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Best approach to Linux support

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Scott Lowe Tech Republic

Published: 17 Dec 2002 10:34 GMT

There are two types of administrators: Those actively running Linux servers and those considering running Linux servers. These days, very few of the administrators I know openly condemn Linux as a toy operating system with absolutely no place in the enterprise -- in fact, many of them are already using Linux in their data centers or are experimenting with using Linux for various services.

This article is aimed mostly at administrators who are considering deploying services on Linux servers and those who have recently implemented Linux. Supporting Linux systems and software differs from supporting other operating systems such as Windows and NetWare, so we're going to look at how administrators can best approach Linux support.

The situation
For some time, Linux has been ready for the enterprise with a wide variety of both open source and commercial applications supporting the fairly young but capable operating system. However, unlike other commercial operating systems, not all flavors of Linux (Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, and many others) are backed by the level of product support that many enterprises desire. And without a high level of support, many companies are not willing to take the plunge.

But before it's dismissed, administrators should carefully look at the support offerings of Linux and of the applications that would be deployed on it. First of all, many popular Linux distributions, such as Red Hat and SuSE, are backed by corporations whose primary business is the support of their particular distributions. So you can now buy support from them similar to the way you would purchase it from Microsoft or Novell.

Although these companies may sell copies of the operating system to end users, their main revenue stream comes from support. As a result, they are generally committed to doing well and have improved their support offerings considerably in recent years.

Nevertheless, not all of the applications you will run on Linux will be supported by these vendors. The only ones they typically support are the ones that ship with their software.

Go beyond the vendor
Supporting open source software goes beyond the various corporate service contracts. In fact, I think it's fair to say that service contracts are not the primary means of supporting Linux, even for those companies that have service contracts. With open source software such as Linux, the level of support you can get for free over the Internet is quite amazing.

Linux plays the underdog role as an operating system that's trying to gain mass appeal by taking an entirely new approach to the software business, and the Linux community tends to see itself as part of a larger cause. As a result, many Linux experts volunteer their time to develop software, write documentation, and answer questions about Linux software. Linux administrators and engineers and open source software developers are likely among the closest-knit groups you will find, and you can interact with them quite easily via e-mail and Internet forums.

May the Forge be with you
One of my favorite open source Web sites is SourceForge -- the self-proclaimed world's largest open source software development portal. This is one of the first places to look for solutions to technical problems and for help in implementing solutions.

I'll use an example. Suppose you have decided to roll out "LAMP" -- Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP -- for your new Web site. Being new to Linux, you aren't sure exactly what is entailed in this endeavor, but you are dedicated to getting this solution up and running.

A number of things must be done to make this possible. First and foremost, you need to install all of the software. Although you could use binary packages to install each component, you lose some level of flexibility and want to compile the sources and be able to control the installation.

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