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

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.

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!*