In 1995, during a summer job at Ieunet (now Esat Net), I first encountered free Unix. We were testing Linux and FreeBSD (another free version of UNIX) to see if they would make good Unix servers. By the end of the summer we'd moved the main Web server to a free Unix machine. The reason? We'd run into an obscure problem which we diagnosed and fixed once we had the operating system (OS) source code available. (It wasn't a problem with the OS, but we needed the OS source code.)
After this positive experience we decided to try it out in the School of Mathematics in Trinity College, Dublin. We bought a Pentium 120 as a server and several diskless 486 PCs to act as terminals for undergraduates. The server out-performed our 1-year-old Sun SPARC stations by a factor of 2 or 3 and cost less. The money we saved by buying 486s instead of branded terminals allowed us to get 17-inch monitors for undergraduates (rather up-market for that time).
In the School of Mathematics we provide a Unix system for about 1000 undergraduates, postgraduates and staff. The system has always been run by students. Free Unix is ideal for us: it lets us use high-quality, easy-tomaintain software on generic PC hardware - which has a good price/performance ratio.
You'd be amazed at how many users a single Pentium can support. One day I found that one of our FreeBSD servers wouldn't let anyone else log in. I'd accidently left it configured for a maximum of 32 logins. I increased the number and ever since it has happily supported everyone who has tried to log in.
Now we use free Unix for everything from email and Web browsing to high-performance simulation of quantum mechanics and telephone networks. Our system will be all free Unix by next summer - with one possible exception: our secretarial staff complain that they don't have Windows. I'm offering them KDE, a free Windowslike GUI for Unix, and hopefully that will provide what they need.
Free Unix has been making huge inroads in academia . New research software now usually appears for Linux before any other platform. TCD's Computer Science department is considering replacing NT file servers with Linux machines - to simplify administration. The successful student Internet societies (e.g. UCD, TCD, UL) all use free Unix to provide services to their members.
It isn't just academics either. Oracle and Yahoo use free Unix for their business needs. Closer to home, most (perhaps all?) of the Irish ISPs use free Unix machines as servers. Irish companies like Baltimore, Iona and Nua all use free Unix in their operations. Even the name server for Ireland (.ie domain) is a Linux machine.
Unix isn't quite for everyone - yet. Traditionally Unix has been used for "serious" computing, so there hasn't been the same push to develop userfriendly tools, which are the basis of MacOS and Windows. Some people say that learning computers though Windows is like learning phrases of a language but learning through Unix is more like learning the grammar and the individual words. Both approaches have their merits. However, tools to make Unix easy to use are finally available - thanks to the growth of Linux.
Free Unix also has a lot to offer those who are just interested in computers: you have a vast selection of free software to play with. This means you can email, browse the Web, write reports and program like everyone else. Naturally, I typed this article on a free Unix machine.
You can also "tinker under the hood" as the source code is at hand. This allows you to become part of a world-wide development team - quite exciting for the average hobbyist! (There are a few lines of C code written by me in FreeBSD - something I'm a little proud of.)
You might notice I've used the phrase "free Unix". This is because, as well as Linux, there are some versions derived from the original "BSD" Unix. Some people like to argue about which is better - Linux or BSD. Both are admirable pieces of work but they differ slightly.
Linux is the most widely used free Unix by a long way. Consequently Linux has the widest hardware support and a good selection of available commercial software (see earlier articles in this series). The BSD people run a smaller operation and provide a single place where you can get everything: software, documentation and source code. BSD is also licensed in such a way that the code can be reused commercially - Apple has used the BSD networking code in their new OS.
I'd recommend test driving free Unix to anyone in the computer business. Which free Unix should you choose? Well, what do your friends run? Can the Irish Linux users group help you?
The free Unix world is a very interesting place to be. It's a world of rapid and exciting new developments. Some people think that Unix may beat Windows NT at its own game. It hasn't got to the stage where we'll all buy PCs with Linux on them - but now we have a choice.
David Malone: dwmalone@maths.tcd.ie