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Welcome to LCOC: LinuxCape OpenSource Community website. The purpose of LCOC is to
promote Open Source in Ghana, and this website was created as an information gateway
for all computer enthusiast and for all interested in the promotion of computer.
If you are interested in joining, please feel free to
Sign Up.
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Linux is a free Unix-type operating system originally created by Linus Torvalds with
the assistance of developers around the world. Developed under the GNU General Public
License, the source code for Linux is freely available to everyone. Click on the link
below to find out more about the operating system that is causing a revolution in the
world of computers.
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Source: helsinginsanomat.fi
When Bill Gates first heard about Linux
Do you know who was responsible for telling Bill Gates about Linux for the first time?
My dear husband offers up this question to aquaintances at regular intervals. Then, as they shake their
heads, he replies: "My wife." The standard response is disbelief and a look that suggests hubby dear
is completely off his trolley. As his wife, I can assure you that this is not so. It's a true story.
As nearly everyone in the wired world knows, Bill Gates is the richest man in the
world, the founder and principal owner of the software behemoth Microsoft, the company responsible
for the Windows operating system that runs in the majority of the world's PCs.
Eleven years ago, at the end of September 1994, Gates invited a group of Scandinavian journalists to
London for an audience.
I was the young journalist, not long married, working for the Finnish News Agency (STT),
who was prepared to fly off to London for a working weekend at just a few hours' notice.
My husband was already an intrepid internaut; he fired up the Mosaic browser and dug up the
relevant information that allowed me to rough out Mr. Gates' position in the universe before
the interview took place.
I was already well aware of one nuance linked to the subject in hand. The Finnish press had
featured a whole bunch of articles on one Linus Torvalds.
Along with countless other super-nerds around the world, this young computer science student
at the University of Helsinki had been working on a most excellent new operating system.
It had been dubbed Linux (after Linus's Minix, as it was based on the Minix operating system,
itself a spin-off from the Unix OS that sought to provide a stable UNIX platform for PCs).
By the latter half of 1994, Linux had hundreds of thousands of users around the world,
and - even better - it was absolutely free.
I read these pieces with interest - not least because Linus's sister and his mother were
my colleagues at STT.
And so it was that when we were ushered into the great man's presence in a
reception room at a plush London hotel, I asked with trembling voice whether Gates had heard
of something called Linux. He said he had not (I should perhaps point out at this stage that
this is the weak link in the story, since I cannot vouch for the truth in of Bill Gates's reply).
I presented to Gates my knowledge of Linux in two previously-prepared sentences.
"Oh, great. Free software", said Gates. Room enough in the world for that.
Gates added politely that this Linus was clearly a talented chap, since making an operating
system is no easy business. He did not, however, believe the statements of users, to the effect
that Linux could run web servers more efficiently and more reliably than Microsoft's own Windows.
Now Gates knows a good deal more.
According to Technology Review, at the end of 2004, the open-source Linux had captured
around 67% of web servers in corporate back-offices. The Linux penguin mascot is also
pecking away at the monopoly Microsoft enjoys in personal desktop and laptop computer operating systems.
A few years ago, Steve Ballmer, the Microsoft CEO and Gates's warhorse, declared that:
"Linux is a cancer [that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches]".
In London back in 1994 Gates himself commented so tetchily about his then competitors that he,
too, must by now have come up with some suitable pejorative term for Linux.
And what else did Bill Gates say eleven years ago?
He wanted to tell us about his company's new objective: a computer in every pocket.
Well, the Linux penguin is beavering away in pockets, too, for a start embedded in
the smartphones made by Motorola and Panasonic and in Nokia's soon-to-be-released 770
Internet Tablet, which features a new Linux-based operating system.
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Source: REICHEL.NET
Date: 19 Sept 2005
1. Security - Linux is Open Source Software, while Windows is not.
The simplest benefits of Open Source Code to demonstrate are increased security,
reliability and functionality; because users of Open Source are readily able to
identify and correct problems with the programs and to submit their own enhancements
for incorporation into the program. Closed Source systems enjoy none of those benefits.
2. Scalability - Systems implemented under Linux can be cloned limitless
times without paying additional software licensing fees - With Windows, you pay for each
installation/workstation/server/cpu.
3. Power - Linux is made with the Unix design philosophy, which dictates
that system tools are small and highly specialized. The result is an incredibly powerful
and reliable system, limited in capability only by the user's imagination and ability to
integrate the Unix utilities. The Windows philosophy is to create unwieldy swiss army knives,
limited in capability by how many features the user purchased on their particular knife.
Diminished reliability is arguably a side effect of increased complexity. Thus with Windows,
the case is often that you have tools that ALMOST do what you want them to, if they didn't crash.
Read more
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