On Thu, 2004-05-06 at 20:47, Mike Borgelt wrote: > Easy to say but when 95% or so of the world uses Wintel and we have > products that require PC support and specialist software like printed > circuit design it isn't that easy and we still have to support the Windows > standard whatever else we do.
Interestingly, the specialist electronics area was one of the first to port to Linux. When I was working for Red Hat in the US I spent a lot of time working with Avanti, Cadence and Mentor Graphics (all in the specialist chip design software area). At the time (1999/2000), they had all ported to Windows NT so their users could avail themselves of cheaper Intel hardware. Unfortunately, whilst the end users' managers were delighted at the reduced costs, the end users were rapidly up in arms about the unreliability (and low performance) of their X86 NT based machines. Being techies with a strong Unix background (all this software previously ran on Unix workstations), they started lobbying for Linux if they had to use X86 boxes. When their managers realised that there was real and substantial loss of productivity involved in using NT, the switch was on! If you look at archived versions of EE Times, you can see the debate and outcome unfold in real time. I was never involved in PCB layout software, but I would have thought that there would have to be some running on Linux. A quick search on Google for "PCB layout Linux" turns up a wealth of URLs - but I cannot comment on them as it is way outside my field. > AAAARgh! My last old PC died! Slowly! I've now got reasonable redundancy. > Either PC on the network can get net access via the router and ethernet > modem. I really don't want our business dependant on one old PC. I replaced my main server late last year. It was a 1996 Pentium 64 with 64MB of RAM. During its life it had blown 2 (SCSI) hard disks several fans and had needed a new case power supply when I moved to the US. Apart from that, it had run as my main firewall/router/mail server/ proxy cache/ web server without any trouble at all - apart from software maintenance. (It started with Red Hat 2.0 and ended its life on Red Hat 8.0). Right now, PCs are dirt cheap. Given that for a server yo udo not want anything fancy in the way of graphics or sound, you can buy something at well under $1,500. I suggest you contact Brian Wade (on this list) for a quote on a purpose built machine. I would include a CDROM burner (or better still a DVD burner) to use as a backup device) and whilst you would really only need 256MB RAM you will probably not be able to find anything with less that 512MB these days. If you are not a Linus expert, there are people on this list who are and can provide professional assistance if needed - and answer casual queries if that's all you need. For a small business with Internet connectivity needs (which is today most), using a Linux server as a centralised data repository, print spooler, backup device for Windows clients, whilst also running as an Internet firewall, mail server, virus scanner and spam filter is eminently cost effective. If you have enough bandwidth, you can also bring your web server in house too, which would save you on hosting costs. Worth thinking about I would suggest! (My only problem is that SeeYou is not yet available on Linux). -- Robert Hart [EMAIL PROTECTED] +61 (0)438 385 533 Brisbane, Australia http://www.hart.wattle.id.au _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
