Linux: The Ultimate Enterprise OS?
Can Linux, a bunch of code written by hundreds of programmers around the world out of the goodness of their hearts, ever really be an operating system that businesses bet their lives on?
You bet. Linux is rapidly catching up with, and in some cases surpassing, the features of Windows NT. It's got many Unix implementations running scared, too: Linux on Sparc has outperformed Solaris on Sparc in some tests, and it's an order of magnitude easier to install and configure despite Sun's best efforts. All of this is precisely because Linux is a product of the Internet; unlike other operating systems, its development cycle is based on Internet time.
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Linux offers something that no operating system vendor could provide during the past 20 years because of simple business barriers, a potential standard multiplatform, vendor-independent operating system. The open source model of Linux is what makes that possible.
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