Sep 012010
 

killer linuxContinued from : Is your company afraid of Linux? (Part 2 of 3)

Fear #4 (Support!): This is where Linux shines. Because of the open nature of the Linux community it is considered to be the most widely supported platform and the most inexpensive.

To get professional support for your Microsoft server platform, you have to either pay for a professional support plan from a Microsoft Partner or from Microsoft themselves. I’ve never run into an SMB that had purchased a professional support plan from Microsoft. To obtain one-time support for your Windows server operating system you would pay a per incident fee anywhere from $99 (next business day) to $260 (4 to 6 hour response). No support is included with the purchase of the Microsoft operating system itself. So these fees are on top of the licensing fees you pay for the right to install and use the Windows OS. Licensing for Windows Server 2008 ranges anywhere from $500 to $4000 which doesn’t include the client access licenses (CALs) which run around $40 per desktop or per user on your network.

Most Linux distributions are free to download and use, although, there are a few Linux enterprise shops that provide licensing and professional support for their product. SUSE (now a division of Novell) and RedHat are two of the most popular. SUSE’s enterprise server license ranges form $400 to $1500. RedHat is anywhere from $400 to $1,200. These license plans “include” professional support anywhere from email-only support to 24×7 phone support. Each license is renewable yearly because of the licenses focus around their professional support plans.
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Aug 312010
 

sorveglianzaIn these days all the new netbooks and most laptops have built-in webcam, or at least add one external costs very little, apart from the traditional use in video calls you can use our Linux box to create a monitoring device, it can be used to monitor your child while you are at another PC, or your pet while you are at work, or have a home-made video surveillance system for your  properties.

To accomplish this we will use the software Motion, the software is present in many distributions, I will give commands using my Ubuntu 10.04.

Feature that made me choose this software is the ability to remain “asleep” until it detects a noise or movement, and then activates and records, plus the ability to define custom actions when it start (send an email, an sms , Etc.).
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Aug 292010
 

ImageMagick Usually when we talk about programs for editing images we think to graphic programs such as The Gimp or photoshop, but they are not the only alternative.

ImageMagick is a suite of programs that you can use from command line to change and transform images, may seem more uncomfortable but it is actually a very powerful option to process many images in a short time or include image processing programs in web or bash scripts.

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Aug 262010
 

Linux-vs-MicrosoftContinued from : Is your company afraid of Linux?

Fear #2 (Cost!): Let’s look at skill-sets first.  When you hire an employee who labels themselves a Windows Server Administrator, you are generally getting someone whose expertise on servers stops with Windows.  Yeah, sounds extremely obvious, but I am addressing an important point.  When you hire someone who labels themselves as a Linux Server Administrator, you are generally getting someone who knows both Linux and Windows server administration.  Emphasis on the word “generally” as not all windows server admins know only Windows and not all Linux admins are well rounded.

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