dive into mark

Linux software may be free, but does that mean you don’t have to pay for it? [via Scripting News]

Amazingly, this is a very good article, explaining to CFOs what this Linux thing is that everybody seems to be talking about. IBM’s recent surge of support seems to have done exactly what IBM wanted: propelled Linux into the upper echelons of the board rooms and executive suites.

However, I laughed heartily at quotes like this: My belief is that very few corporations using open-source technology on a widespread basis have downloaded it for free. Ha! If it lets you sleep better at night to think that your IT infrastructure is orderly and organized, well, do whatever it takes. But let me tell you how Linux got into the infrastructure at my day job:

Like most other development shops, we have a lot of software. We were keeping installers and such on our backup domain controller, because that’s where somebody started an “installers” directory and shared it and nobody had any better ideas, and due to budget constraints, we couldn’t afford a separate server.

As we grew, the amount of software we had to keep around for various projects also grew, and we started running out of space. My tech-savvy project manager poked around online and found three 30 GB IDE drives for some ridiculously low price, and bought them himself, with the wildly optimistic aim of getting the company to reimburse him later. We found an old 266 MHz Pentium in the corner, dusted it off, and wired up the drives.

Then he came to me and said, “hey, I got these drives, and I put them in this old machine, and I want to install Red Hat and move all our installers onto it.” And I said, “Cool, how can I help?” And he said, “Download Red Hat and burn it onto a CD for me. I’ll install it and set up the networking, but then I want you to install Samba, set it up, and move all the software over.”

Keep in mind that my only previous experience with Linux was briefly playing with it on a home machine about three years ago. But I downloaded Red Hat (7.0 was the latest at the time, which was horribly broken in many evil ways) via LinuxISO.org, and burned it, and he installed it, and I immediately updated about 50 packages to get it to a usable condition, and installed Samba (from source because I didn’t know about RPMFind.net yet), and installed Python and Apache and a few other essential packages, and moved everything over, and sent out an e-mail telling people where all the installers went. And it’s been running ever since.

Linux works. It does what it does and gets out of your way. If you think you’re not running Linux in your company, you’re an idiot. Not all Linux servers come in a box. Ours didn’t even come as a server.

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