Red Fern Software - The advantages to Open source GNU/Linux/FreeBSD systems.

Quality, Price, Stability, Cost of operation, Security, Dependency control, Remote Administration, Greater flexibility and adaptability, True multi user, multi tasking, Reduced Administrative costs

Quality: The goal of GNU and the Open Source community is to guarantee the quality of software by providing source which is open to inspection and improvement by all. This goal has become a reality.

Operating systems built under Open Source include Linux and FreeBSD and its variants, and could now include Apple computers OS X, which is based on FreeBSD.

Price: It is a commonly held notion that the primary reason for open source software is price. This may be a significant factor in some cases, but the time spent recovering from failures or associated with security and/or stability issues can very quickly outstrip the initial purchase price of hardware and software combined. Open source is designed to address these issues. Cost is incidental.

The purchase price of open Source operating systems is free. Distribution CDs can be obtained at very low cost, often less that $50 per system.

Stability: In most cases, the open source community has adopted the well proven Unix design philosophy viewing software as a pyramid of blocks, each block being responsible for one, and only one, task. The bottom layer of of the pyramid can be viewed as the kernel which most directly interacts with the system hardware. These base blocks are assigned the tasks of providing a stable and secure environment for the upper layers - the applications. The people that created the underlying kernel do so under rigid standards for stability and security. In the world of free software, no sales are lost in compromising stability for user features. This has proven to be a distinct advantage.

This is in contrast to the monolithic design where the applications and underlying operating system are designed to work as one. While this model would seem to lead to greater efficiency and more immediate usability, in fact the resulting complexity as lead to software of poor quality. These factors translate directly to costs associated with software maintenance.

The Unix design philosophy has allowed the Open Source movement to achieve its success and is why Unix remains the best choice for developers and business alike.

Another issue is that nearly all Unix distributions provide some form of dependency control. Dependency control prevents software updates from jeopardizing system integrity. This feature, it is felt, is beyond the ability of the average consumer, but is an essential tool of system administrators and is a major distinguishing feature of the different Unix distributions. Some Linux distributions do a better job of dependency control than others and this is a major factor in the long term stability and usability of a system. We at Celestial consider this the most significant factor in choosing which distribution to use for a given circumstance. We avoid those distributions which implement dependency control less effectively.

This dependency control is implemented using package managers. The most common package manager is Red Hat Package Manager (RPM). Most distributions of Linux use it, and it has been ported to many other Operating Systems. Most commercial packages available under Linux install via RPM.

Reduced administrative costs: In Unix/Linux operating systems, networking is built in at the kernel level, and remote administration capabilities are considered essential, not added applications that are often the first thing to quite when there is a problem. Remote administration can completely remove the necessity of having administrators on site.

Open Source software eliminates costs associated with policing networks to prevent license infringements. There are available word processors, for example, that are very modern in use, but that are free or whose licensing is such that they incur no financial or legal obligations for use. Linux distributors license their installation systems, but the programs are open source, available on the web, and free to copy and move from one system to the other.

Flexibility:

Security: Security is a particular issue for school systems, which must control not only access to systems, but what those systems are being used for at any given time. Unix was designed from the ground up as a true multi user system. Customization for this type of purpose is easily and much less expensively accomplished.