Linux `good . . . it could be better', Apr 12, 2004

Casey Palmer had planned to run both Windows and Linux on his home computer, but the machine had other ideas at first. After he partitioned the hard drive and installed MandrakeSoft's Linux Discovery 9.2, he couldn't figure out how to get Windows running again.

"Windows was completely inaccessible for a few days," he said. "I was really freaking out."

Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft Corp., appears to take delight in the troubles that Munich is having as it switches 14,000 city computers from Windows to a rival Linux operating system.

The German city, roughly comparable in size to Toronto and just as strapped for cash, decided nine months ago to embrace the open-source software as a way to lower costs, improve competition in the marketplace and make the city less reliant on the world's largest software company.

At an October hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives government reform committee's technology subcommittee, Steven Cooper — the Homeland Security Department's chief information officer — was questioned about the government's vulnerability to monoculture.

Cooper acknowledged it was a concern and said the department would likely expand its use of Linux and Unix as a precaution.

The monoculture idea is also influencing how experts look for solutions to security problems.

Complicating matters for Microsoft is the rise of Linux, and a growing belief that increased security means less reliance on Microsoft products.

Reports this fall from the U.S. Computer and Communications Industry Association and Gartner Group, a respected U.S. technology research firm, concluded that having a "monoculture" of computer networks based on Microsoft software leaves corporations and governments vulnerable to a single point of attack and failure.