Robert Pogson

GNU/Linux represents hundreds of millions of lines of source code which would cost billions of dollars to replace. It will more or less do more than that other OS which costs the world economy billions in licence fees and billions in malware prevention, remediation, and down-time. Another plus for Linux is that one can do more on each machine and continue doing that until the hardware fails completely. Many firms with many servers claim to use one-third the number of servers with Linux as with that other OS because:

• Linux loves to run heavily loaded
• Linux rarely needs rebooting even for upgrades
• Linux servers do not require a graphical user interface

On the desktop, the installation of the Linux OS presents much more software and more useful applications. The fact that most distributions carefully test thousands of applications and software packages for compatibility means software upgrades are fairly easy and reliable. The burden of licences with that other OS is great:

• $100 per seat for XP
• $1000 for a server licence
• $600 for Office or $100 for educational version of Office
• $40 per seat for CAL

There is simply no contest here. GNU/Linux is better software, a better buy, better value in the long run giving longer use of equipment and more productivity per dollar. Users can literally double the number of seats or halve the cost of equipment with GNU/Linux and the cost of maintenance really plummets if Linux thin clients are used for they have almost no maintenance and no per-seat licences.

The return on investment is very high for GNU/Linux because of the absence of licence fees. Many migrators recover their investment in months due to reduced power consumption, maintenance and increased uptime. That is often the case with Linux thin clients. Thick clients take longer to recover the cost, perhaps two or three years. Remember, some customers of M$ pay $1000 or more per seat annually for maintenance (largely compensating for its faults and weaknesses) of that other OS. One techie can handle perhaps 50 to 100 seats with that other OS. With Linux, 1000 is not unusual for thin clients, because most of that work will be managing accounts, and monitoring a few servers not repairing file systems. This means the cost of maintaining one seat in Linux may well be less than $100 per annum.

These advantages of Linux mean, in essence, that it costs nothing to migrate to Linux, analyzing the numbers in the long run. Remember, techies for that other OS plan on replacing everything every 3 to 5 years while with Linux 5 to 10 years is reasonable. There simply is no reason to replace the per-seat hardware while it still works well. If you examine replacement costs they will be half or less with Linux. Being able to use older equipment well means you can save almost all your per-seat hardware costs by using stuff the users of that other OS discard or pay you to haul away.