and institutions, whether on a basis of open-source distribution,
closed-source zero-cost, or closed-source for-profit. When a consumer
wishes to use Linux, he chooses a distribution that includes, in addition
to the kernel and a selection of software, a way to install the whole
shebang and later to upgrade it. The most popular distributions include
Red Hat, SuSE, Debian, Mandrake, Slackware, and Gentoo. There are dozens
of others.
linux.org: Linux Distributions
http://www.linux.org/dist/index.html
linuxlinks.com: Distributions
http://www.linuxlinks.com/Distributions/
Experience
----------
I have been using various Linux distributions for six years, beginning
with my exposure to a Red Hat 5.0 network when I was an undergraduate
student and continuing through my present use of Debian Linux workstations
in a computer lab and a pair of machines running Fedora Core 2 and Red
Hat 9.0 at home. In this evaluation I shall concentrate on Red Hat 9.0,
the version with which I am most familiar, having used it for almost
two years. My comments do apply with some generality to other recent
versions of Red Hat, including versions 7.0 and 8.0, which are also
based on the Linux 2.4 kernel. I have not used Fedora Core 1, the
first consumer-oriented distribution of Red Hat Linux following the
corporate decision to split it into a for-profit enterprise version,
which retains the name Red Hat, and a zero-cost consumer version called
Fedora. Furthermore, my evaluation does not focus on Fedora Core 2,
which uses the lately released 2.6 kernel.
Fedora Project: Red Hat Enterprise Linux
http://fedora.redhat.com/about/rhel.html
New Linux users are encouraged to install Fedora Core 2 or, when it comes
out within a few weeks, Fedora Core 3, so as to avail themselves of the
latest improvements and the freshest software packages. The particular
distribution on which I am basing this evaluation, Red Hat 9.0, is still
available as a free download from third-party sites but not from the
Red Hat corporation, which no longer officially supports it.
LinuxISO.org: Red Hat
http://www.linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=7
To install Red Hat 9.0, a user would download the three CD-ROM images,
burn them to disc, and begin the installation process by booting his
computer from Install Disk #1. The Anaconda installer takes over in
either textual or graphical form, presenting the user with a series
of interactive screens that let him modify the default settings as a
prelude to a -configuration and decompression procedure that generally
takes between ten minutes and an hour, depending on hardware performance
and package selection.
Red Hat: Documentation: Red Hat Linux 9
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-9-Manual/
Reliability
-----------
I have personally found Linux to be a very stable platform for running
a large number of resource-intensive programs at the same time. Many of
my colleagues in academe agree, as do millions of tech-savvy Linux users
worldwide. Indeed, the robust performance of Linux is one of its most
notable advantages and the factor prompting its prevalence on large-scale
systems at universities, corporations, and government research labs. In
my experience, Linux runs far more reliably, in the long term and under
pressure, than Windows. The older Windows 3.11/95/98 systems crashed
several times a day even under light usage, and the much-improved Windows
NT/2000/XP systems still can't stay up longer than several days at a
time. By contrast, my Red Hat 9.0 box runs without crashing for weeks
and months at a time. When it does go down, it is either because I am
running faulty and resource-intensive code I have written, or because
I am in the middle of some tricky software configuration.
I am not a lightweight user. In addition to running a full complement of
graphical and networking software, I serve some web pages from one of
my home machines and run a small local-area network. The Debian Linux
machines in the computer lab where I work are frequently occupied by
industrial-strength data-processing tasks that manipulate gigabytes of
data in memory and terabytes on disk. My webhosting provider, DreamHost,
also runs Debian Linux, and has an average uptime at this writing, as
calculated over the past 90 days, of 44.95 days. A month and a half of
uptime on a heavily trafficked virtual web host run by a small firm is
not bad at all.
Netcraft: What's that site running?: dreamhost.com
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=dreamhost.com
The inherent reliability of open-source software, brought about by
the auditing of each line of code by hundreds or thousands of software
developers, is what accounts for the popularity of Linux as a webhosting
platform. Of the webhosts detected by the independent survey firm
Netcraft to have been active in September 2004, over 67% were running
the open-source web server Apache, which most often runs on Linux and
related UNIX-type systems such as FreeBSD and Solaris.
Netcraft: September 2004 Web Server Survey
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/08/31/september_2004_web_server_survey.html
The corporations and research labs of the world are increasingly choosing
Linux for its large-scale stability. Consumers who run Windows on the
desktop are often unaware of the extent to which the back-end systems of
their favorite websites are powered by Linux. The Google search engine,
the Yahoo content portal, and the Amazon ordering system run on racks of
Linux machines. NASA, Cray Supercomputing, and US government laboratories
trust Linux to power their biggest machines.
Wired News: Linux Feels the Corporate Love
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,54504,00.html?tw=wn_story_related
Networx: World's Fastest Linux Supercomputer to Bolster National Security Projects
http://www.lnxi.com/news/7.15.2002.19-Worlds_Fastest.html
InternetNews.com: Cray Unleashes XD1 Opteron/Linux Supercomputer
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3417221
ZD Net UK: Linux supercomputer to simulate space for NASA
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/servers/0,39020363,39161899,00.htm
Whatever the flaws of this young and vigorous operating system, it is
not lacking in reliability.
IBM: developerWorks: Putting Linux reliability to the test
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-rel/
Efficiency
----------
There are several ways in which an operating system demonstrates its
efficiency. An operating system can distinguish itself by efficiency
in task scheduling, memory management, hardware access, or multimedia
throughput. The measure of greatest renown, if not necessarily
greatest importance, is processing speed on benchmark programs. Raw
speed demonstrates how well the operating system schedules tasks and
how lightly it intervenes between a user process and the CPU. Real-time
operating systems tend to be the fastest of all, and several of these
are based on the Linux kernel, but these are stripped-down systems
designed specially to support critical hardware applications such as
medical monitoring and flight control.
Wikipedia: Real-time operating system
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_operating_system
As a full-fledged consumer system, Red Hat 9.0 is designed to offer
a balance between performance and feature richness. It is difficult
to evaluate its processing speed on the whole, never mind compare it
to alternative platforms. One approach to comparative processing-speed
evaluation is to use benchmark programs that exercise various components
of the system in isolation. Number-theoretical algorithms measure
integer-processing speed, engineering simulations test floating-point
performance, first-person shooters such as Quake offer a measure of
graphical throughput, and productivity software such as Office strives
for some overall sense of efficiency from the user's point of view. It
is not clear how individual benchmark scores can be combined to yield
a general assessment of system efficiency, nor whether a benchmark is
a good measure of anything but itself.
Netlib: Benchmark Programs and Reports
http://www.netlib.org/benchmark/
Benchmarking is further complicated by the fact that complex software
packages are written in a different manner for each operating system,
exploiting to various degrees the strength of each. Furthermore, some
operating systems perform better on certain hardware setups than others,
and can be configured to achieve different results. All of this means
that efficiency comparisons are less like observing the outcome of
a footrace and more like judging an essay contest. Nonetheless, some
synthetic benchmarks exist that claim to provide an overall measure of
a system's processing speed. Among these are the Whetstone, Dhrystone,
and HINT benchmarks.
Brigham Young University: An Introduction to HINT
http://hint.byu.edu/
Linux has always done well on software benchmarks. As far back as 1998,
when it was only seven years old, the Linux kernel was easily outstripping
Windows 95 and keeping pace with Windows NT, Microsoft's enterprise-level
operating system. Today, version 2.4, the second-latest stable version
of the kernel and the one sitting at the center of Red Hat 9.0, has been
rendered obsolete by 2.6, which corrects some important memory-management
problems. The 2.4 kernel was plagued by drastic slowdowns when memory
usage reached full capacity. The operating system spent most of its time
paging blocks of data from virtual (disk) memory into dynamic (RAM) memory
and back out. I myself have experienced these slowdowns while running
intensive text-processing algorithms in my research. The algorithmic
defect was diagnosed by volunteer Linux developers and corrected in the
new kernel. For this reason, I use 2.6 exclusively for research purposes.
Florian Weimer: The HINT benchmark on different operating systems
http://www.enyo.de/fw/hint-1998/
InfoWorld: Linux v2.6 scales the enterprise
http://www.infoworld.com/infoworld/article/04/01/30/05FElinux_1.html
Typical users at home and in corporate settings would rarely reach
such extremes of memory usage, however, so Red Hat 9.0 was generally
perceived to perform well. Whether it is faster than the versions of
Windows available in comparable contexts has been a subject of vociferous
debate. Open-source partisans cite studies showing that Linux wipes
the floor with Windows, while Microsoft-funded evaluations show exactly
the opposite.
Dan Kegel: NT vs. Linux Server Benchmark Comparisons
http://www.kegel.com/nt-linux-benchmarks.html
There are no unequivocal conclusions on any point, save that Linux and
Windows are both fast enough to run the user software that is written
for them. The differences between them are generally so slight that more
depends on the hardware configuration than on the choice of operating
system. Rather than switching operating systems, a user who seeks to
boost speed should upgrade the CPU, install more RAM, or download the
latest graphics drivers. Even upgrading from one version of a given
operating system to the next is more effective than replacing one flavor
of operating system with another.
IBM: developerWorks: Kernel comparison: Web serving on 2.4 and 2.6
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-web26/
Ease of Use
-----------
What strikes one user as the natural way to eject a disk or copy a file
may seem awkward to another who is used to a different way of doing
things. Ease of use is to some extent a question of habituation. Consider
the fact that Mac users believe their one-button mouse to be the pinnacle
of user-friendly simplicity, while Windows users swear by their scroll
wheel, and UNIX users regard any mouse with fewer than three buttons as
a grossly simplified input device suited only to children and cavemen.
Another difficulty in evaluating ease of use is that an operating
system means different things to different people. From a software
developer's perspective, what matters is easy access to the operating
system's internals. In this respect, Linux is the undisputed winner over
all closed-source operating systems, including the various Windows and
MacOS versions as well as closed-source Unices such as Solaris. The Linux
kernel that comes with Red Hat 9.0 is covered by copious documentation
on the web and in print.
SourceForge: KernelBook: Official Linux Kernel-Docs
http://kernelbook.sourceforge.net/#kdocs
Linux Documentation Project: Single list of HOWTOs
http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/H
O'Reilly: Understanding the Linux Kernel, 2nd Edition
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxkernel2/
O'Reilly: Linux Device Drivers
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxdrive/
Microsoft also offers a developer-support network, the use of which
is limited to registered users who pay annual fees. Not only is most
information on Windows internals issued from or controlled by Redmond,
but it is notoriously terse, recondite, and incomplete on a variety of
subjects that Microsoft apparently feels are proprietary details best
keep obscure or secret. By contrast, it is the raison d'etre of Linux
to provide unfettered access to its facilities and source code. A Linux
programmer need only consult a search engine or use the "man" command
to uncover reams of guidance on the development topic of his choosing.
Microsoft Developer Network
http://msdn.microsoft.com/
University of the Aegean: Diomidis Spinellis: A Critique of the Windows
Application Programming Interface
http://www.dmst.aueb.gr/dds/pubs/jrnl/1997-CSI-WinApi/html/win.html
European Union: Advantages of open source software
http://eu.conecta.it/paper/Advantages_open_source_soft.html
The typical computer user is not a software developer, however. Most
users are not interested in accessing operating-system internals
and don't want to read documentation. For those with limited demands
who wish to do little more with their computers than surf the web,
use email, and prepare documents, Linux offers a full suite of mature,
useable software. For web browsing, Red Hat 9.0 users can turn to Mozilla,
Konqueror, or Opera; for email, the options include KMail and Evolution;
among the productivity-software packages are OpenOffice.org and KOffice.
Mozilla
http://www.mozilla.org/
Konqueror
http://www.konqueror.org/
Opera
http://www.opera.com/products/desktop/index.dml?platform=linux
KMail
http://kmail.kde.org/
Novell: Evolution
http://www.novell.com/products/evolution/
OpenOffice
http://www.openoffice.org/
KOffice
http://www.koffice.org/
These products are user-friendly by virtue of their familiarity. Most
interface features have been modeled on those of Windows, just as
Microsoft has copied the Macintosh interface. A Windows user confronted
with a Linux desktop, whether one based on the Gnome or KDE window
manager, will be reassured by the colorful icons and familiar layout.
KDE Project: KDE 3.3 Screenshots
http://www.kde.org/screenshots/kde330shots.php
Home users may run into trouble if they try to attach certain peripherals
to a Linux-run computer, however. Although hardware support has improved
significantly since the early days, Linux is still hampered by the fact
that Microsoft's near-monopoly of the desktop market compels many hardware
manufacturers to dedicate their driver development to Windows. Red Hat 9.0
does recognize nearly all basic peripherals such as monitors and mice, but
multimedia devices such as scanners and webcams are sometimes supported by
obscure open-source drivers or by even more obscure proprietary ones. If
these are not integrated a priori with a Linux distribution such as Red
Hat 9.0, the procedures by which they are to be obtained and installed
are usually beyond the abilities of a home user.
Another irritant for consumers is that the look and feel of Linux
applications is much less consistent than the harmonious Mac GUI or the
sober Windows interfaces. The two major windowing systems packaged with
Red Hat 9.0, namely Gnome and KDE, often disagree with each other over
menu layout and window decoration. Applications written by independent
software teams without regard to the Gnome and KDE themes feature
idiosyncratic interfaces ranging from the spartan to the rococo. Although
open-source developers have lately been making a push toward greater
aestheticism and homogeneity in GUI design, it is still the case that
freedom brings with it a certain amount of chaos. For this reason,
some industry commentators feel that Linux is not ready for consumer
desktops and question whether it ever will be. Others note the young age
of Linux and prophesy that the increasing involvement of corporations
and the standardization of significant parts of the programming framework
will result in the kind of superficial uniformity characteristic of the
proprietary operating systems without compromising the variety of choice
in many software categories that is a strong suit of Linux.
Forbes: Why You Won't Be Getting A Linux PC
http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/17/cx_ld_0617linux.html
Linux vs. Windows: The Rematch
http://www.pcworld.com/resource/article/0,aid,104693,00.asp
TechRepublic: Is Linux ready for the desktop?
http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-6313-1039422.html
ComputerWorld: Is Linux ready for the corporate desktop?
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/linux/story/0,10801,62924,00.html
PC World: Is Linux on the Desktop Inevitable?
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,109266,00.asp
ZD Net: IBM warms to desktop Linux
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5104650.html
Security
--------
Reports issued from each side of the Windows-Linux divide have delivered
contradictory judgments on the security of their preferred operating
system. Linux proponents point out that the vast majority of successful
cracking attacks, in both variety and number, are aimed at Windows
systems. Windows boosters argue that most of these attacks target
improperly secured home-user systems, and remind us that cracking tools
and viruses are overwhelmingly directed at Windows due to its popularity
among home users. Redmond says that it devotes considerable resources to
analyzing security reports and responding immediately with patches when
holes are discovered. The open-source community contends that its tens
of thousands of volunteers do a far better job of locating and quickly
fixing vulnerabilities than any single corporation can.
eWeek: "Linux vs. Windows: Which Is More Secure?"
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1557459,00.asp
NewsFactor: Is Linux Really More Secure Than Windows?
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/19649.html
Where most studies agree is that the security of a computer system depends
in large part on the circumstances and skills of its operators. A home
user who unknowingly or uncaringly leaves his network ports open and
indiscriminately installs any software is asking for trouble, no matter
what operating system he is running. On the other hand, a sophisticated
user who keeps an eye on security bulletins and installs the latest
patches, or an enterprise that employs security experts or subscribes to
a competent patch service, enjoys as secure an installation as anyone can,
regardless of the choice of platform.
NewsForge: "Windows vs. Linux security: No unbiased reports"
http://software.newsforge.com/software/04/07/06/1812203.shtml
Carnegie Mellon: CERT Coordination Center: Securing Desktop Workstations
http://www.cert.org/security-improvement/modules/m04.html
However, Linux was designed from the ground up to be secure in a way
that Windows never was. This difference has cultural roots. Windows is
a consumer product developed and sold by a corporation that dedicates
itself to supplying software with a glossy appearance and hands-off
convenience. The UNIX-type operating systems, of which Linux is one,
emerged from the technically rigorous and security-paranoid confines of
academic institutions and Pentagon-funded research groups.
From its earliest days, Linux was endowed with a file system in which
every item had an associated set of permissions that decided which
users could use them and which could not. The most sensitive files
are restricted to access by root, an abstract user in whose name the
kernel runs and whose identity only system administrators are allowed to
assume. Thus, a program that hopes to compromise the correct operation of
a Linux system must find some way of gaining root privileges, which is a
far greater hurdle to overcome than persuading a user to open a malicious
attachment or to execute a pernicious piece of software. This is why
viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, malware, and adware are practically
unknown in the Linux environment while they run rampant in the Windows
world.
Dartmouth College: "Understanding file permissions on Unix: a brief tutorial"
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~rc/help/faq/permissions.html
Although file permissions have been implemented in Windows NT, which is
the enterprise-level Microsoft operating system, and in its successor,
Windows XP, most users run their entire system in administrator mode
because the interface makes it easy for them to do so and difficult
to do otherwise. This practice, which defeats the very purpose of file
permissions, is actively discouraged in Red Hat 9.0 and made difficult
or impossible by all Linux distributions.
The general philosophy of the Windows operating system is not conducive to
good security. Although default settings on Windows XP may well be good
choices for the security-paranoid, innocent users are too often allowed
to defeat them by responding "OK" to opaquely worded dialogue boxes in
which the affirmative action is the only satisfying way to proceed. A
Windows system also abounds with installation and configuration wizards
that go forth at the user's bidding and make multitudinous changes lying
beyond his awareness or comprehension.
Linux refuses steadfastly to do the user's thinking for him. Despite the
fact that Red Hat 9.0 comes with a selection of graphical interfaces
for configuring various aspects of the operating system, including
ones related to security, these GUIs are merely thin shells over
command-line programs that do nothing without the user's bidding. The
need to explicitly configure Linux, although it can cause headaches
for the novice, translates into far better security since a user cannot
easily trample his own security barriers.
NewsFactor: "The Great Security Debate: Linux vs. Windows"
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/7907.html
SecurityFocus: Linux vs. Windows Viruses
http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/188
Maintainability
---------------
The Red Hat 9.0 installer is very easy to use and will generally set
up a conflict-free software environment for users, as it is designed to
do. Thanks to the absence of wizard programs and the thoroughgoing use
of file permissions, the system will subsequently remain in a clean and
steady state as long as no software is installed from sources other than
the Red Hat 9.0 distribution discs, since the user won't be polluting any
part of the file system but his own home directory. By design, actions
in the home directory cannot infringe on deeper and more sensitive files
concerned with system configuration. For users who do not desire more
esoteric software, then, Linux is highly maintainable since it does not
degrade in the course of ordinary usage.
Users on corporate networks can furthermore benefit, despite the
grumbling of the more independent-minded, from the remote administration
and updating tools available for the Red Hat 9.0 distribution. From
installation to configuration, all aspects of corporate workstation
maintenance can be carried out remotely by a system administrator. The
Linux kernel and most of its distributions, including Red Hat 9.0,
were made with network connectivity in mind. Physical distance from a
machine therefore poses no obstacle to maintenance tasks.
LinuxWorld: How to install Red Hat over a network
http://www.linuxworld.com/story/32857.htm
LinuxPlanet: Remote Administration of Linux systems
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/4400/1/
Novice home users whose machines are not administered by a sysadmin and
who wish to use software not present on their Red Hat 9.0 distribution
discs will find that maintenance is a great chore. If a software package
they wish to install is not available in the RPM format peculiar to
Red Hat, and if they can't find a binary version of the software that
has been compiled specifically for their platform, users must resort to
what is known as a tarball. A tarball is a compressed copy of the source
files required to compile a piece of software.
Decompressing a tarball is the easy part, since this is done with a
single command like "tar xvfz acmesoftware.tar.gz". Compilation and
installation can be equally painless if -- and this is a big if -- the
software developers have prepared a tarball whose requirements conform
to the user's circumstances. If so, the two commands "configure" and
"make" will suffice to prepare, compile, and link the software. But
if some aspect of the user's platform is not to the tarball's liking,
pain and suffering may follow.
Since Linux is not a monolithic operating system with a single graphical
server, a single window manager, a single set of drivers, and an
application programming interface tightly controlled by corporate
headquarters, various developers write software for it in varying
styles. Leading institutions in the open-source community promulgate
standards with the goal of encouraging compatibility between software
packages written for all parts of the operating system, so it is not true
that chaos reigns. However, there are overlaps and conflicts between
the various standards, ensuring that a Linux power user will sooner or
later confront a tarball that refuses configuration or compilation until
a byzantine list of prerequisites has been met.
Gnome FAQ: Compilation difficulties
http://www.linux.org.uk/~telsa/GDP/gnome-faq/compiling.html
CompTechDoc: Determining Linux Dependencies
http://www.comptechdoc.org/os/linux/howtos/linux_htsysdep.html
The best that can be said for the onerous task of resolving Linux
software dependencies is that they are an opportunity for the user to
learn something about the structure of the operating system. Once the
job is done, furthermore, the user will generally have seen what was
altered and where, which tends to diminish the probability of unwelcome
surprises or inexplicable system crashes later on. Windows software
installers usually work at the click of a button, but no one knows
exactly what they are up to behind the cheerful facade. When problems
do arise later, they are difficult or impossible to diagnose. In the
do-it-yourself ethos of Linux, the damage a user can do to his system
configuration is largely limited by his skill level.
The greatest maintenance headaches in Linux arise in connection with
hardware drivers, which are the most finicky about library dependencies
and version numbers. Worse yet, if the user decides to upgrade his system,
for example from Red Hat 9.0 to a Fedora Core, he can expect most of
his drivers to break in the new software environment. The user's sole
consolation is that the experience of preparing the older system for
driver installation functions as a rough guide to doing the job in the
newer one. A user who lacks the time, skill, or inclination to sift
through technical documentation and experiment with advanced system
commands will be unable to install many of the software packages lying
outside his Linux distribution.
Linux-USB device overview
http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/drivers.php
RPM Package Manager
http://www.rpm.org/
Flexibility
-----------
As with security and maintainability, we must distinguish between
different categories of use. The professional software developer or
computer science researcher will find that Linux is much more readily
harnessed to a multiplicity of special applications than the rigid,
consumer-oriented Windows platform. The Linux kernel has been used
as a basis for implementing embedded systems in automobiles, network
appliances, watches, and PDAs. It has been used to run massively parallel
clusters of rack computers for biocomputation and cryptography.
LinuxDevices: Linux powers first car with integrated UMTS services
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS7438726816.html
LinuxDevices: Other smart devices with Linux inside
http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT2478437967.html
Linux Embedded Appliance Firewall
http://leaf.sourceforge.net/
IBM developerWorks: "Embedded Linux applications: An overview"
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-embl.html
Purdue University: Hank Dietz: Linux Parallel Processing Using Clusters
http://yara.ecn.purdue.edu/~pplinux/ppcluster.html
Corporate users will also find little cause to complain, as Linux
scales easily to the heavy demands of payroll processing and database
hosting as well as the lighter duty required of a networked employee
machine used primarily for email, web browsing, and word processing. The
home tinkerer or amateur programmer will be delighted by the range of
development tools and the depth of documentation available on Red Hat
9.0 and other Linux distributions.
Where Linux can be said to be less than flexible is in the mass consumer
market. Home users are not generally interested in the technical
advantages of an operating system and in the ease with which it adapts
to scientific or commercial applications. What the average home user
desires far more than productivity is entertainment. As an entertainment
center, Linux falls flat. Few games are ported from Windows to Linux,
and even fewer are coded specially for it. The simple arcade games that
are bundled with Red Hat 9.0 will not hold the attention of a serious
gamer for longer than a few hours.
Although it is not very difficult to play music or watch DVDs on a
Linux box, and nowadays most webcams, scanners, and digital cameras are
supported at least on a minimal basis that lets the user stream images or
upload them for storage and editing, the advanced multimedia functions
that many home users expect from a computer are not yet within reach. I
have found no useful software for editing video or composing music under
Linux. Creative types who wish to make art on their computers are probably
better off buying a Mac, as I have contemplated doing myself.
The one bright point for the artistically inclined is that Linux does
have a very good Photoshop substitute in the form of GIMP, the Gnu
Image Manipulation Program. And hard-core gamers who won't go near
an operating system that doesn't let them run around a dank labyrinth
vaporizing fiendish creatures will be happy to know that at least the
first-person-shooter staples Doom 3, Quake Arena, and Unreal Tournament
are compatible with Red Hat 9.0 Linux and many other Linux distributions.
GIMP
http://www.gimp.org/
TuxGames: Doom 3
http://www.tuxgames.com/details.cgi?nc=1098627580&referrer=linuxgames&gameref=88
Conclusion
----------
The attributes of Red Hat 9.0 are influenced by the technical rigor of
the research laboratories where the UNIX family of operating systems
was born and by the libertarian ethos of the open-source community that
sustains Linux today. Linux has proven to be sufficiently reliable that it
powers a multitude of Web services, mission-critical enterprise networks,
and cutting-edge scientific computing clusters. Its efficiency, although
a subject of partisan debate, is at the very least comparable with that
of other operating systems in the consumer and corporate markets. Those
who wish to use Linux as a platform for developing software of all kinds
will find the system internals to be wide open and thoroughly documented,
while home users may be frustrated by the inconsistent or spare design
of much Linux software. Those who venture beyond the classic consumer
applications of email, web surfing, light multimedia, and word processing
will have an especially hard time of it.
Linux is very secure out of the box, offering greater resistance and a
smaller target than other consumer-oriented operating systems to attacks
by crackers, scanners, viruses, trojans, worms, adware, spyware, and
sundry malware. After installation, the philosophy of Linux software
puts responsibility for configuration squarely in the user's lap, making
it unlikely that security settings will be unknowingly weakened. Linux
distributions such as Red Hat 9.0 give the user a software maintenance
system that makes upgrades painless for those packages that have been
specially prepared for it. For software lying outside the package
manager's ken, novice users will often find it a considerable challenge
to find adequate documentation on installing the software under their
particular setup. Finally, rich multimedia has not yet arrived to Linux,
not even to the consumer-oriented distributions such as Red Hat. Linux
does have a very high degree of flexibility for industrial and scientific
applications, more so than any other operating system.
In the end analysis, Red Hat 9.0 is very well suited to the computer
hobbyist, the developer, the researcher, and to those corporate and home
users whose needs do not extend beyond productivity applications and
basic multimedia. For users who lack technical knowledge but still want
to use advanced multimedia such as immersive gaming, home video editing
and music composition, Macintosh or Windows is at present a superior
platform. Given the other advantages of Linux, I hope and believe that
this will change in future.
Regards,
leapinglizard |
