Q. What is Linux?
A. Everyone seems to be talking about it all of a sudden, though it has been there for several years. It’s a lot like what has been happening to the Internet. For years the Internet has been around but few knew or bothered about it. And then came a great interface, the World Wide Web, and suddenly things changed. The boom has been so great that it has not been possible to keep up with it. Well a very similar thing seems to be happening with Linux.

So, what is Linux? Basically, it is a Unix clone that started off as an experiment and now has turned into a very reliable Network Operating system.

Linux was considered very difficult to install and set up. But things have changed drastically. Over the past few years, Linux has reached a point where installation with more services that you can imagine is possible in less that 20 minutes.

There are many versions of Linux available. Some of them are packaged as good as any commercial product and yet available free of cost. The distribution with this issue is a very popular one called Red Hat Linux which is free for download.

Q. How does it compare with commercial stuff?
A. When one buys a software package commercially, the main issues one looks at are price and support. On both counts Linux scores really well. Most versions are available for free and the support is great. During the setup and testing at PCQ Labs we ran into some hardware related problems and decided to check how well this support works. A single question posted in the wee hours of the morning got five responses in almost no time at all and a solution as well. What else can one ask for?

Q. Will I get sacked for setting it up?
A. This will probably be the most difficult part of setting up Linux in your organization. After all, the viewpoint that if it’s free it can’t be all that good is difficult to change. The most critical factor here being that Linux is not really the product of any one company and that you can’t call back someone and say it doesn’t work anymore. Well that too has changed, the commercial versions actually build in a certain amount of free support, and apart from that the Net and the new groups provide tremendous support. In fact, it actually has better support than most commercial products I have come across. With almost five millions users now using Linux, I don’t think you are making a wrong choice.

Q. Can it handle mission-critical tasks?
A. In fact, the surprising thing seems to be that almost every single Linux server installed on low-end PCs lands up being the most mission-critical system in the entire organisation. Most organizations that we work with have actually decided to invest in better hardware just to make sure that things continue to run smoothly.

Q. What all does it offer?
When installed out-of-the-box, Red Hat Linux can do almost everything you would want a network server to do. At PCQ Labs, the server we installed had so many services running that even we were amazed. It acted as a file and print server with support for all Windows clients. It even pretended to be an NT domain for them. An Internet gateway and server complete with firewall, dial-on-demand, proxy server and more. An Intranet server with an excellent Web server product, Apache. A comprehensive e-mail server since POP3, SMTP, and IMAP4 are all part of the standard installation, with lots of additional tools for various kinds of e-mail related tasks including listservs, majordomo, and mail management programs. With few minor additions it could be turned into a complete nameserver, a DHCP server, a SQL server, and so on.