So, why should someone be interested in Linux?
With the advent of Windows XP and Office XP from Microsoft, there will be no more copying of one piece of software to multiple machines. It was never legal to do so! But let us get back to the real world. Remember the early days of the PC? Your job required knowing how to program, write documents, and do project estimations with a spreadsheet. Whether the boss knew or not, the software took a trip home as either a floppy copy or the real thing.
Daring Bill Gates to come knock down your front door with the Microsoft software police! Well, that didn't happen. The software was changing so fast with so many vendors making similar products and with no standardization. You would see your company buy software over and over again. Your pockets aren't that deep.
Then Windows 95 and Office 97 came in to being - standardization, easier to use. Standardization means everybody buying from one company to insure " compatibility " . How many PCs were IBM/Intel compatibles, that truly were? You get burned a few times, you learn. A cash outlay of $600 to Microsoft would give you ownership of an executable operating system and programs. If there were bugs or features you wanted to add, you couldn't do it. Still, like buying a typewriter, the software worked mostly. Instead of refining the product, they offered new? Office 95, 97, 2000, 2002, XP. Windows 3.0, 3.11 WKGroup, 95, 98, Me, NT, W2K, XP.
Up until XP, bringing home the office or friend's copy (illegal) was possible. How could people live with themselves? Well, you should be able to sleep at night now with XP making it impossible for you to keep that illegal copy running for more than a few days. Windows XP server doesn't exist to the public as of today 12/27/2002, but something is probably forthcoming. One of the cheaper vendors sells Windows 2000 Server with 10 Clients for $1016, Office XP Pro $493. You'll have to pay $493 for each workstation plus Windows XP (Pro $275), if not upgrading.
That is why you might start thinking about Linux.
Linux can be downloaded for free. Linux has OpenOffice.org which produced Office 97ish type programs that save in Office97 formats and server processes up the gazoo! HTTP (web server), FTP, SMTP (e-mail), DNS, file server, and others.
Just as with UNIX, there are several versions of Linux from several Organizations (RedHat, SuSe, Mandrake, Debian, etc.) The major Linux difference is not different commands or programs, but how the programs are loaded, where they reside on disk. A sure downside to standardization. RedHat came out with the RPM (RedHat Package Manager). RPM loads the programs like Windows. In Windows, parts of the files associated with the program go into many different directories (C:\Program files\.., C:\Program files\Commmon; C:Windows\system32, etc.) The same is true for Linux programs. The RPM keeps track of what went where so that the program can be updated or removed entirely from the system. The other Linux organizations do it differently : (There is a lot of work in setting up internet servers. Most of the work is done to keep hackers out. Hackers seem to attack Microsoft internet products quite frequently. Nobody should condone such behavior. What a waste! The internet is loaded with all kinds viruses that if nothing else cause useless traffic for everyone. If you could monitor port 80 (HTTP) you would see the Nimda virus with great frequency.
Once everything is setup and locked down, wouldn't it be nice to copy all of that onto the next server? Non-recurring "computer geek" costs spread among several servers. Just mirror the original (RAID 1) then put the copy in another PC and let the new hardware be found. Can't do that with Microsoft!
Beyond the server applications, user applications (Accounting, CAD, etc.) are harder to find in Linux. Redhat's 2002 Annual Report echoes that lament. The GNU General Public License and similar licenses generally permit anyone to copy, modify and distribute the software, subject only to the restriction that any resulting or derivative work is made available to the public under the same terms.
There is a "Third World" out there using Linux. Some of us in the "Second World" may jump ship, not only for a second choice in server operating systems, but because we can change out own futures.