Ed Weinberg edw@detel.com 914-713-7222

Linux
By Ed Weinberg

What?

• Originally developed by student Linus Torvolds in '92.
• Now includes the volunteer work of over 1000 students and professional programmers
• Gave it away on the internet with a "copyleft"! (GNU)
• Several companies packaged it in "distributions" (www.caldera.com, www.redhat.com)
• Predicted by IDC as that "commercial shipments of Linux will grow faster than the total shipments of all other...operating environments" (www.idc.com/Data/Software/content/SW033199PR.htm).
• Runs on more hardware and platforms than any other O/S. (I86, Alpha, PPC, StrongARM, Palm II, Ipaq, 68000, Psion, Cisco)
• Runs on "Legacy Equipment" (386 with 16MB of RAM).

Who Supports it?

• Netscape
• IBM (servers and DB2 database) Linux will run ALL IBM software on All IBM hardware from PC's to mainframes...and even a watch!.
• Compaq (servers, Ipaq www.handhelds.org)
• Hewlett Packard (servers)
• Oracle, Informix, Sybase
• Novell, IBM, Compaq invest in Red Hat.
• SCO (announced compatibility in next rev)
• BSD (announced compatibility in next rev)

Is it stable?

• The most popular operating system on the internet. (used by over 36% of the internet)
• Comes with BIND (for DNS) which is used by over 90% of the internet.
• Comes with Sendmail (Mail server) which is used by over 70% of the internet.
• Comes with Apache Web server which is used by over 65% and has been embraced by IBM.
• According to IDC in 1999 24% of servers shipped ran Linux, 4.1% of clients shipped ran linux, and 5% of all clients shipped ran Macintosh.
  • Web serving
  • Windows networking
  • Multiprocessor systems in the "Enterprise"
• NASA is using it to contol automatic docking on the new space station.
• NOAH uses a Linux cluster to calculate their hourly weather reports.
• Cisco Systems uses it for print servers world wide.
• It generated the special effects for the movie Titanic.
• On 4/8/99 Dell shipped 1,200 pre-instslled Linux PCs to Burlington Coat Factory.
• Home Depot is using Linux because they liked the ability to remotely manage the computers.

Linux as a server

• Web
• FTP
• Win95 networking (SMB) File and Printer server
• Netware server
• Easy remote administration
• X11 server (similar to NT Terminal server)
• Proxy
• PPP/SLIP/UUCP/VPN
• DHCP
• WINS
• SQL databases
• IMAP4
• Kerberos

Linux as a workstation

• 4+ Office suites available: Applix, Corell Wordperfect, StarOffice, Koffice
• Command line or GUI (choose your desktop!): KDE, Gnome, other)
• GNU Image Manipulation Program (Gimp)
• Stable
• Great for network environment.

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