[Sussex] What path does one take

[Desmond Armstrong]

I will attempt to provide some answers from my point of view and of 
experience.
Professionally I have only used UNIX in some flavour and know very well 
that it works pretty flawlessly and the systems are only switched off 
and therefore rebooted once a year when there is a requirement to do 
electrical wiring maintenance.
I am simply used to the system working reliably and that it cannot have 
nasties like viruses.
Since leaving my last professional full time work (I worked as an 
electronic designer designing mostly analogue circuitry for integrated 
circuits with the major integrated circuit manufacturers) I have 
embarked on  the process of getting on top of the open source UNIX 
otherwise called Linux.
Now I provide support to home users and seeing all the problems am 
steadily introducing them to Linux. Of course once they experience the 
utter reliability of Linux they can (and do) resign all the experiences 
of viruses, crashing, freezing and rebooting to history. This is quite a 
difficult task for me but, one thing that is quite clear, the support 
that I have to provide is minute on the Linux side answering questions 
and providing instructions while the task of keeping Windows going gets 
much harder by the day. (My distro of choice is Mandriva and Mandriva 
2007 is looking superb).
In the first instances I withold the root password until I am satisfied 
the user won't mess it up.
Meanwhile Windows is just getting worse, and I am now at the point of 
refusing to support it.
As for OSX this is based on the NeXT (Steve Jobs), pure UNIX, I had such 
a machine on my desk in HK and it was totally reliable. At present OSX 
is not secure in the way that a good Linux is today but I am sure that 
that will change with OSXI.
As for the free aspects, this results in some superb quality software 
where any flaws are so exposed to the open source community that they 
remain very shallow and enhancements are rapidly provided where required.
It is not without reason that IBM, HP and Sun have all put their might 
and a lot of funding behind the open source community. Remember the news 
item where IBM converted their 60,000 desktop and laptop machines to Linux?
As for costs, if one is in business it is only reasonable to provide 
some funding to help in the developement of the open source software and 
even to contribute in other ways.
My contribution is in helping ordinary home users and in the process 
hopefully saving (them) a great deal of frustration which is the biggest 
single factor if you go the MS.
Just look at the NHS, it is common knowledge, and our cost, that they 
were required to use MS, we could by now have had a proper reliable 
system at much lower cost.
These are comments based purely on my opinions and experiences.
p.s. don't forget the Linux Expo, Olympia 25, 26 October.