Blogging Ottinger (tim)

According to a recent ArsTechnica article there is a strong uptake in the use of open source in the US and Europe.

In the difficult economy here, US companies seem to be using open source primarily for bottom-line cost savings. In Europe, however, the decision swings towards certain open source projects because of their quality and flexibility.

In the desktop space, the report is that Linux desktops are being adopted in a more grass-roots kind of way. American companies pride themselves on imitating their competitors, and apparently that is significant. The article says that

… employee demand and sucessful deployments by competitors are more relevant than cost savings and customization as far as Linux [desktop] adoption is concerned

I also stumbled upon another article from O’Reilly about reasons people adopt linux. Tom Adelstein points out that it has a lot less to do with rebellion against Microsoft than one might think.

Well, however you slice it, there are more than one or two good reasons to use Linux.

Personally, I like being able to share it with other people. I use Debian, and I can copy and share it as much as I want, and the Debian project is pleased with me doing so. You can put it on your kids’ computers, on your wife’s and grandparents’ computers, on your laptop AND your desktop, all from the same disk (or network source), all without paying any licensing fees. Being able to share matters a lot when you’re a geek household with more computers than people.

I have to admit that I was pretty fed up with Micro$oft, especially back in the day when Kempin ran the OEM affairs, and during the antitrust trials. I don’t hate them, but I didn’t like the way they were doing business (especially their licensing). I still prefer using any alternative.

I use the Debian stable release when I want stability (duh) and the unstable release for casual use. I don’t mind so much when new things are a bit broken for a little while. I like to be close to the leading edge for my fun stuff.

I like how it performs, even with limited hardware. I was surprised to find that my computer at work (running Windows) was much slower than my laptop (running Debian) even though the work desktop is a desktop, and has as much ram, and has a much more modern hard disk, and has a faster processor. My main linux computer at home is a 450MHz, 294MB RAM, 20 GB disk machine, and performs at least as well as my work computer does in Windows. Oh, I booted up a puppy linux live CD at work, and it was killer fast. It figures.

But one of the big killer reasons I use linux is that it has a lot of free programming tools and languages. I can do so much more for free in Linux than I could possibly afford to do in Windows, and I can copy all of my tools to all of my systems without risking the wrath of some west-coast lawyers. I actually have to go delete the ones I’m not using, since I installed everything under the sun. I may not learn Forth and Haskell and Sather this year. I’m still learning ruby, groovy, and java, refreshing on C++, and playing in Python. I promised myself to learn smalltalk. It’s a lot of fun, and it’s all available for free (including web frameworks and gui frameworks). Oh, and did I mention PostgreSQL? You need a good database sometimes, and that’s what it is.