Making the Move To Linux

First step is to identify your software requirements, says Bob Matsuoka, founder, president and CEO of RunTime Technologies, a Web-tools ISV. "This means looking carefully at all of your servers, including Web, applications servers, database servers and e-mail servers, and making sure that you can move to Linux or Unix equivalents," he says.

There are two approaches, according to Kevin Carlson, CTO of Verteris, an Atlanta-based ISV. The first is to migrate your core infrastructure--which includes Domain Name Server, SAMBA, Network File Services and e-mail servers--before moving users and custom applications. Or, keep these services based on Windows and migrate the applications first.

Certainly, the issue of which operating system to use is huge. The biggest draws right now are Red Hat, BSD and, coming on strong, Mac OS X. Of the three, Red Hat offers the widest driver and third-party support. Some developers are mixing various Unix versions--one for their developers, one for their servers.

Another issue is implementing source and version control on development systems. While you have many choices for various products, such as SourceSafe and Active States, it can be difficult to maintain source control if all of your developers are running Linux desktops. "You might be better off running Mac OS X than straight Linux," Matsuoka says.

The choice of OS also depends on factors such as the development tools available, the particular security and authentication models used, and the strength of the graphical environments that run on these versions. "You need a security framework for your enterprise directory, and with Linux this still seems to be one of the shortcomings," Matsuoka says. "We still use Windows NT security domains for our internal security, but eventually we plan on going to LDAP for our applications access control."

For some ISVs, the development environment turned them off to Linux. Robert Wilkinson is a Phoenix-based developer who dabbled in Linux but came back to Microsoft. "The richness of the .Net development environment continues to amaze me," he says.

The biggest consensus--and motivation for the migration toward open-source tools--has to do with the choice of Web server. "Apache is pretty much it," Matsuoka says. Finally, there is the decision of which database server to pick. The most popular is mySQL, an open-source server.

Certainly, the open-source world is a more complex one with lots of choices. "Be prepared to spend a lot more time to configure things and to debug your setup," Matsuoka says. He also recommends to "have at least one person on staff who is very experienced with Linux. Not Unix, but Linux. Especially when it comes to security, Linux has its own warts."

David Strom ([email protected]) is technology editor at VARBusiness.