Using Linux in an Office Environment

Arthur Donkers

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Although Linux is very popular in certain circles, many people still regard it as a toy operating system, or something for the freak, and do not consider it a full-fledged alternative to the more established commercial UNIX implementations available for the PC platform. An increasing number of companies, however, are starting to use Linux, often as a network-based server for intranet or Internet applications. In this article, I explore the potentials of Linux in a day to day office environment.

More than a year ago, Le Reseau was approached by AXY Management Systemen, an application developer based in the Netherlands. They had developed an integrated office application that enables users to send direct mail, make letters, and perform other office-related tasks. All of the data is stored in a database for easy retrieval and integration.

Until then the company had used the more common UNIX implementations on the PC platform. However they were not completely satisfied with that combination. First, the support by the supplier was not good enough. They had encountered a number of problems while developing their application, and their supplier could not resolve them easily. Furthermore, the platform did not offer a number of features (symbolic links) they needed.

Second, using that particular version of UNIX forced them to use big PCs with large amounts of memory and disk space to accomodate the average number of users. We found through some experimentation that Linux was capable of supporting more concurrent users than the other UNIX implementations on the same hardware. Together we set out to find a better alternative for their basic system configuration - a system that offered more bang for the buck.