🚀 go-pugleaf

On 10 Jun 1997 09:58:38 GMT, K. Spoon <kspoon@mindless.com> wrote:
>
>I'm currently trying to push for a "Linux lab" on my campus in the hopes
>that I can expose some of my peers to a most excellent development 
>platform with a wide variety of libs and languages to choose from.

This is where (IMHO) Linux excels.  The sheer number of high-quality,
freely available development tools blows NT out of the water.  For anyone
interested in learning about programming, OS internals, and/or Unix in
general, Linux is ideal.  That is the one thing I can say about Linux
with no reservations, excuses, or qualifiers.  It's been invaluable to
me over the course of my education, and I owe at least half of my clues
(regarding programming and computers in general, not just Linux/Unix-
specific stuff) to it.

As for the lab, we're in the process of setting up such a lab on my
campus (UNC-Charlotte).  The rest of the machines used by students in
the Engineering and CS depts. are almost all Suns: a ton of Sparc IPC's,
a bunch of SS20's, and a handful of Ultras.  Suffice it to say, the Linux
machines (and the NetBSD boxes that came before them) run circles around
the IPC's and SS20's, and can certainly give the Ultras a run for their
money.  And due to the wonders of remote execution, the few commercial
apps that we really need (and aren't available for Linux) (mainly
FrameMaker) can be run off of a server; this is completely transparent
to the students and other users.  They provide a lot more bang for the
buck, and having the sources for everything's nice too.  The hackability
also allows for some rather novel installation/configuration/administration
schemes.

Of course, this is the ideal environment for Linux.  Convincing someone
in a corporate environment would be a much harder sell.  Especially if
it's being pushed as an alternative to NT...then you find yourself in
the position of having to "sell" Unix as well as Linux.  Hats off, and
a keg of virtual beer, to anyone who has accomplished this.

  Regards,
    Mike