LibLinux
From the LibrarianInBlack:
The Howard County (Md.) Public Library has migrated its public PCs from Windows to Linux. According to the article, there's no complaints thus far and they envision saving a lot of time and money ... especially since they don't have to toss their older machines in order to run more secure Windows versions.
And yeah for Dynix for making it possible by not tying their OPAC to a specific platform. I hope other major vendors are looking at this, and the possibility of doing similar things with their ILSs.
Considering:
- how much manpower was lost late last month just in tech services due to fighting a particularly virulent worm (luckily, it wasn't destructive), and
- how when I try to run the ILS, the Z39.50 interface and my email at the same time, I usually end up having to kill the interface in the Task Manager (which takes the ILS with it) and I simply cannot run any version of Netscape along with the first two apps or it'll take Windows with them down the drain ...
I would love to move to a more stable, forgiving platform. Not to lay all of the blame with the OS, but I don't think that Windows helps with the various conflicts and probably contributes quite a bit. But that's just my $0.02.
Comments
Well, we didn't lose any man hours because we have a Windows Update server in-house that automatically downloads the latest patches and distributes them to all of our clients which have the Automatic Update service enabled. If you are running Windows 2000 or XP, this is a no-brainer. This isn't to knock Linux or discount the Sasser worm but to point out that there's ways to manage these Windows-specific bugs.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 8, 2004 08:00 PM
Actually (crossed fingers), we didn't get hit by Sasser in my section. However, Gaobot/Gobot ... we just couldn't get rid of it, for days. Previously cleaned computers were constantly re-infected.
We too have automatic Windows updates, and daily anti-virus updates and scans, but in this case, it didn't help.
Posted by: misseli | May 8, 2004 08:13 PM