Since these two sources showed such significant differences, I decided to conduct my own survey. First, I went to National Underwriters online list of life and health companies (www.nationalunderwriter.com/links/lifelist.htm) and randomly selected 52 carriers from the list. I say randomly, but I did make certain I included all firms on that list that are well-known throughout the industry. I went to the public Web sites of these firms and examined the HTTP headers to determine which server was being used. My results are as follows:

Interesting. My little survey is not all that different from the Port80 results. I suspect that since the Netcraft survey takes in all active Web servers, it includes a lot of small business and personal sites, which probably are much more likely to be running free software. If you own a small business and all your Web site is doing is providing some basic information such as hours of operation and a nice little map, why not get a free distribution of Linux and another free distribution of Apache and throw up some static HTML. I also suspect a lot of hosting companies are running some flavor of Linux/Unix and Apache. That would serve to inflate the numbers, too. Whatever the reasons behind these disproportions, there is a strong indication a substantial portion of major U.S. business (including insurance companies) rely on Microsoft Web servers.

What Constitutes anEvil Empire?

Maybe the answer to that question depends on who your employer is. If you work for Scott McNealy (CEO of Sun Microsystems), its obviously Microsoft. If you work for Microsoft, it is a Janet Reno-run Justice Department. If you are a poor, out-of-work hacker, it is any software company that dares to charge for its goods. The fact of the matter is powerful, successful companies always are perceived as bad. Today that means Microsoft is the one to hate.

When the first PCs were being produced, IBM was the bad guyit already controlled the mainframe and mini markets, and next it was going to control the desktop market (although at that time, no one had any idea what the desktop market really was). Remember that when the government forced the breakup of AT&T in 1982, the Justice Department immediately dropped its long-running antitrust case against IBM. (It makes you question the actual motives behind antitrust suits.) When Bill Gates forced IBMs hand in only licensing IBM an operating system for its personal computers, he opened the door to real competition in the PC arena. If he had sold IBM the rights to DOS, IBM would have controlled that marketplace and probably would have maintained unreasonably high prices for the product as well as the subsequent service contracts (and we all might be using OS2!). Seriously, Gates foresight not only allowed Microsoft to become a very successful enterprise, it also allowed affordable PCs to become available to the masses. Those same affordable PCs allowed all the hackers out there the opportunity to learn and hone their skills. Just look at the example set by Apple Computerit never became ubiquitous because it wouldnt license its OS.

In my world, Wintel programmers get along with UNIX programmers (hey, C is Cright?), and we all get along with the Mac users down in art and composition. Its just these Linux and open source guys that are so critical. Dan Bricklin started a movement years ago when he gave away VisiCalc, and things have never been the same.

Open Source

January 16, 2003MandrakeSoft, the financially strapped creator of the Mandrake version of Linux, said Wednesday it filed for the French equivalent of bankruptcy protection from creditors.

This news tidbit struck home. In preparation for writing this piece on the UNIX/ Linux/Windows/Open Source debate, I installed a current version of Mandrake on a two-year-old 750 MHz PIII machine that had been running Windows 2000. More on that little experiment later. Mandrake has become one of the best-known Linux implementations around. I recently was discussing operating systems with a friend who is stuck in an OS/2 time warp. He mentioned he had just bought a PC from Wal-Mart that came preloaded with Mandrake V. 7. (Now that sounds mainstream to me.)

The pro-Linux press predictably reacted to the Man-drake news with an attitude. Even in the worst-case scenario (they say), which would mean Mandrake closes its doors, the software will continue to live because it is open source. Let me explain (or try to). Assume you have invested in a Mandrake release of Linux for your 3,000 desktops. And then assume the company from which you purchased this software and support (MandrakeSoft) goes out of business. Dont panicbecause the Linux community will rise up and provide ongoing support, updates, patches, and fixes for this software that someone took from the public domain, modified, and sold for a profit. OK, I see how this works now.

Excuse my cynicism. Open source is cool and fun and has led to wonderful developments in the software community. The problem is I work for an organization that requires me to provide operational software solutions 24/7. Shrink-wrap software is generally reliable, although we know it isnt perfect. I dont have the time, the staff, or the desire to get into the source code of an operating system running a live e-commerce server to try to track down a problem. If a real problem arises with a critical piece of software, I want to be able to hold a vendor responsible for getting that problem resolved. It would not be acceptable to post my problem to a message board and hope some altruistic genius will come along and rescue me.

I am well aware of the other arguments about using Wintel softwarethat its buggy and not secure. And that may be so, but it has been my experience that properly securing and hardening Web boxes and keeping your patches, hot fixes, and service packs up to date generally will keep your systems up and running (our Web servers were running just fine during the recent slammer attackonly thing was you couldnt get to them because other infected servers were taking all the bandwidth).

More Bickering

If a piece of software is free or low cost, it would appear it would be less expensive to maintain and operate that bit of software than something from, say, Microsoft. Thus the cognoscenti postulate that since it is much less expensive to acquire a Linux OS and an Apache Web server and an Office clone, then it follows that total cost of ownership (TCO) of these products will be less than using their Microsoft counterparts. Makes sense to me. Well, it didnt make sense to Microsoft, so it hired IDC to write a white paper comparing TCO for five common corporate workloads for Linux and Microsoft systems. The resultshold your breatha Windows 2000 environment had cost savings of 11 to 22 percent over a five-year period. Sounds like FUD to me (FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, and is a marketing technique used when a competitor launches a product that is possibly both better than yours and costs less).

I am not going to bother analyzing this bit of marketing fluff from Microsoft, but I will provide a brief synopsis. The five areas chosen for comparison were networking, file serving, printer serving, Web serving, and security. The TCO for Windows 2000 was less in all scenarios except the Web. The major expense leading to a higher TCO for Linux systems is manpowerthere arent enough skilled Linux administrators and programmers around right now, and there are swarms of Microsoft technicians. Hence, there is a steeper learning curve for the Linux product line. Those differences disappear when looking at Web servers because there already is a large installed base of UNIX/Apache servers.

Mandrake

I mentioned above installing a Mandrake release for some quick comparisons. The computer in question is a two-year-old laptop with the specifications mentioned previously. I did two clean Mandrake installations and two clean Windows 2000 installations. I didnt provide any manufacturers drivers or updates. I simply let both operating systems install themselves and let them make hardware and configuration choices when necessary. Both installs went smoothly, and I had fully operational systems when done. The network card was detected, and I was able to access the local network and the Internet immediately. One big difference was the default Mandrake setup left me with a fully operational suite of Office applications (Word Processor, Spreadsheet, and Presentation Software). I had to install Office 2000 to achieve the same functionality with Microsoft. Total cost: Mandrake under $100 with support; Windows 2000 plus Office, $700-plus. (OK, if you buy a new box from a manufacturer, you really dont pay that much for Win2K, but thats what you pay for a shrink-wrap.)

I had some minor problems configuring some of the Mandrake desktop simply because it was new to me. I was unable to get any of the included media software to play a DVD under Mandrake, but, hey, this is a business computerI shouldnt be watching Office Space at work, anyway.

All in all, I was very impressed with the ease of installation and use of the Mandrake desktop. I am puzzled, howeverwhat I ended up with was Windows running on Linux. I hate to think the future of Linux is just a cheap Windows substitute. One of the attractions of operating systems such as Linux is they are not Windows. They dont come with dozens of annoying and unnecessary wizards to do your work for you. There is something really weird about the geek operating system of choice trying to pass itself off as a different Windows clone.

Where Do You Go from Here?

It really is just smoke and mirrors right now. If you run a Microsoft shop or if you use a Solaris 9 system, you probably will be well served to stay where you are. Thats good advice for today. However, if Microsoft continues to pursue draconian licensing and upgrading policies, then your hand may be forced. I never would advocate using a truly free version of any bit of software in the corporate worldbut there are inexpensive commercial Linux distributions available. Red Hat is targeting the corporate world and is making some inroads. One of the major insurance carriers I tested in my little survey was running Apache on a Red Hat distribution. Red Hat Linux with Star Office certainly is a viable alternative to Microsoft. Linux will continue to invade the corporate IT environment, but I hope not just as a Windows clone. Use Linux for those applications for which it is best suited. At this time, that means rock-solid, secure Web servers. Microsoft still owns the end user, meaning that the average office worker is comfortable with the usual office suite of products. Never underestimate the resistance to change. And that resistance will mean less productivity. Our job as technology leaders in the world of business is not always to provide the most elegant solution even though that is what our gut is telling us. We must provide the most efficient solutions for our employers at this time while keeping a cautious eye on the future. As for me, I use Linux at home for fun. I run Windows software for productivity.