Les Hatton

Working with a neighbour's XP machine this week, trying to sort out the endless uninvited pop-ups, strange freezes and disappearing devices that seem to define the Windows world, reminded me how nice it is that Linux is becoming respectable at last.

Although I am a computer scientist and therefore in possession of a complete set of nerd genes, it was with some trepidation that my company first looked at Linux as a possible replacement for Windows in 1996. However, we were spurred on by growing frustration with Microsoft, whose software offered indifferent quality and came with depressingly restrictive licences.

I started experimenting with Linux by dual-booting a laptop. Even then the operating system was astonishingly reliable - about 1,000 times more reliable than Windows 95. Unfortunately, applications were non-existent for anything except program development, so we switched to Linux for that and carried on using Windows for office tasks.

Today we have three main servers all running different versions of the Linux kernel. These servers have accumulated more than 12 server years with no operating system failures. They use Samba to network flawlessly with a couple of Windows machines we use for software testing and have required almost no maintenance.

The applications have also improved. We use KDE as the main environment and OpenOffice meets our office productivity requirements. OpenOffice can handle just about all Microsoft documents we get sent but, most importantly, the file formats are open source so we won't lose access to valuable writing or data assets in the future.

Web handling through PHP and MySQL is extremely sophisticated, allowing us to integrate our software processes tightly with our business processes, an essential element of the higher levels of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) software process model. We have automatic scripts of just a few lines that mirror disk volumes round the network, making backup almost invisible. And we can now develop our own products entirely under Linux and simply port the results for our Windows customers - a matter of a half day's work because all of our regression tests are written in portable scripting languages that run equally well on Windows.

Perhaps the most satisfying thing is the ability to buy a few components for £200 and a couple of hours later have a secure server up and running Suse Linux and already integrated into the network. The time we used to spend "maintaining" Windows - for example, trying unsuccessfully to harden machines or endlessly reloading operating systems to cure odd quirks - is now dedicated to open-source projects to give something back in return.

Do we have any regrets? No. Would we go back to using Windows? Not on your Nelly.

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