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.

Comments

One quarter?

[Jim the Bad]

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!

At long last, someone starts making sense.

[caluml]

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.

Quick Question

[boris_the_hacker]

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.

Re:This is good

[Draoi]

Of course, one hopes that they have a Linux expert (or at least somoene who knows what they are doing) on staff

Now, wouldn't this be an ideal opportunity for one of the big distros (Hi, Redhat!) to stand up and volunteer *free* tech support for this worthy charity? Free publicity and all that.... *hint, hint!*

Re:Powerful... how?

[Blacklaw]

To me, power and performance are two different things. Performance is how well it does what it's supposed to do. Power (in a software sense, anyhow) is the number of features, configurability (which probably isn't a word, but you know what I mean), additional things that make the platform that much more 'powerful' to use.

Think about the number of integrated development environments that have been described as 'powerful'. That's how I define it.

Power in a *hardware* sense, though, has to me a different flavour entirely. But that's for another rant.

-Blacklaw

Why is this Troll modded up?

[bogie]

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.