In this article, we’re going to talk about some of the features
Multi User
we’ve also mentioned the ability for multi-user in the early days of operating systems most of the time you could only have a single user logged on.
Well early in the game Linux was able to develop a system that allowed multiple users or multiple consoles to run side by side. In effect sharing the hardware and coming along with a multi-user is of course the multitasking giving us the ability to run a spreadsheet our email program and browse the Internet all at the same time.
I know we all take that for granted now but in their early development days of Linux. This was definitely a difficult feature to come by another one of the top features that make Linux so popular in the IT community is that.
More Secure
it is considered secure now. it’s been a long time standing that Linux is for the most part considered more secure than Microsoft Windows. And I think the biggest reason for this is that Linux has been such a small market share that it makes more sense to develop viruses and hacks for the Microsoft operating system.
Because you’re much more likely to find those in places you might be browsing. But as Linux is becoming more and more popular that security might wary just a little bit. So it’s secure at the moment simply because it’s less popular than the Microsoft Windows platform and all of the vulnerabilities that are out there for Microsoft don’t affect Linux.
So you hear about all these virus outbreaks and all of these different hacks coming out most of them are not going to affect Linux. Now as we mentioned before the variety of compatible software is definitely an important feature. The reason is that has come available to us is simply because of the fan base of the Linux operating system.
Open Source
Now people realize that it’s free and they say well you know I’ll spend some time developing some software for this and they do and they share that with the community. Whereas in a Microsoft environment you see individual software developers develop their software for a specific Microsoft version. Such as Windows 2000 or
The problem you run into there is it limits the market on the different variations of that because of copyright protection and things of that nature. But in the Linux
Free to distribute
If you’re a developer and you post it out there and say you know anybody that wants to download this and use it as free to do so you’re free to distribute it or sell it or even modify it and repackage your own version.
You’d be pretty hard pressed to find a major software vendor that will allow you to do that on the Microsoft Windows platform. So that’s one of the reasons that the software base has expanded to the amount that it has in the Linux environment. As we mentioned the cost or how inexpensive Linux is now there are distributions that are going to be paid by your spaces.
Such as SUSE Linux which is developed by Novell can cost you anywhere from 60 to 80 dollars for a desktop Linux distribution now. Because it is released under the GNU that allows you to modify it if necessary or make any kind of changes. Redistribute it those type things but most of the times your companies are going to lean more toward that free operating system things like the older versions of Red Hat or the newer versions of fedora core.
Reduce the Cost
so that reduces like I mentioned before the total cost of ownership and the reason that that’s important for companies is they want to be able to have a good stable supported platform that they don’t have to keep paying for over and over such as upgrading the operating system every few years .
In reducing that total cost of ownership, it makes Linux a very appealing solution now. Because Linux has become so popular people have found many different uses for it.
Most Linux distributions support various types of installations and really the difference between desktop graphics install or a workstation install etc is going to be the actual packages installed the Linux operating system itself will remain unchanged in the background.
You can manipulate what software comes with the system and you do that based on the role that that particular machine is going to play. Now another major benefit the Linux operating system is its support for older hardware.
Can be installed on older Hardware
Because Linux has been developed for so many years and by so many different people have found needs to run Linux on many different things. They’re even running Linux on cell phones and other various oddball hardware components in addition to older computers. So you couldn’t install Windows XP on 133 megahertz system with 32 mega RAM and imagine it to run properly.
Whereas there are many Linux distributions out there that would run very well on that level of hardware so the ability to run on that what we consider to be legacy hardware is extremely valuable to us now.
Support GUI and CLI
Because the command line interface with a CLI is somewhat familiar to some of the older DOS components and DOS commands it’s usually a pretty easy transition to make from a DOS user to a command line user and in addition a lot of the Linux distributions have been created with a graphical user interface that can be configured to be similar to the Microsoft Windows environment.
Stability
That makes a pretty easy transition for our users in the field. So that they don’t have a huge learning curve. Now the stability of Linux has been one of the key features. That they’ve bragged about for many years and for the most part it’s developed with stability in mind. But why developer support is another huge feature that is beneficial to us essentially because if there’s a particular piece of hardware out there you can bet somebody else has had the need for support and has probably developed a product that works and that also goes for software and the backend kernel development and pretty much anything you can imagine.
I mean there are even Frye
Having multiple networking protocols
It contain multiple networking protocols like TCP/IP, IPX/SPX, Appletalk, AX.25.
