Since about ten years, we use Linux operating systems in our company. As a result of the excellent experiences with Linux, we now use it on most of our PCs and development workstations, and for all servers and networking computers.

But what is so convincing to us about Linux?

Linux is based on the well proven UNIX system concepts. Since Linus Torvalds published his operating system kernel in 1991, Linux has been matured by a "community" of developers distributed all over the world. It gets constantly improved by a great number of experts, who could never be employed by a single software company. As e.g. hardware manufacturers want their products to be usable within Linux systems, they engage developers to contribute the necessary drivers, and today a broad range of hardware is being supported out-of-the-box.

The Graphical User Interface (GUI) is based on the X-Window-System (X11), which is well known from other systems such as UNIX, BSD or OpenVMS. As X11 is a networked system innately, GUI applications can be run on a remote server and still be displayed on a local workstation screen, without need for expensive add-on software.

Clear separation of operating system programs, user applications and GUI allows for secure multi user operation from the outset.

As all system and application settings are represented in configuration files (without something like a "registry"), they can be reproduced and restored on single or multiple computers without hassle. This is particularly useful for remote administration.

Linux is completely Open Source, i.e. the source code of all components of the system is freely available und thus can be looked onto or adapted as needed. Thus, you as a user are not dependent from one single software vendor.

Generally speaking, Linux performs very reliably and stably, while being undemanding on hardware resources.

All "big" Linux distributions ship with standard office and internet applications as well as many specialized programs, as for image manipulation, software development, network analysis, file / web / e-mail servers, without additional cost. Most of these programs are based on open standards and data formats, so documents and data may easily be exchanged among different programs, and they remain available long-term.

Not only us, but many small, medium and big enterprises as well as public organisations are being motivated to use Linux. Currently several public authorities in europe are migrating thousands of PCs, notebooks and servers to Linux operating systems. We closely track these changes and experiences - maybe for your benefit?

last update: 21.12.2010