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Good Samaritans Choose Linux
blowdart writes "According to this article on the BBC news site the charity Samaritans has chosen Linux to provide it with more secure and powerful computer systems. The installation was supplied by Trustix with IBM providing network security. 'One of the great challenges for computing in any charity is to provide more for less,' said Mike Hermon, Information Systems Manager at Samaritans. According to the Trustix press release the installation is limited to security hardware only, "Samaritans is installing a four zone Trustix Firewall on an IBM eServer x305 and a Trustix Proxy Server on an IBM eServer x300 server.'" Oddly enough, today's Word A Day is Good Samaritan.
Charities giving money to the poor instead of to Microsoft!
'One of the great challenges for computing in any charity is to provide more for less,' said Mike Hermon, Information Systems Manager at Samaritans.
But I thought Windows was cheaper than Linux...
This is good because the money that they save in Microsoft licenses will go to their charitable work. Of course, one hopes that they have a Linux expert (or at least somoene who knows what they are doing) on staff or they might spend too much on support calls.
-Rick
So good Samaritans choose Linux, and bad ones choose...? ;-)
This is one of the places I can see FOSS (including GNU/Linux) really making a difference. Nothing The Samaritans does goes outside the organisation - they don't offer training, they don't do work for other people, they just use the computers to run their charity.
And that's just blown 99.9% of the arguments for keeping Windows on the desktop out of the water.
If the support is there, and it's done intelligently, then this is a brilliant move that all similar charities should seriously think about adopting - especially if they're just setting up and haven't paid any money out for Microsoft Open Licensing yet.
-Blacklaw
But surely it would be better for them to give their money to Microsoft... after all, Bill Gates is such a generous man, giving money to India and his charitable foundation, he could probably spend it better than The Samaritans.... :-)
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
But it' still nerdy, isn't it??
They probably had enough of people wanting to kill themselves because of Windows crashing. And that was just the Samaritans staff!
Baz
Perhaps you are also interested in reading this press release/article on Linux Weekly News. :-)
Just FYI
The article states that Linux "now accounts for one quarter of operating systems sold worldwide.". Hmm. I mean, Linux is doing well, but one quarter? Come on!
-- And when Justice is gone, there is always... Force. --Laurie Anderson, "Oh Superman"
I was glad to read when Mt Uthas on the BBC article said: "There is a general perception that Linux is nerdy and requires a high degree of skill but we have designed an easy-to-use interface,"
I think Linux is great anyway, but I'm glad that people are realising that most people in a business use 1-3 applications 95% of the time.
Make sure those are nice, easy to use, and look pretty much like the ones you've replaced, and you're laughing.
I thought Trustix was a strange choice though - why would someone choose it over the more widely accepted distros, such as RedHat, Debian, SuSE etc?
Still, good for them that they chose something different - even if they probably did it soley due to the fact that they are a charity, and money spent on Microsoft/Sun/any other commercial OS is money they can't spend elsewhere helping suicidal people.
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Headline:
Good Samaritans Choose Linux
First sentence (all the ADHD infliced slashbots can read before posting drivel about great wins for Linux:
According to this article on the BC news site the charity Samaritans has chosen Linux to provide it with more secure and powerful computer systems.
Final sentence (and the crux of the article):
Samaritans is installing a four zone Trustix Firewall on an IBM eServer x305 and a Trustix Proxy Server on an IBM eServer x300 server.
How is some organization implementing a Linux firewall/proxy server earth shattering news?
[Linux] now accounts for one quarter of operating systems sold worldwide. Wow, that's pretty high. Anybody know where their numbers are coming from?
But, in my short life so far, I haven't seen a solution for a problem as good as this one.
The wordsmith article it mentions that the word "Good Samaritan" is also known as "Samaritan".
So why do we prefix the word "Samaritan" with the word "Good" ? Is there any particular reason for it other than the bible story ? Can you get such a thing as a "Bad Samaritan" ?
This is just a curiosity thing so please dont take it as flmaebait.
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ducks..
So every thing they do is colored by an illogical, irrational belief in God, and a desire to oppress and torture everyone who isn't of their particular Christian sect.
So this is a bad thing?
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http://www.samaritans.org/know/about_principles.sh tm
'nuff said.
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
I'm more and more convinced that each of these "such-and-such chose Linux" stories is actually done via Mad Lib.
"{company name} has switched all {number} of their servers to Linux. 'They say Linux is for {adjective} people, but I'm a {noun} and I find it much easier to support and to {verb}. I hope to save {large number} this year.' Oh, and Microsoft is very {adjective}."
Samaritans are people from Samaria. The "Good Samaritan" was a guy from Samaria who happened to take care of an injured man by the side of the road, which was more than could be said for the other passers by. Maybe these Samritans are just a bunch of people from Samaria?
Any similarity between The Samaritans and a story from the bible is strictly coincidental.
- Bill Gates, 2002
"Samaritans! Sanitarians! Satanists!"
- Steve Ballmer, 2002
Money for nothing, pix for free
No, but they take there ethos from a biblical story about someone who was good even though he wasn't of the same set of beliefs as the storyteller or audience.
On one occasion an expert in system administration stood up to test Linus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to obtain 99.9999% uptime?"
"What is written in the FAQ?" Linus replied. "How do you read it?"
He answered: "'Keep your kernel constantly patched, and secure your unused ports, and always keep an off-site backup'; and, 'Always share your code freely with your fellow developers.'"
"You have answered correctly," Linus replied. "Do this and your system will remain up."
But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Linus, "And who is my fellow developer?"
In reply Linus said: "A man was going down from Seattle to San Francisco to an open source conference, when he fell into the hands of wardrivers. They stripped him of his firewall, formatted his system disk and went away, leaving him unable to access even his webmail.
"An MCSE-certified consultant happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he flashed his headlights and passed by in the other lane.
"So too, an Oracle salesman, when he came to the place and saw him, accelerated his BMW and passed by in the other lane.
"But a Unix developer, as he traveled, came to where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and reinstalled his kernel, pulling out book floppys and data restore CDs. Then he put the man on his own wireless network, took him to SourceForge and upgraded his firewall.
"The next day (for it was a slow network connection) he took out two silver CD-Rs and gave them to the man. 'It is a custom distribution,' he said, 'and should keep you up and running until you can get to your own restore tapes. And here is my SMS number if you need any help on how to install it.'
"Which of these three do you think was a fellow developer to the man who fell into the hands of the wardrivers?"
The expert in system administration replied, "The one who shared his distribution without cost or consulting fees."
Linus told him, "Go and do likewise."
Luke 10:25-37, Revised Internet Version
This type of story is becoming simply repetetive. /. should just have a side page that lists all the articles covering people converting from or choosing linux over Windows. Every single story doesn't belong on the main page.
Same goes for the "So in so has this report that Windows is cheaper than Linux" and vice versa. After a while it just becomes noise.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
chosen Linux to provide it with more secure and powerful computer systems.
Powerful? In what way? Maybe it's just me but "powerful" == hardware-esque performance. This is like that article a couple of days ago that said you could tweak old gaming systems to outperform newer but untweaked ones.
Of course you could say that powerful refers to utility/robustness/security... but why not say that instead? It is such a nebulous/marketing term that makes it seem that you could drop Linux on your UltraSPARC III workstation and get a twenty-fold performance increase.
What is music when you despise all sound?
The Samaritans have nothing to do with religion, the name is just an indication of the service they provide - solace and comfort to strangers. Primarily they are a suicide hotline but they accept all kinds of calls.
"more than 50 percent of all security advisories that CERT issued in the first 10 months of 2002 were for Linux and other open-source software solutions.
Proprietary UNIX solutions were responsible for just as many security advisories as Linux in the same time period.
Ok now lets assume that by Proprietary they mean close source UNIX (like Solaris, AIX, HPUX, ...) if this is the case than Linux + Open source accounted for more than 50% of the CERTS, but Proprietary accounted for as many as linux that adds up to more than 100% without certs from any OS outside of UNIX.
"Trojan horse-based attacks on Linux, UNIX, and open-source projects jumped from one in 2001 to two in 2002."
This is what I find disturbing not only is it lumping Linux and Unix certs together to outnumber MS, is throws all open source projects (eg Apache, Samba, ...) into the same bin. It also give no numbers for **THIS** year (the one MS is supposedly more secure than Linux in), all it say is Linux went up from 1, and MS went down from 6.
Finally there is the following "many Linux distributions lack the sophisticated automatic-update technologies modern Windows versions contain"
Many distros by % of linus market, or by joe blow put a distro out. Redhat, Mandrake, and Suse I know have this feature, and it can run on any Distro if you dl it.
This article provides no numbers, groups together not only multiple operating systems but multiple applications in order to meet is goal (does it cout certs for Apache that hinder windows as being only an open source problem for linux, because that is what is sounds like). Basically its FUD with no substance. If this moron (the writer of the article not the /. poster) wants to make a point I suggest he actually use numbers and not vague referances, he should also learn to compare apples with apples.
That could be a bumper sticker!
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
Will Bill Gates get all depressed because of all those people defecting to Linux and end up calling the Samaritans ?
Which Linux Distribution Would Jesus Use?
"Linux a charity case"
WWJR?
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
No, but they take there ethos from a biblical story about someone who was good even though he wasn't of the same set of beliefs as the storyteller or audience.
the only connection to any religion that samaritans have is our name. the philosophy / ethos and practical methods we use to help those in distress have nothing whatsoever to do with religion - everything is geared towards befriending the suicidal and the emotionally distressed. this is an avowedly secular organisation. i feel compelled to make these points because someone reading some of the preceding posts might get the idea that we are associated with the bible or christianity - if they choose not to call us because they got the wrong idea from this website the consequences might be considerably worse than any of us might care to imagine. so please take care before you start branding us one thing or the other.
cheers, bdr (ed 4685)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They even need a firewall, only a really sick and twisted person would try and hack the computers of people who give time and money to help thoes in need.
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Well. Linux has developed. So they'd need to buy Windows 2008 (it's almost 2003) in order to really get lower TCO!
HURRR. DUHHHH. Take a look at the wininformant.com site (that which the post is ripped from and is one big link to) and take note of who the one and only pathetic author is on the whole god damn site.
YHBT, HAND.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well there's bound to be more reports for Linux since there's so many distributions. I'm sure if you discount duplications there would be a lot less reports.
The guys preparing such Linux FUD should also remember that many open source projects release binaries for Win32, so any report for Apache may also apply to Windows.
I would never use more for less. More sucks, thats why they developed less. Tststs...
Dyslectics of the world, untie!
The damn story he's replying to is exactly what he's writing about. Another case of moderation abuse. Sheesh...
No surprises there. Want Michael to post your story? Make sure it involves some local government or non-profit switching to lunix...
YHBT (not quite, the sarcasm of the last sentence should point it out nicely). FOAD. HAND.
BSD - Bad Samaritan Distro
I work for a 501C3 organization. While in my heart I would like us to use open source solftware, Microsoft gives charities such deep discounts that it would be very hard to make a case for a change (we pay about 1/5 the regular cost). And the decision is not mine to make.
You're a non profit organization.. why the hell would you even care whether or not you're using linux or windows. "One of the keys to cutting costs is the fact that we charge per server rather than per user as Microsoft does," he said. (stupid trustix guy) Plus what the trustix guy said was wrong. Of course windows charges per server. They've been doing that since the NT 3.5. And for any windows Sysadmins you know what I'm talking about because windows will ask you what type of license server you wish to run when you install. To waste soo much money on an IBM box with a Trustix Configuration is stupid. I agree with the guy about the 4 zone fire wall too. Who the hell would hack a site like that and even then talk about over kill. Now I would find it more respectable if they said due to lack of funding we ran our web/email servers on a 486 running a lite flavor of Linux. That'd be cool and economically feasible(and you'd be hard pressed to find a 486 that would run MS exchange 2000 :)) I've seen a 486 box process enough emails for like 50 people and still run web services.. (I dont expect THAT many people to be logging into the site for suicide support... but that may be me assuming too much)
For that matter, why is it news(worthy) when any company/organization chooses Linux? Just about every day I see one of these "Some Company/Organization Chooses Linux" stories. Is Linux in such a bad state that Slashdot needs to publicize everybody who decides to use it?
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
If it weren't for the fact that the people known as Samaritans were extinct today, the term "good Samaritan" would be horribly socially insenstive. The understanding of "good Samaritan" in the context of the myth depends on a general belief that Samaritans were NOT good to the Jews.
The Good Samaritan parable would have an excellent modern analogy, let's say, in a Palestian rebel deciding one day to assist a wounded Israeli soldier. But if we started referring to that Palestinian as the "one good Palestinian amid the whole race of evil ones" I think it would escalate the war!
Please consider that the impact of the Good Samaritan story stems from the fact that the Samaritans considered the Jews to be untouchables. What's more, the Samaritan in the story was breaking the law by helping the Jew. The priest and the Levite kept walking, which I imagine they were required by law to do.
What I take from the story is that there were good and bad Samaritans, good and bad Jews, and all lived under a terribly repressive social order. Not unlike the present day.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
did anyone else notice that good samaritan is actually TWO words? how is that the WORD of the day? (singular)
Where does this say this is earth shattering news?
Any win for linux especially higher profile ones are worth mentioning. You also seem to forget that Slashdot is read by the majority of the tech community. I'm sure most people reading Slashdot don't even run linux. But the more articles there are about companies using linux, means its more likely that the readers of this site who don't run Linux will consider running it.
You seem to be forgetting that all combined the advertising power of all the linux companies is pathetic. Contrast that to the hundreds of millions that Microsoft can spend on not only traditional print, radio, and tv ads, but also on paid salesman who go company to company making sure your using windows.
Somehow I don't think a little PR on Slashdot, who btw is a big believer in linux in case you forgot, hurts anyone. In fact its good for the community and the more "migration stories" the better.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
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The problem is that if the news become too stupid, it backfires. The tech community are rightfully interested reading about Linux as a working alternative to Windows, but they are probably not interested in hearing the chanting of a semireligious chorus of slashbots. Not all PR is good :)
so you're saying i can go and buy ms dos6.22(or whatever was the latest) from ms and get support for it? or dr dos? freedos exists though.
To find them:
FreeDOS (GNU GPL, still under active development.)
DR-DOS (still "closed source", not sure about development future.)
this the Best of the year! And just as 2002 is ending. Smart move!
As long as we're talking about tribes that had bad relations with the Jews in biblical times...
I hear that "Palestine" is a modern European mispronunciation imposed on the area during the colonial period and that the people there, to this day, pronounce it (as their ancestors did before them) "FILL-ih-steen".
As in "Philistines".
That conflict has been going on for a LONG time.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
... only a really sick and twisted person would try and hack the computers of people who give time and money to help thoes in need.
Would you also advise the Salvation Army to leave the locks off the doors to their soup kitchens, stores, warehouses, and refurbishment workshops?
There really are bad guys.
Bad guys who are theives often have no more conscience about stealing from a charity than they do from anyone else. Bad guys who are graffiti artists often have no more conscience about tagging a charity building than any other. And so on.
So why should bad guys who crack systems, for fun, profit, or to use as a DDOS tool, be any less willing to crack a charity's system than a home, business, school, government bureau, or hospital system?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The samaritans have been running linux to server their web and mail for some time. A few years ago it was a slackware box running apache and sendmail .... and exporting an NFS root share to the world ... D'OH. We sent them a polite e-mail and it was fixed, but god knows who might have read the anonymous jo@samaritans.org e-mail. Let's hope they're a little more savvy this time.
I'm a UK based geek who a few years ago was helped out by these folks, so obviously I won't be giving my name.
If you need to talk, give them a call. If things are getting too much and that bottle of pills looks SO attractive, give them a call. They will listen, they might offer limited advice, but most of all they will help you through the bad times.
It works, and I'm still here to prove it
These are good decent folk and they deserve your support. If there are any sys admins out there who have some spare time then give them a call and offer your services. It's about time we returned the debt and all became 'good samaritans'.
Thank you.
An ex Samaritan client
It's blue screen time for you buddy
Someone needs to tell these Word-a-day people that 'Good Samaritan' is two friggin words.
That's double my daily recommended allowance!
So when I am feeling depressed about my lack of Linux skills - I can call the Samaritans up and they will help?
AC/DC
Anonymous Coward/Don't Care
Well obviously he used Slackware. What other distributions existed around 10-50 AD?
Let it snow?
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