Linux? What does this mean?

Thing is, it’s the name of a product, so it probably does have a proper pronunciation - I mean, if I decide I’m going to pronounce Skype as Skeee-ippay, I’m just plain wrong, aren’t I?

Sure, it doesn’t really seem like Torvalds cares how people pronounce it (typical laid back Fennoscandian), but that doesn’t mean there’s no correct way to do it.

Solaris isn’t really a Linux OS, right? It’s a BSD derivative with its own, historically proprietary kernel. I’ve got nothing against Sun or Solaris (I use a couple computers running Solaris 9 and I have a copy of Solaris 10 I’ve played around with) but I’m not sure it’s the one I’d choose to use as a server. I’d probably go with FreeBSD.

I’ve used Solaris 9 and 10 as a server OS and had no problems, but then I am not a *nix newb.

And it is correct to say that Solaris is not Linux. Solaris is Sun’s proprietary version of Unix. I don’t know the exact roots of it, but it’s been around a good while and came out of the AT&T Bell Labs/BSD development of unix, not from Linus Torvalds’s efforts in the 1990s.

Oh also, forgot to mention, Solaris and Sun’s origins predate Linux by ~20 years.

Yes it does, actually. Torvalds invented the term and has declined to identify a “correct” pronunciation. Who greater than Torvalds holds authority on the matter?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say if you don’t know what Linux is, you shouldn’t be using it.

In my opinion, you need to back away from the weeds here, in your case the operating system (ie linux) is in the weeds, and concentrate on locating a tech expert you can trust. Just like finding a doctor or an accountant, you need to find an expert you are comfortable with and let him/her sweat the small stuff. Your job is finding this person. And like medicine or law, anyone using the jargon and details has a couple of strikes against them. They need to be able to speak to you in your language, English, and not theirs. Concentrate on that. Understanding the details of Linux and Open Source vs Windows vs Mac vs routers… Anyone trying to baffle you with BS isn’t going to earn your trust.

You are going to have to pay somebody to set this up linux or microsoft.

Yes, I get this. Even though I may be a little backward about setting up systems, I am pretty good at running people, and running a business.

Although I didn’t explain it well in my posts, I am in the process of finding a good IT guy. Again, I would rather pay well for exactly who and what I want, then go cheap and stupid. I am also setting this up at the get go. For the last ten years, we’ve managed with just a simple PC. Knowing that we are going to have to improve our system, I am trying to get this done about six months ahead of time, instead of just hiring Joe Schmo because I need a warm body.

You guys were a double check for me about some of the things I had. An independent source, as it were.

No it doesn’t. It may indicate that there’s no right and wrong way, but that need not necessarily be the case. Things can be simply true without being violently asserted.

I think it’s more likely he is talking about application stacks/development environments on the server, i/e LAMP vs IIS/SQL/.NET, rather than end user environments. If that is the case, it’s mostly where your programmer’s experience and expertise lies. It would be entirely reasonable to be running Linux on the back end and have the end-users running Windows.

You state that this is a home-grown application (“design some software”), not packaged software, so this is custom one-off work basically? What line of business, generally? (I don’t need specifics. It’s just easier sometimes to put things in terms of your work if I can.)

If it’s custom and not bought whole from a vendor, success will entirely be dependent on the skill of the programmer/development team, the back end won’t matter as much. For instance: Can you tell a usability difference between the Dope, Cnn, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft.com, Myspace, etc? It’s all just the same old browser point-and-click thing. Sure they move buttons around, change colors, move menus, etc, but it’s a pretty familiar environment, even as horrible as it is most of the time, any 12 year old can navigate myspace. Cnn and Google use Linux, the Dope and Yahoo use FreeBSD, Microsoft(obviously) and Myspace use Windows.

So if he is just talking about development environment, and backend server OS, you won’t really see a difference. If you are building the app from scratch you can do the same things in any environment(it’s just a little more tricky with some depending on what you want to do).

Ok, talked to him this morning. We’re hoping to find some software that is close to what I need (construction/estimating/sales) and tweaking it for my needs. We’ll then start out with one laptop, and one server. When I get the new office space, we’ll go to having all the laptops (10-15) work with the server. He will find the software, bring it for my perusal, and we’ll go from there. He’s charging me $60.00 an hour, est time 20-25 hours for research in software. He figures all of the the costs will be approx $10,000. Is this reasonable? This would be with Linux, open office, and using browsers instead, etc, redundant servers, and ongoing tech service.

Let’s see…10K sounds pretty reasonable to me. Remember, even if the software is free, hardware and support isn’t. If you’re having to buy all the hardware and he’s having to get everything up and running from scratch, I can see it. Companies like IBM are really big on open source software these days because they can use cheap or free software but make their money selling hardware and, most importantly, support.

$10k is pretty cheap. If you were using Microsoft, you’d pay that much just in licensing (unless you were creeping by with Small Business Server).