For those of you still locked in Windows operating systems, you should do an experiment – go to www.distrowatch.org and take a look at the number of open source operating systems available. If you’re willing to experiment, try out any distributions that offer a “live-CD”. Downloading and burning one of these files to a CD will allow you to try out the software using your CD as an effective “hard drive” (the live-CDs do not install to your hard drive so you can remove the CD when you’re done and reboot back to your old system). Some people have disabled booting from the CD in their computer, so you may need to make that change (press F2, Del, F10 key depending on computer manufacturer during initial boot and change drive seek/boot order). Do keep in mind you will notice some performance lags running from the CD that you wouldn’t have from a regular Hard Drive installation.

If you select a version of Linux that offers Open Office, you can compare the open source productivity suite to Microsoft Office. You can read and save in “.doc”, “.ppt”, and “.xls” formats so you can share your documents with co-workers. I would suggest trying out “Kubuntu” as a starting point (some distributions can be too finely targeted for a general user), www.kubuntu.org. If you use a re-writeable CD you can try out several different varieties and avoid the “coaster” problem if you don’t like a particular flavor.

What does this mean for business productivity? A lot! Small startup firms can get underway with very little capital. I’ve tested a small installation that allows a mini call-center (or marketing, finance, or shipping group) to run on ten year old “scrounged from friends” 486 and Pentium I’s. Recently, I came close to starting up a small manufacturing company myself and would have run the entire plant for the cost of some ethernet cables, a couple of inexpensive network hubs, and a shipping label printer. Larger companies can retrofit their workforce with similar systems instead of “upgrading every three years”. One study I looked at, buying new equipment for traditional vs open source options like the above installation (and rather than starting with re-using existing assets), cut the Information Technology (IT) hardware and software expenditures by 70% – something to make any CFO or CEO or investor take notice.

Is open source coming to your neighborhood? Check out the chart on this link: (Firefox)
Most of these users are running Firefox under Windows (baby-steps are ok), but you can see the market cross-over point has been passed. If your company is on the medium to large size, you are probably already running open source operating systems on the “backroom” IT tasks like email servers, routers, file storage servers, and so on – and most non-IT employees don’t even realize it (except for the fabulous up time those devices and users enjoy under open source Linux).

Drop me a line if you’re interested in more details on open source – or have had your own success with an open source installation (click on the link in the “about” section at the top right of this page). In case you’re interested: my consulting web site, this Blog & updates, and all my daily computing needs are met running open source software. I switched after getting really tired of daily Windows lock-up events and the “blue screen of death” (including losing work since my last file save). Then when re-booting, Windows thumbs its nose at me and says I should be more careful and properly exit when I shut down my computer!

Microsoft will certainly improve its software offerings, and will need to with the growing Linux community and especially now that Apple computer is building with Intel CPUs. We’ll see how they do.

Cheers!