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A very good example recently came up with the US Postal
Service: they deployed over 900 systems throughout the US to automatically recognize the
destination addresses on each mail item. In order to do this some customisation was
required. The basic kernel was recompiled with only the essentials, and then a special
device driver for the scanner was compiled into it as well. According to John Taves, the
person who conceived and executed this project for USPS:
"Linux was an excellent solution for this. To make the
OS and OCR software run in 32M with no swap, the kernel was recompiled to only the
essentials, which wouldn’t be possible with brand M. Because Linux is free, I didn’t
have to worry about the brand M licence fees either. The device driver for the custom card
was relatively painless to develop, and I must say Linux product support was far
superior to anything else. When I had trouble allocating large amounts of real memory in
the kernel, I just e-mailed a question and got a response quickly."
Q. Do I get enough
everyday-software after installing Linux?
A. Well, after installing most operating systems you don’t get
enough software to do all your everyday tasks. But to assume that you get less with Linux
is quite wrong. Linux has a lot of functional software. If you intend to use it as a
server, then in most cases nothing extra needs to be added, but if you intend to use it as
a desktop, then an office suite is what you would require. And believe me, there are some
great ones available for Linux-Applixware and Star Office being prime examples.
Q. Is Linux multitasking
capability as good as Windows/Mac?
A. Definitely, yes. The reason being that only Win NT does preemptive
multitasking. Win 3.1, Win 95 and Mac OS do only cooperative multitasking. So when you
compare that with Linux which also does preemptive multitasking then Linux turns out to be
far better. In fact, better than Win NT. Cooperative multitasking is more like task
switching rather than full multitasking. A good test of this is to format a floppy while
doing something else. Most operating systems give a lot of trouble with something as easy
as that. Linux will handle that really well.
Q. How often does Linux crash?
A. Well, given proper hardware, the system will almost never crash.
Often, Linux is installed and tucked away in a corner, even without a keyboard and
monitor, and the system just keeps running. No reboots, no general protection faults.
A very stable and reliable system.
Q. Is it easy to integrate
Linux into an existing network setup?
A. That’s something Linux can handle really well. It has support for
all the popular protocols. And can even emulate an NT, Netware, and Appletalk server.
TCP/IP is native to Linux, so setting it up to access the Internet is a really simple and
quick task. In many cases, the only way to integrate a mixed environment would be to use
the Linux box as a common server.
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