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Association Work -
Association Community Published Articles
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Written by Renato Cruz Sogueco
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Tuesday, 29 July 2008 16:21 |
 Ever considered using one of those “free” technologies known as open source software? Open source powers most of the world’s Web servers, provides dependable and secure e-mail solutions, delivers dynamic CMSs, CRMs and provides robust software for many of the Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, wikis and social networking. Let’s explore the pros and considerations you need to know to successfully deploy open source in your organization.
Benefits
The bottom line benefit is it’s free. All the operating systems (OS) and software applications you would require to power your Web and e-mail servers, CMSs and even desktop systems with complementary productivity software is a free download from a wide variety of Web sites part of the open source movement. And since no vendor “owns” rights to the software, subsequent upgrades and patches are free and there is no additional or annual licensing fees associated with use. We’ll discuss more about solutions and online resources later in the article.
You may have reservations regarding free products but the software is rigorously tested for enterprise use by a devoted group of developers and users who take great pride in their work. As a result, security breaches or bugs in the software are addressed much quicker at times than software purchased off the shelf.
Do you want to recycle your equipment? With open source software, new life can be given to older desktops and servers. Linux is a very “lean” OS with low hardware requirements. You’d be surprised by the quick performance, even on much older hardware. SAF’s policy for recycling old hardware for open source use is to replace the machine’s hard drives and power supply. We have found these components to be the most likely to fail. In addition, we normally deploy old hardware in development environments and purchase new equipment – with their useful warranties – for production. Older desktops with open source are given to employees who require a machine at home for office productivity and e-mail.
The last significant benefit is the ability to customize open source software. Normally with paid software, you’d need to adapt your business processes to the software’s strict feature set. Since open source licensing has no restrictions using the source code, you can rewrite portions to fit specific business requirements. In addition, since many of the common modifications are posted on the Web, it’s usually a matter of Googling the requirement or reviewing existing FAQs, greatly reducing programming time and deployment.
It’s a Matter of Time and Microsoft
Let’s talk about a few of the challenges. Although the software itself is free, your time is valuable. And you’ll need lots of it to learn new systems. It’s a must to read all documentation and online resource available to successfully implement open source software the first time. If you plan on installing several solutions together as typical in a Web server for example, you may want to explore existing how-tos since we’ve found some setups require individual components be installed in a particular order.
Your next challenge is Microsoft dominance in the IT workplace. Many, if not all, your IT staff have been trained on and are experts on nothing but Microsoft products. Some have devoted much time and money to be certified on these products. You may be introducing open source in a potential hostile environment. Our experience is to challenge staff to “break” the Linux installation to truly dismiss it as an option in the IT shop. Since it does not cost anything to try out, there is no reason not to at least try it. As your staff will discover, Linux et al really does just work and is indeed tough to break but in the process, they are exposed to running open source software.
It’s true. Many open source solutions don’t have 24/7 phone support. But it could be debated, these solutions don’t require it. Much of the support you’ll need from our experience is during install and configuration. As mentioned, much of this is found online so you may need change thinking and learn how to find support via the Web rather than on the phone. Once the service is up it stays up unless we need to reconfigure the solution.
How-to and Online Reference
The best reference you should visit is found at http://howtoforge.com. The price for subscription is about $7 a month or whatever the exchange rate from 5 euro. In addition to the mountain of step-by-step how-to information, you can download ready-to-go virtual Linux installations you can run in VMWare’s free Server or Player program found at http://www.vmware.com
Other useful online references include:
http://www.oreilly.com/
http://www.sitepoint.com/
http://sourceforge.net/
Get the Linux Operating System (OS)
Since Linus Torvalds and a group of worldwide developers created the Linux OS, the variants of the free OS have multiplied to run on every hardware platform in existence. The following links are some of the more well-known distributions and those we recommend:
http://www.redhat.com http://www.suse.com
http://www.mandriva.com http://www.gentoo.org
http://www.ubuntu.com/ http://www.debian.org/
Macintosh, Xbox and IBM Cell (PowerPC) hardware variants include:
http://www.yellowdoglinux.com http://www.mklinux.org
Web administration tool
Now that you have that Linux server up and running, you may want a nice web GUI to configuring it rather than a line command. Check out: http://www.webmin.com/
Desktop Applications
If you’re itching to try something other than Windows or Mac OS X on your desktop, download the desktop version of Ubuntu at http://www.ubuntu.com, which includes the following open-source productivity programs:
Web browser and email: http://www.mozilla.com
Productivity: http://openoffice.org
Open Source Web Platform
Much of open-source Web development is based on the Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP model or LAMP. Check out more on the separate resources at the following:
http://www.apache.org http://mysql.com
http://www.php.net
A new development platform gaining lots of traction is Ruby On Rails. Check out this link for more: http://www.rubyonrails.org/
Content Management Systems (CMS)
Begun your search for a new CMS for your organization? Begin your search by comparing all the open-source CMS packages found in the following links:
http://www.cmsmatrix.org
http://opensourcecms.com/
From our experience however, we recommend the following CMSs:
http://www.joomla.org http://www.drupal.org
http://www.wordpress.org
Web design resources
Once you have your Linux Web server running with an installed CMS, point your Web designers to the following for more on working with open-source Web platforms:
http://www.forwebdesigners.com/
http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/index.php
http://www.w3schools.com/default.asp
Build an E-mail Server
Want a robust, secure e-mail server with enterprise-class performance?
Build it on Linux with the software found at the following sites:
http://www.postfix.org http://spamassassin.apache.org
http://www200.pair.com/mecham/spam/ http://www.clamav.net
http://www.ijs.si/software/amavisd/
Firewall
If you have an older desktop system and two cheap network cards, you can easily have a Linux-based firewall. Check out these resources:
http://ipcop.org/
http://www.smoothwall.org/
Absorbing the concept of open source may seem overwhelming at first, especially if you are busy taking care of room of Microsoft servers and have users sharing their colorful opinions about the new Vista OS. However, as you chip away tasks by converting them to Linux solutions, you’ll begin to find you have more time to explore more open source alternatives, testing them out, then promoting them to production. And in time, even take a vacation. Imagine that.
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 27 October 2009 12:52 |
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