# Can a small business afford not to run Linux?

There's an interesting article at ITWire on whether or not [a small
business afford not to run Linux][1]. The conclusion of the author
is that small business should be running Linux, both on the desktop
and server. One part of the article caught my eye:

> I copped some flack from the Windows crowd for some comments in
> the prequel to this story in which I expressed my dismay at how
> slow my highly configured computer ran under Windows Home
> Server...Apparently, this was my fault according to those who
> serve Redmond. I should have configured and optimised my computer
> correctly, chosen my security package more wisely, so I was just
> an idiot and a dumbass who didn't know what he was talking
> about...Believe it or not, like most people who use computers for
> work, I don't have time to fiddle around to optimise my computers
> and network.

This is understandable, small-business owners don't have time to
waste tweaking server and desktop settings to get something
usable. They want something that works out-of-the-box. Next comes
this:

> ...how come when I partitioned my disk and installed a dual boot
> Ubuntu 7.10 system without any special tweaking, only then, when I
> had Linux up and running, did my computer give me the sort of
> performance I expected from the hardware?

This was the surprising part - for years, Windows advocates have
picked on Linux for the need to configure and tweak it - largely
true. It's only been the last year or so that Linux distributions
like Ubuntu and Fedora have garnered enough hardware and video
support to make installation and configuration pretty
painless. Witness the automatic printer configuration in Ubuntu
7.10, for example, or the automatic X-configuration that happens now
under Xorg.

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20080216182402/http://www.itwire.com/content/view/15298/1023/
.