One of the largest mistakes by companies of any size is the implementation of operating systems designed for home use in business environments. Because of this, businesses of all sizes spend lots of money on combating issues like viruses, spam, spyware and system instability. If you're a small or start up business, this condition is worsened by the fact that every minute a given system is down during your work day, it's costing you money - in terms of actual support services as well as lost employee hours.

In order to combat this, we start at the root of all of the problems, the underlying operating system. By using an operating system that grew up in, and so is geared toward, a business environment, we can cut out 90% of the problems mentioned above. Enter Linux.

By implementing Linux throughout your business, you increase system stability and efficiency, cut out the bulk (if not all) of your licensing fees and store all of your documents and data in industry standard formats which makes them easier to do work on as well as ensures anyone who needs to can read it. In addition to all of this, you're going to save money on service calls and down time.

Contrary to popular belief, Linux has been around just as long as Windows 3.1, entering the light of day in 1991. Up until a few years ago, it was used primarily by system administrators who utilized the ability to customize the code to make it do exactly what they needed their systems to do. Because of this history, Linux has a strong foundation in business environments since development of the operating system was geared more toward functionality than usability. While this made Linux harder to use than other operating systems, it also made for rock solid performance for mission critical systems. The usability issue has since gone away almost entirely with the emergence of desktop-centric Linux distributions backed by major corporations who offered development resources to get to the easy to use, intuitive Linux desktops we see today.

Also contrary to popular belief is the fact that a normal computer user can indeed use Linux for everyday tasks without ever having to go to the command line. Once your system is configured, graphical applications and applets allow you to control practically every aspect of your computer.

One of the largest concerns with running Linux in a business is printer support. Linux is capable of talking to any networked or shared printer, but printing to a directly connected printer is something that's hit and miss, though constantly sees improvement. To be sure, check here for your printer model, or purchase a printer that's listed there. If you're going to be looking for a new printer, check something from Hewlett-Packard or Epson as history shows these to have the best all around support - there are exceptions to the rule so be sure to check the printer in the database before you actually buy it.

On the software side of things, many people new to Linux find that some very popular software will run under Linux either directly through a Linux version or utilizing emulator software such as Crossover Office or the free version Wine - in fact, some of this software, such as Firefox and Thunderbird, started out on Linux and were then ported to other operating systems. In addition to this, these users are absolutely floored by the amount of free software they can install merely by selecting it from a desktop application and are often able to find real Linux native alternatives.

A quick trip to Sourceforge.net will also show thousands of software packages for Linux in various stages of development. A trip to HotScripts.com will show a myriad of PHP/MySQL web based applications that can be run on any Linux system with little installation work and can be set up to serve only your local machine, your local network, or the public internet (which can allow you to work from anywhere in some cases). One huge advantage to using a web-based, PHP/MySQL solution is as your business grows to any size, your software can easily keep up or be modified to do so with minimal strain on your checkbook. In worse case scenarios, Linux applications, web-based and otherwise, can be created or modified to exactly suit your needs, often for less than the cost of a limited use enterprise software license.

If you'd like more information about using Linux in your business, don't hesitate to contact us with your questions, or take a trip to some of the sites on our links page.