I use Linux in a variety of ways, business, home, hobby. Because of the ways I use Linux, I am glad there are choices in distros. A plethora of options to look through, see what works best for what situation.
I also work with a handful of others who are techs and admins and just helpful folks in general. We have found a somewhat common ground in which distros we use most often and in what environments.
Lately, we have taken to using the following distros for the different purposes in which we use Linux.
Commercial Business Desktop:
I have to say Suse/OpenSuse is the choice I have used and people I work with have chosen when looking for a commercially supported business use desktop. The implementations have altered between the Gnome and KDE usage but overall, Suse has a pretty solid presentation and choice of management tools and options to work with. Also, because it is a commercially based distro, the chances of it going away quickly are diminished. Support will be there should we opt to pay for it and with the release of 11, it has become a much more "usable" distro.
Commercial Home Distro:
It's almost a draw as to which commercially supported distro gets the most attention for the home user. We use for the most part, either Mandriva or Ubuntu. Both have support options and both have pretty active development teams. Mandriva has shown that even when things get tough, they make every effort to hang in there. Ubuntu is enjoying the benefits of having the "Media Darling" title and gets much attention. Although I have to admit, while these are probably our most used commercial distros for the home user, they are still not our top choice for home use recommendations, unless the user simply insists on commercial support. Then, it's one of these two.
Commercial Server Distro.
Hands down, for a commercial Linux server, it's RHEL. Again, we have to pause to say that is only if the user in question absolutely insists on going for commercially supported "Brand name" buying. Despite some security issues recently, RHEL shows quick responsiveness and attention to customer needs by not denying or hiding concerns, but instead by pointing out the issue, fixing it and alerting customers as to how to get things right. They have been probably one of the most consist, longest lived commercial distributions around and doesn't appear likely to disappear anytime soon.
Non-Commercial Business Desktop:
Many small businesses, new startups small businesses and "adventurous" business types want to use Linux but still don't want to pay or have the ability to pay for the "boxed" commercial distro. Because of this, I will have to say, for a business desktop, OpenSuse still fits the bill here. Now, once we have left the commercially supported realm of distros here, almost any distro can be modified to fit a businesses needs. Most distros are shipped for use as a home use distro with games and multi-media apps, fancy graphics and 3d enhancement which most businesses don't really need or care about, unless they are trying to display a certain image to their clientèle who may regularly see the laptop or desktop monitor due to the nature of the business. This applies to OpenSuse as well.
Non-Commercial Home Desktop:
There are two distros that share the most usage in this category. PCLinuxOS and Linux Mint. Both of these are very user friendly, and pretty much are usable "out of the box" so to speak. The install processs and setup have been made very user friendly, they both use the synaptic front end with apt package manger which makes for easy locating and installing of new software and both have hard-working communities of people updating and adding new pkgs and apps for a wide variety of interests and uses.
Mint is based on Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS is based on Mandriva, but each brings a unique and creative spin to their upstream bases by almost completely redesigning the presentation and selection of tools. Both have communities of helpful and dedicated people who enjoy using Linux and go to lengths to help others and share what they learn.
Non-Commercial Server:
Again, here there is a tie between CentOS and Debian. CentOS is essentially the same as RHEL, it uses the same source packages and strips away the name branding of RHEL, leaving a "free" version that is very stable and dependable. Debian, as always, is a cornerstone of the Linux community with a reputation for dependability and stability. Both have very active core groups of developers and community members who take Linux development very seriously. Both also have very serious communities who can provide a wealth of help and support and they maintain a bit more "straight to business" attitude in their forums. It is always good to do searches and a little homework before asking for assistance because the chances are that your issue has probably been asked and answered due to the large number of users who interact in those forums and the expectation of the community that it is incumbent on users to do as much as they can for themselves.
Hobbyist distros:
Hobbyist here is much the same as the notion of the "super-user" or people who are very familiar with computers, applications and operating systems and try to tweak as much performance as possible from their system. Often the hobbyist find entertainment in their pursuits of tweaking perfection as well.
Debian also fits in this category as well as Sidux, and Sabayon. Fedora is included here as well. These distros seem to appeal to the users who don't need to have a uniform desktop required by a workplace or school, etc and they prefer to include the latest and more exotic apps and pkgs that are often called "bleeding edge".
Another level to this category is the "Geeks Dream" distributions for the "ultra-hobbyists" who are often developers, technicians and involved in the computer industry/community on a regular basis. These are folks who make computers "macho". For them, it's a contest to who can script better blindfolded or compile a new app faster than the other person. Two of the most used of these distros we see are Gentoo and Arch.
In conclusion:
This is not a definitive list nor is it conclusive. This is just what I and others I work with have concluded are the most commonly used among our clients/customers/users and the main reasons why they are selected. There are several distributions in each of these categories that may provide a unique and appreciable experience to a user individually for artistic or particular needs reasons.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Monday, August 18, 2008
Big clouds and little clouds
Cloud computing is a hot topic. Again. The notion comes and goes, the buzzword hits the charts, then fades away after awhile.
What are people thinking about now when they talk about "Cloud Computing"?
I remember as a young computer tech student oh about 15 years ago. We were learning on Novell Netware 4, which was the industry standard and Windows 3.11 was the "new" thing.
Novell's big thing was also cloud computing at the time.
Yes by golly, You would be able to set up servers that provided apps and authentication ( Novell's biggest push was in NDS or Novell Directory Service" ) as well as storage and many other services locally, and even be able to provide access to these same services not only in the workplace as an "intranet" but on the Internet as well.
Sound familiar?
Of course, back then the focus was still primarily on the business intranet, but the spread of the internet and potential to tap that wide spread access had huge meaning to global businesses and enterprises with spread out staff.
These days we have "Web 2.0", Software as A Service ( think Google Docs ) and a vast array of newly arriving tools and service providers, eager to provide you fantastic services all online at a very reasonable price.
I like to think of these as "big cloud" providers. They want to do it all for us. One stop shopping for our software and access needs.
However, there are my personal favorites, the "little clouds". Little clouds are businesses and organizations who maintain local services and apps either on their own physical location or through the use of contracted hosting providers.
These little clouds provide access to a variety of web apps allowing staff to collaborate on documents and scheduling, email and instant messaging. A plethora of software is now available allowing the mid and small sized businesses and organizations to host their own sites and services. Further allowing them the most control over content and appearance, how strict or lax security and access will be. I like being able to say that GNU/Linux is one of the most proactive supporters of software such as these and is always available for the company that dares take their business network interests into their own hands.
Can Google's servers go down, leaving users with no access to their documents and tools? It absolutely can and it has. Can your local servers, providing similar services go down and leave your users out temporarily? They sure can. So, which risk is greater, using the "super-provider" or serving your self?
If Google goes down, you have to wait for them to get back up. "Sorry, can't help you just now, thousands of other users are hammering at us as well while we try to get things back up as soon as possible. Thanks for calling."
If your server goes down, you call your local tech to get his tukus in gear, get the hardware or whatever it otherwise requires, dust off those regularly scheduled backups you've been religiously doing and get back up hopefully quicker than the "big boys" because you have less to fix.
Can "Big Clouds" cost you a lot of money? You betcha. They are offering a premium service and all of it on their hardware. How does that cost spread out compared to the cost of hosting your own servers locally? Depending on your needs and hardware requirements, ( and how much you pay your local tech )it can cost a lot also ( although, if you are using GNU/Linux software, at least you don't have to have per user licenses, etc.. hounding you ) and over all, the costs may come out high for both solutions.
So then what do you do?
What does local control and specific customization worth to you? What does the likelihood of recovering from a downed server faster than the "Big Clouds" can mean for your business?
If those are very important, or at least more important than letting someone else make those choices for you and your business, then you might seriously consider following the "little cloud" route.
Only you and your business can determine what is the best path to take, based on anticipated costs and the value of not doing the brunt of the work yourself locally.
Me? I prefer to ride on 'little clouds" any day. It makes me feel like I'm actually doing something.
What are people thinking about now when they talk about "Cloud Computing"?
I remember as a young computer tech student oh about 15 years ago. We were learning on Novell Netware 4, which was the industry standard and Windows 3.11 was the "new" thing.
Novell's big thing was also cloud computing at the time.
Yes by golly, You would be able to set up servers that provided apps and authentication ( Novell's biggest push was in NDS or Novell Directory Service" ) as well as storage and many other services locally, and even be able to provide access to these same services not only in the workplace as an "intranet" but on the Internet as well.
Sound familiar?
Of course, back then the focus was still primarily on the business intranet, but the spread of the internet and potential to tap that wide spread access had huge meaning to global businesses and enterprises with spread out staff.
These days we have "Web 2.0", Software as A Service ( think Google Docs ) and a vast array of newly arriving tools and service providers, eager to provide you fantastic services all online at a very reasonable price.
I like to think of these as "big cloud" providers. They want to do it all for us. One stop shopping for our software and access needs.
However, there are my personal favorites, the "little clouds". Little clouds are businesses and organizations who maintain local services and apps either on their own physical location or through the use of contracted hosting providers.
These little clouds provide access to a variety of web apps allowing staff to collaborate on documents and scheduling, email and instant messaging. A plethora of software is now available allowing the mid and small sized businesses and organizations to host their own sites and services. Further allowing them the most control over content and appearance, how strict or lax security and access will be. I like being able to say that GNU/Linux is one of the most proactive supporters of software such as these and is always available for the company that dares take their business network interests into their own hands.
Can Google's servers go down, leaving users with no access to their documents and tools? It absolutely can and it has. Can your local servers, providing similar services go down and leave your users out temporarily? They sure can. So, which risk is greater, using the "super-provider" or serving your self?
If Google goes down, you have to wait for them to get back up. "Sorry, can't help you just now, thousands of other users are hammering at us as well while we try to get things back up as soon as possible. Thanks for calling."
If your server goes down, you call your local tech to get his tukus in gear, get the hardware or whatever it otherwise requires, dust off those regularly scheduled backups you've been religiously doing and get back up hopefully quicker than the "big boys" because you have less to fix.
Can "Big Clouds" cost you a lot of money? You betcha. They are offering a premium service and all of it on their hardware. How does that cost spread out compared to the cost of hosting your own servers locally? Depending on your needs and hardware requirements, ( and how much you pay your local tech )it can cost a lot also ( although, if you are using GNU/Linux software, at least you don't have to have per user licenses, etc.. hounding you ) and over all, the costs may come out high for both solutions.
So then what do you do?
What does local control and specific customization worth to you? What does the likelihood of recovering from a downed server faster than the "Big Clouds" can mean for your business?
If those are very important, or at least more important than letting someone else make those choices for you and your business, then you might seriously consider following the "little cloud" route.
Only you and your business can determine what is the best path to take, based on anticipated costs and the value of not doing the brunt of the work yourself locally.
Me? I prefer to ride on 'little clouds" any day. It makes me feel like I'm actually doing something.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Software as a Service is a key to Linux Growth
There are many very good sites that offer software that many Linux and other Opensource OS's can use to expand their usefulness and presence in the average Joe's home desktop.
Sites like American Greetings design and print allows people to sign up for a yearly membership and print commercial quality paper goods in their own home. Often, the home software version of this can cost anywhere between $20 to $100 and become outdated each year as the newest version is introduced.
Millions of users like to use and want to be able to print greeting cards at home. I am not one of them, but my wife is. So are many people I know. They consider it big time saver and have the opportunity to customize and make a card or printed item more personal by having access to software like this.
What other kinds of software is missing from the free software world that hasn't made it over yet? How many of these are available as a service? A great many of them.
So, what's the problem? Why aren't Linux and other OpenSource users signing up en masse to use these services?
The vast majority of them intentionally design their websites to work specifically with proprietary software. On most of these sites, if you go to look at system requirements, they will brazenly tell you their website is optimized to work with Microsoft or Apple software.
Now, any first year web design student can tell you that there are design standards in place that designers are encouraged to follow that will make a website software independent. in other words, there are recognized and known ways to make these sites work with any and all software thereby making access available to anyone, regardless of the OS or browser they use.
Wouldn't this make more sense to a company who wants to sell more memberships or units or whatever from their website? To make it as accessible as possible and not cut off potential customers, especially when they don' t have to?
Why then do these companies not only persist in supporting a legally recognized monopolist and practitioner of unethical business tactics, but actively promote that relationship. They actually brag on it.
Is it to have the country club effect? By making their product exclusive, they make more people want it because they have to pay more or socially conform to get access to it? It's been a recognized and highly used sales strategy for years.
Create an artificial cap or limit on supply to increase the assumed demand and maintain a certain floor on cost as well.
Software as a service is booming and is actually a very good idea for delivery of services and product.
On the other hand, the OS and other aspects like file storage and security should stay local and have nothing to offer but corporate and government snooping and mishandling of data, your data.
Oh yes, the popular argument against that is that our personal data is already spread across the entire world and web so why should we care now about our data.
For the same reason people say they want to cure AIDS and cancer and any other mas social problem. Just because it exists, doesn't mean it is acceptable. At some point in the future we want to arrest that situation and cause it to cease to exist or exist in a controllable manner. Maybe the effort is futile, but it is worthwhile to work toward regardless.
Please, call, email, write to the consumer dept of your preferred software/service provider and inform them they they are limiting themselves and only enabling these monopolistic companies to maintain their stranglehold on future development and access to goods and services.
Sites like American Greetings design and print allows people to sign up for a yearly membership and print commercial quality paper goods in their own home. Often, the home software version of this can cost anywhere between $20 to $100 and become outdated each year as the newest version is introduced.
Millions of users like to use and want to be able to print greeting cards at home. I am not one of them, but my wife is. So are many people I know. They consider it big time saver and have the opportunity to customize and make a card or printed item more personal by having access to software like this.
What other kinds of software is missing from the free software world that hasn't made it over yet? How many of these are available as a service? A great many of them.
So, what's the problem? Why aren't Linux and other OpenSource users signing up en masse to use these services?
The vast majority of them intentionally design their websites to work specifically with proprietary software. On most of these sites, if you go to look at system requirements, they will brazenly tell you their website is optimized to work with Microsoft or Apple software.
Now, any first year web design student can tell you that there are design standards in place that designers are encouraged to follow that will make a website software independent. in other words, there are recognized and known ways to make these sites work with any and all software thereby making access available to anyone, regardless of the OS or browser they use.
Wouldn't this make more sense to a company who wants to sell more memberships or units or whatever from their website? To make it as accessible as possible and not cut off potential customers, especially when they don' t have to?
Why then do these companies not only persist in supporting a legally recognized monopolist and practitioner of unethical business tactics, but actively promote that relationship. They actually brag on it.
Is it to have the country club effect? By making their product exclusive, they make more people want it because they have to pay more or socially conform to get access to it? It's been a recognized and highly used sales strategy for years.
Create an artificial cap or limit on supply to increase the assumed demand and maintain a certain floor on cost as well.
Software as a service is booming and is actually a very good idea for delivery of services and product.
On the other hand, the OS and other aspects like file storage and security should stay local and have nothing to offer but corporate and government snooping and mishandling of data, your data.
Oh yes, the popular argument against that is that our personal data is already spread across the entire world and web so why should we care now about our data.
For the same reason people say they want to cure AIDS and cancer and any other mas social problem. Just because it exists, doesn't mean it is acceptable. At some point in the future we want to arrest that situation and cause it to cease to exist or exist in a controllable manner. Maybe the effort is futile, but it is worthwhile to work toward regardless.
Please, call, email, write to the consumer dept of your preferred software/service provider and inform them they they are limiting themselves and only enabling these monopolistic companies to maintain their stranglehold on future development and access to goods and services.
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