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Why Linux ?

This Linux distribution has been compiled due to the ever growing need for reliable high quality, good value software. We feel that the current commercial operating systems and major applications are simply over priced and offer relatively poor value for the purpose that they are intended to serve.
The operating system is and should always be unimportant to the user, all that really matters is whether or not the desired task can be easily accomplished. The operating system should be unintrusive into the users experience of a system.
Linux was selected primarily for its reliability and configurablity, as an added bonus, it is also essentially free to distribute.
We have agreements to distribute additional world class software with our distribution, StarOffice (compatible with Microsoft Office and Lotus Smart Suite amongst others) and Netscape Communicator. These agreements and the design of our Linux distribution mean that the majority of computing needs are catered for, namely office applications and internet access.

Reasons to Use Linux

Linux is rapidly becoming the choice OS for many professionals, researchers, and hobbyists. This page explains why Linux could be a good choice for you.

Stability

Linux has legendary stability. This comes from its true flat 32-bit (64-bit on some systems) architecture. Linux's memory management is far superior to that of Windows 95. It employs complete memory protection, meaning that it is not possible for one program to overwrite the memory of another. This behaviour is one of the most common causes of crashes under Windows.

Furthermore, the open nature of the Linux kernel means that it has been reviewed and debugged by thousands of people and companies world wide. This tremendous benefit is evident whenever you use Linux. You will see none of the typical crashes that you get from Windows. There is no "Blue Screen" error in Linux because those errors simply do not occur.

Networking

In today's Internet-connected world, it makes little sense to use an operating system with only a buggy and partial implementation of TCP/IP. TCP/IP is the protocol spoken on the Internet and many corporate intranets.

Linux, and the Unix/POSIX platform in general, trace their networking roots back to the early 80s. The support for Internet networking is far better, more evolved, and faster than that in Windows 95.

Consider a few examples. With any Linux distribution, right out of the box, you can:

Set up a router, firewall, or bridge
Provide Network Address Translation (NAT) for your network
Run the world's most powerful mail server
Run the world's most popular web server, Apache
Run an FTP server
Provide timesharing and true graphical remote login capabilities

Not only that, but all of these capabilities are fully functional and non-buggy. There is no need to shell out huge sums of money for partially working solutions. Furthermore, Windows platforms are simply not capable of doing some of the items above.

This is one reason why Linux is an ideal platform for an ISP -- the people that require the most heavy-duty networking servers. Over 50% of new ISPs being created across the country are using Linux.

In another interesting article, Computer Currents has a report that starts out with the words "Linux beats NT at its own game". The article further goes on to explain how the total cost for a Linux server was $49.95 while an NT server doing the equivalent task costs over $4600.

Cross-platform

Linux can speak not only to the huge installed base of Internet-speaking machines, but also to various other machines in your location. Linux can talk with, and act as a file or print server for, Microsoft Networking systems, LAN Manager systems, NetWare, OS/2 Warp Connect, Sun, UNIX ware, SGI, NT, and many more.

Performance

Linux has been designed from the ground up to be fast. Operating systems such as Windows 95 carry around a lot of 16-bit baggage from the DOS era, which really hurts performance.

Linux features a number of technological advancements that have not yet made it into the Windows line of operating systems. All these combine to make an extremely fast operating system. Here are a few:

The merged VM/buffer cache integrates the disk and directory caching with the virtual memory subsystem. This allows the disk cache to dynamically shrink and expand as the demands on the system change. This produces a minimum of swapping and a maximal hit ratio.
Linux's second extended file system (aka ext2fs) is designed in such a way that disk fragmentation is prevented 98% of the time on many disks. This means that there is no need to have any sort of defragmentation tool; the file system does such a good job of avoiding fragmentation that such a tool would be a waste of time.
Not only that, but the file system contains many other optimisations that make it much faster and more reliable than Windows' FAT or NTFS systems.
Linux has superior multitasking compared to Windows. This fact is readily apparent when one attempts to do something that simply cannot be done on Windows. For instance, at Wichita State, there are some login servers. One server, a Pentium Pro with 128 meg of RAM, is capable of handling over 70 simultaneous logins. That is, 70 people can be running their compilers, editors, programs, and games all at once with almost no degradation in performance to the other 69 people. Windows does not even have the facilities to permit more than one login at a time, let alone good enough multitasking to permit 70.

Linux's legendary low resource requirements allow it to act is a low- to mid-range web server even on hardware as old as a 386. There is an interesting report available detailing the use of Linux as a server on low-end machines. Considering that Linux can cause a 386 with 8 meg of RAM to serve dozens of Web hits per second, imagine what it can do with a Pentium Pro or Alpha server!

Power and Functionality

No other operating system even comes close to matching Linux in terms of power and functionality. Here are a few of Linux's unique features:

The virtual file system allows Linux to support a huge range of file systems from Linux and other operating systems -- about 25 in all. This includes FAT and VFAT from DOS/Windows, NTFS from NT, ufs from BSD-derived systems, HPFS from OS/2, HFS from Mac, the Network File System, the SMB system from Microsoft, ISO9660 for CDs, and many more. In a location where there are computers from different platforms installed, the ability to exchange data with ease can be very important.
The X Window System is the GUI of choice in Linux. It is unlike any Microsoft GUI because of one important principle: X was designed from the ground up as a networked GUI. This seemingly small item makes a huge difference. For instance:

You can change your user interface dynamically -- without even restarting any applications. Your window manager controls the appearance of programs on the screen. While Windows offers you only one window manager, Linux offers you dozens. You can instantly switch Linux from a look that makes it appear exactly like Windows 95 to a much more powerful futuristic feel.
X allows you to run programs on many different computers around the office and around the globe. These programs can all display on your machine and interact with you as if they're running on your own computer. You can have programs from your computer and many others appearing on the same display at once -- and they are so perfectly integrated that you can't tell the difference.
Powerful toolkits and development tools such as GTK and Tk allow developers to create state-of-the-art graphical applications in far less time than it takes to create a similar application in Windows.

Debian GNU/Linux boasts one of the most powerful package management systems available today. With this system, not only does it take only seconds to install or remove any application, it also is possible to upgrade the operating system with ease. Even for a major system upgrade, the computer often doesn't need to be rebooted. For servers, the server may be down for only a few seconds instead of the hours or days it takes to upgrade a large Windows server.
Linux gives you a choice with everything. You get to pick which interface to use -- graphical or shell -- and you can dynamically switch between them or use them both simultaneously. You can also pick which graphical interface to use, and switch among those without closing any applications. All interfaces are fully customisable. You get to pick your favourite text editor from a selection of dozens. Windows gives you one inadequate editor -- Notepad. Linux users can pick from dozens of tools to do word processing and typesetting. Microsoft provides one, Word, and even that pales in comparison to LaTeX/LyX on Linux.

Ease of Administration

Linux is ideal for large computer installations. The reason is that Linux's other features, such as powerful security and package management, make administering a Linux machine far easier than a corresponding Windows machine. Let's examine a few reasons for this.

Linux makes it impossible for any person to accidentley mess up the operating system. With Windows, it is trivial to totally mess up the GUI or even the entire system. Under Linux, it is possible to let people have full privileges to get all their work done but impossible to mess up the system.
Linux is immune to most viruses for the same reason. Viruses cannot penetrate Linux's security any more than users can.
Linux's logical file system layout prevents many headaches. Linux's security model strictly enforces a separation between applications and the user's data saved in them, and between one user's data and another's data. This provides a number of advantages:

Backing up a system is as easy as backing up the "home" directory tree and the system configuration area. There is no need to back up anything else because it can be restored from the CD in minutes. This reduces the backup time and cost substantially.
There is true isolation between users. No more problems with one person changing settings and bothering others with the change. Due to Linux's security model, all changes effect only the one individual user (unless the administrator wants to set global defaults).
It is always easy to find data files. They are not buried in some arcane path with the application itself; rather, they are stored in the user's personal data area (called the home directory in Linux).
Once you know how the file system is laid out, you can instantly tell where to find a particular application's executables, documentation, or libraries -- even though a Linux system can contain millions of files without any difficulty.

All of these things combine to make Linux a virtually zero maintenance platform. That is, once Linux is installed (which only takes a few minutes itself), there is no need to continue messing with it -- it just runs. Period.

A Developer's Dream

Linux is one of the best platforms for program development. There are several reasons for this. Linux comes with some of the world's best compilers and development tools -- free with the OS. Also available is the world's most powerful programmer's editor, XEmacs -- also free. You get a wide range of industrial-strength languages such as C, C++, Java, assembler, and Perl, plus other languages such as Tcl, FORTRAN, COBOL, BASIC, and many more. There is Visual TCL which closely resembles Visual BASIC, although Virtual TCL is based upon a much better language and has better performance and functionality.

Linux also comes with powerful version control software. This lets to archive all the changes to your project so you can easily find differences or go back to a previous version later. This can of functionality is unparalleled in the Windows world.

Wide-ranging Applications

Linux has a huge selection of applications. Consider:

The GIMP is widely becoming the tool of choice for web graphics, often replacing PhotoShop.
LaTeX is a text-processing (compare word processing) system that runs circles around Word.
Perl is already the language of choice for Web scripting. Windows has no real scripting language.
XWave is a powerful sound editor for Linux.
SOX can convert between dozens of different sound formats.
StarPresents is a powerful presentation module in StarOffice, which is free!
Netscape, the legendary web browser, is of course available for Linux.
Mathematica is a powerful professional math tool that is available for Linux.
WordPerfect is already available for Linux and other Corel apps will follow shortly.
Blender is a powerful 3D application. Others, such as PovRay, SCED, and the BMRT (derived from Pixar) are available as well.
A large selection of games, including Quake.
Many, many more -- see the Linux Applications list.

Cost

This is one of the best things about Linux -- it is free or very inexpensive. You can download and install it for free off the Internet. You can have your own mirror and install it over your LAN. Or you can go out and buy a CD for only $3 that contains the entire system. Or you can purchase a boxed set from $49.95 to $150 that comes complete with commercial support, CD, complete manual, and bonus software. But what's more -- that one investment of $3 or $50 contains all the software you'll need. Linux comes complete with web servers, browsers, compilers, servers, routing software, etc. You would end up spending tens of thousands of dollars to get the equivalent software under Windows -- and some of the software has no equivalent under Windows.

Computer Currents has a report that compares a $49.95
Linux set-up very favourably to a $4,600 NT setup.

Security

New security holes are being found in Microsoft operating systems every day. It is trivial to crash any Windows machine connected to the Internet -- even from across the planet due to security holes. This obviously does little to improve reliability.

Windows 95 machines are so insecure that they are widely regarded as having no security at all. NT machines have a bit more security, but they are easy to infiltrate as well, as has been reported by agencies such as CNN. Microsoft's web server, IIS, has a number of huge security loopholes, especially when combined with FrontPage. These holes allow others to change what appears on your website -- which can be very embarrassing at best and can destroy your company's reputation at worst.

The Linux file system is designed from the ground up with security in mind. The same goes for the memory management and networking systems. In Windows, security is largely an afterthought and it is trivial to circumvent; Linux has none of those problems.

Open Design

This is the best part -- the secret to the success of Linux. Linux is designed using the Open Source model. This means that instead of one company and a few programmers working on the OS, Linux has amassed thousands of programmers from all across the world. These include some of the best-known programmers on the planet -- researchers into cutting-edge technologies at universities, NASA, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and many other reputable institutions worldwide. Anyone can examine the source. This means that Linux has tapped a huge pool of developers and debuggers. The result: a free system of the highest possible quality.