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Good Samaritans Choose Linux 148

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.
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Good Samaritans Choose Linux

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 05, 2002 @08:52AM (#4817821)
    Charities giving money to the poor instead of to Microsoft!
    • It's good if they make their management cheaper & more efficient.
      Does they use it only for server, or also at desktop too?

      --
      Stefan

      Looking for Developers, new project members, testers or help? Want to provide your abilities ?
      DevCounter ( http://devcounter.berlios.de/ [berlios.de] )
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  • oh, okay? (Score:5, Funny)

    by mschoolbus ( 627182 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `yelirsivart'> on Thursday December 05, 2002 @08:55AM (#4817834)
    'One of the great challenges for computing in any charity is to provide more for less,' said Mike Hermon, Information Systems Manager at Samaritans.

    But I thought Windows was cheaper than Linux [slashdot.org]...
  • This is good (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rickthewizkid ( 536429 ) on Thursday December 05, 2002 @08:56AM (#4817838)
    This is good because the money that they save in Microsoft licenses will go to their charitable work. Of course, one hopes that they have a Linux expert (or at least somoene who knows what they are doing) on staff or they might spend too much on support calls.

    -Rick
    • by $rtbl_this ( 584653 ) on Thursday December 05, 2002 @09:00AM (#4817856)

      You mean, as opposed to the free technical support calls you get from Microsoft? :)

    • This is good because the money that they save in Microsoft licenses will go to their charitable work.

      Oh really? Are you sure? =P
    • Re:This is good (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Draoi ( 99421 ) <draiocht&mac,com> on Thursday December 05, 2002 @09:15AM (#4817942)
      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!*


      • 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!*


        So their OS is free, now you want their services to be free as well? How will they make money, sell their shoes?

        Business Model:
        1. Develop Free Product with Free support
        2. ???????
        3. Fail to Profit
        • So their OS is free, now you want their services to be free as well? How will they make money, sell their shoes?

          Read what I wrote. I'm not suggesting that at all. I'm suggesting that they provide (a limited?) free support service for *this* charity. Normal punters get to pay for support. Hence;

          Business Model:
          1. Develop Free Product
          2. Charge for support.
          3. Provide free support for a worthy cause.
          4. Win karma points from the populace & sell more service contracts
          2. ???????
          3. Profit!

          See?

      • Free software and support? That would make the Samaritan's purse [samaritanspurse.org] happy. :-)
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 05, 2002 @08:57AM (#4817840)
    So good Samaritans choose Linux, and bad ones choose...? ;-)
  • um... (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by russx2 ( 572301 )
    Oddly enough, today's Word A Day is Good Samaritan
    ... isn't that two?
  • by Blacklaw ( 311963 ) on Thursday December 05, 2002 @08:59AM (#4817850) Homepage Journal
    This is one of the places I can see FOSS (including GNU/Linux) really making a difference. Nothing The Samaritans does goes outside the organisation - they don't offer training, they don't do work for other people, they just use the computers to run their charity.

    And that's just blown 99.9% of the arguments for keeping Windows on the desktop out of the water.

    If the support is there, and it's done intelligently, then this is a brilliant move that all similar charities should seriously think about adopting - especially if they're just setting up and haven't paid any money out for Microsoft Open Licensing yet.

    -Blacklaw
    • Except the article doesn't mention how Linux has been deployed other than in a server role. Their desktops could still be Windows.
      • It's true that TS have just implemented a pair of servers running Linux at the moment. But if GNU/Linux is going to break into the desktop market *anywhere* other than in the homes of a few techies, then it's going to be here.

        They've already shown a willingness to try FOSS solutions, and I think it very likely that the next call centre that gets set up (especially if it is outside the UK/US) will be running GNU/Linux on the desktop.

        It's a blow for the Open Source boys that TS are still using Windows on the desktop, but that's probably simply because they've already paid for it. If you've just shelled out £200 per computer for an operating system, you don't turn around and say "Right! Let's ditch it and install a free version instead!". It's the same reason why any attempt on my part to get a few machines switched over to Linux (to give the kids experience of other operating systems) have been met with apathy and, from the beancounters, fear.

        -Blacklaw
      • See the Trustix press release:

        "The charity is already using SuSe Professional Linux distribution."
  • But surely it would be better for them to give their money to Microsoft... after all, Bill Gates is such a generous man, giving money to India and his charitable foundation, he could probably spend it better than The Samaritans.... :-)
  • by Bazman ( 4849 ) on Thursday December 05, 2002 @09:01AM (#4817860) Journal
    They probably had enough of people wanting to kill themselves because of Windows crashing. And that was just the Samaritans staff!

    Baz
  • LWN article (Score:4, Informative)

    by Karamchand ( 607798 ) on Thursday December 05, 2002 @09:01AM (#4817861)
    Perhaps you are also interested in reading this press release/article on Linux Weekly News [lwn.net].
    Just FYI :-)
  • One quarter? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jim the Bad ( 192095 ) <JimTheBad&NtlWorld,com> on Thursday December 05, 2002 @09:01AM (#4817862) Homepage
    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!
    • If linux would account for one quarter of operating systems sold worldwide it would be great. Everybody knows most installs are from copied / downloaded CD's. The real number would be much higher in that case.
    • Re:One quarter? (Score:3, Informative)

      by N3WBI3 ( 595976 )
      I am wondering if they mean one quarter of server operating systems, that is a little more likely to be true. This article is not real news, they are using Linux for their firewall and proxy whcih, are area that linux has had no trouble. Somebody wake me when they start to have articles like this about linux on the desktop...

      Regards

    • I would be curious as to what that percentage would be if pre-installed OS's were discounted and only sales of boxed software were counted.
  • 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.
  • /. sensationalism (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 05, 2002 @09:02AM (#4817865)
    Headline:

    Good Samaritans Choose Linux

    First sentence (all the ADHD infliced slashbots can read before posting drivel about great wins for Linux:

    According to this article on the BC news site the charity Samaritans has chosen Linux to provide it with more secure and powerful computer systems.

    Final sentence (and the crux of the article):

    Samaritans is installing a four zone Trustix Firewall on an IBM eServer x305 and a Trustix Proxy Server on an IBM eServer x300 server.

    How is some organization implementing a Linux firewall/proxy server earth shattering news?
    • Re:/. sensationalism (Score:2, Informative)

      by blowdart ( 31458 )
      Actually it's the BBC that is being sensationalist. The quote is from the BBC article, which was why I balanced it with the "truth" from Trustux's press release.

      A press release telling the truth? Oh the irony

    • "How is some organization implementing a Linux firewall/proxy server earth shattering news?"

      Hmm, I thought this site was described as "News for nerds" and not "Earth shattering news for nerds"..

      Don't like the news? Move on to the next article.
    • What I think is rather more earth-shattering is that the BBC (the most popular non-techie news site in the UK) is reporting this on its front page. Doesn't this demonstrate how mainstream Linux is becoming?
      • by blowdart ( 31458 )

        Actually no.

        As a new article is posted in a section, the front page is update to have that article in it. So whatever acrticle is newest in Technology will be in the Technology section of the front page.

    • by bogie ( 31020 ) on Thursday December 05, 2002 @12:46PM (#4819447) Journal
      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.
  • linux market share (Score:3, Insightful)

    by griffinp ( 611793 ) on Thursday December 05, 2002 @09:02AM (#4817870)
    [Linux] now accounts for one quarter of operating systems sold worldwide.
    Wow, that's pretty high. Anybody know where their numbers are coming from?
    • Who knows. But even if we assume it is 1/4 of operating systems sold, imagine what the percentage would be if they included all the people that download an ISO, and install it on multiple machines...
    • >> [Linux] now accounts for one quarter of operating systems sold worldwide.

      >Wow, that's pretty high. Anybody know where their numbers are coming from?

      Everyone knows that 73% of all statistics are wrong.

      Obviously, those numbers are part of the 99% of all statistics which are either pulled from thin air or (mis)quoted out of context.

  • But, in my short life so far, I haven't seen a solution for a problem as good as this one.
  • Quick Question (Score:4, Interesting)

    by boris_the_hacker ( 125310 ) on Thursday December 05, 2002 @09:05AM (#4817893) Homepage
    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:Quick Question (Score:5, Informative)

      by FearUncertaintyDoubt ( 578295 ) on Thursday December 05, 2002 @09:21AM (#4817969)
      The Samaritans were a sort of Jewish half-breed in the ancient middle east. Samaritans were often looked down upon by Jews as second-class types. So to them, the term "Samaritan" would have already had a negative connotation, with no qualifier such as "Bad." In the biblical story, Jesus' point was that the two upstanding Jews passed by the wounded man but the Samaritan aided him, so the Samaritan was the good one and the other two were not, though common perception was the other way around.

      I guess that saying "Good Samaritan" is actually a bit of a disservice, since it could suggest that Samaritans are normally otherwise -- which was the prejudice that Jesus pointing out as false.

      • As long as we're talking about tribes that had bad relations with the Jews in biblical times...

        I hear that "Palestine" is a modern European mispronunciation imposed on the area during the colonial period and that the people there, to this day, pronounce it (as their ancestors did before them) "FILL-ih-steen".

        As in "Philistines".

        That conflict has been going on for a LONG time.
      • I guess that saying "good" people use Linux is actually a bit of a disservice, since it could suggest that Linux users are normally otherwise -- which is the prejudice that Michael [mailto] is pointing out as false. (The BBC article does not say "Good Samaritans".)
    • Samaritans are (or were) residents of the country of Samaria. The biblical story is referring to a fellow from that country who did a good deed. Therefore, there could have been a Bad Samaritan, but he didn't get the favorable press.
    • Replace "Samaritan" with "Palestinian"
      if you want a modern context.

      To say "Good Samaritan" is to reinforce
      a prejudice against Samiratans and Canaanites.

      These people were the offspring of conquerors and indigenous tribes. When the Jews returned to Canaan to create Israel, the land was not empty and deserted; rather, it was populated by many races. These people were murdered and displaced under a divine mandate, whether you take the judeo-christian view or not... Even the Jewish tradition acknowledged that they conquered the land and took it from people who were living there. (Perhaps you read the divine command to murder the Canaanites, let's say, Deuteronmy chapter 7, as something more benign... But you'd need to be a pretty skilled spin doctor to soften "Do not leave alive anything that breathes... Completely destroy them [Hittes, Canaanites, etc.] as [God] has commanded you..."

      Well, I'm guessing that was written long AFTER the genocide and occupation was done, as a justification, like a schoolgirl justifies sleeping with "motorcycle boy" instead of the "nice guy", after the fact...

      This was a major political problem 2000 years ago, and continues to be a primary cause of unrest in the region today.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 05, 2002 @09:13AM (#4817927)
    "Do you need someone to talk to?"

    "Can we offer you help?"

    "Would you like to know more?"


    Yes, I need help, I want to know more!

    RTFM!!! *click*

    ducks..
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 05, 2002 @09:19AM (#4817961)
    Top 10 Reasons To Run DOS!

    1. Tons of free abandonware programs!
    2. The OS is abandonware itself! Go crazy, fileswappers!
    3. Totally consistent text-mode CLI!
    4. Lightning-fast on today's hardware!
    5. Lack of support for big partitions = built-in anti pr0n controls!
    6. Works with ANY hardware you can throw at it -- hey, even if it doesn't do anything 99% of the time, at least it doesn't throw up a thousand bitch-boxes about how it can't find drivers!
    7. Split seconds from boot to command line!
    8. Easy management tools! Bad partition? FORMAT C:!
    9. Over 20 years of research and experience behind it!

    and last but not least...

    10. Everyone will think you're running Linux!
    • 10. Everyone will think you're running Linux!

      It's funny you should mention this, but I live a lot of my working life in a cygwin bash session. One day the technician saw me doing that, and asked: "why are you running DOS?"

      It's hard for some people to realise that the command line is *far* more powerful that the gui, if you know what you're doing.

  • by ohboy-sleep ( 601567 ) on Thursday December 05, 2002 @09:25AM (#4817990) Homepage
    I'm more and more convinced that each of these "such-and-such chose Linux" stories is actually done via Mad Lib.

    "{company name} has switched all {number} of their servers to Linux. 'They say Linux is for {adjective} people, but I'm a {noun} and I find it much easier to support and to {verb}. I hope to save {large number} this year.' Oh, and Microsoft is very {adjective}."
  • by richie2000 ( 159732 ) <rickard.olsson@gmail.com> on Thursday December 05, 2002 @09:32AM (#4818017) Homepage Journal
    "Bad samaritans! Bad!"
    - Bill Gates, 2002

    "Samaritans! Sanitarians! Satanists!"
    - Steve Ballmer, 2002

  • by mblase ( 200735 ) on Thursday December 05, 2002 @09:38AM (#4818058)
    On one occasion an expert in system administration stood up to test Linus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to obtain 99.9999% uptime?"

    "What is written in the FAQ?" Linus replied. "How do you read it?"

    He answered: "'Keep your kernel constantly patched, and secure your unused ports, and always keep an off-site backup'; and, 'Always share your code freely with your fellow developers.'"

    "You have answered correctly," Linus replied. "Do this and your system will remain up."

    But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Linus, "And who is my fellow developer?"

    In reply Linus said: "A man was going down from Seattle to San Francisco to an open source conference, when he fell into the hands of wardrivers. They stripped him of his firewall, formatted his system disk and went away, leaving him unable to access even his webmail.

    "An MCSE-certified consultant happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he flashed his headlights and passed by in the other lane.

    "So too, an Oracle salesman, when he came to the place and saw him, accelerated his BMW and passed by in the other lane.

    "But a Unix developer, as he traveled, came to where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and reinstalled his kernel, pulling out book floppys and data restore CDs. Then he put the man on his own wireless network, took him to SourceForge and upgraded his firewall.

    "The next day (for it was a slow network connection) he took out two silver CD-Rs and gave them to the man. 'It is a custom distribution,' he said, 'and should keep you up and running until you can get to your own restore tapes. And here is my SMS number if you need any help on how to install it.'

    "Which of these three do you think was a fellow developer to the man who fell into the hands of the wardrivers?"

    The expert in system administration replied, "The one who shared his distribution without cost or consulting fees."

    Linus told him, "Go and do likewise."

    Luke 10:25-37, Revised Internet Version
    • That's a great post, well deserving of the +5 Funny mods, but you completely missed the main point of the parable. He didn't say just to help the needy. He said to help the people you least want to help.

      The victim on the road was a Jew. Jews and Samaritans had nothing to do with one another. For a Samaritan to help a Jew would be like a KKK member helping an African (as I understand it).

      Your parody would have been more appropriate if you had put the MCSE in the place of the good Samaritan, but you put him in the place of the first passerby who was a Jewish priest!

      Here's the implicit analogy=> Jewish priest:Jew :: MCSE guy:Linux geek
      Hunnh??

  • chosen Linux to provide it with more secure and powerful computer systems.

    Powerful? In what way? Maybe it's just me but "powerful" == hardware-esque performance. This is like that article a couple of days ago that said you could tweak old gaming systems to outperform newer but untweaked ones.

    Of course you could say that powerful refers to utility/robustness/security... but why not say that instead? It is such a nebulous/marketing term that makes it seem that you could drop Linux on your UltraSPARC III workstation and get a twenty-fold performance increase.
    • Re:Powerful... how? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Blacklaw ( 311963 )
      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
  • by racerx509 ( 204322 ) on Thursday December 05, 2002 @09:48AM (#4818109) Homepage
    That could be a bumper sticker!

    • Combine it with this bumper sticker [thinkgeek.com]!
    • If olive oil comes from olives, then does baby oil come from babies?

      Baby oil used to come from babies, but babies are just too small and too lean to meet the demand. So, most baby oil on the market today comes from plump, cute baby whales. For marketing reasons, of course, they can't call it baby whale oil. Too many people care about baby whales, so telling the truth on this would be corporate suicide. So, the baby oil companies just keep on calling it baby oil, and let you think that what you're buying is rendered baby rather than those cute, fuzzy, big-eyed baby whales.
      Oh, the humanity!

  • by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Thursday December 05, 2002 @09:49AM (#4818115) Homepage
    Will Bill Gates get all depressed because of all those people defecting to Linux and end up calling the Samaritans ?
  • "Linux a charity case"
  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday December 05, 2002 @10:19AM (#4818298)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by NoMercy ( 105420 ) on Thursday December 05, 2002 @10:26AM (#4818343)
    They even need a firewall, only a really sick and twisted person would try and hack the computers of people who give time and money to help thoes in need.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • ... only a really sick and twisted person would try and hack the computers of people who give time and money to help thoes in need.

      Would you also advise the Salvation Army to leave the locks off the doors to their soup kitchens, stores, warehouses, and refurbishment workshops?

      There really are bad guys.

      Bad guys who are theives often have no more conscience about stealing from a charity than they do from anyone else. Bad guys who are graffiti artists often have no more conscience about tagging a charity building than any other. And so on.

      So why should bad guys who crack systems, for fun, profit, or to use as a DDOS tool, be any less willing to crack a charity's system than a home, business, school, government bureau, or hospital system?
    • I work for a non-profit AIDS Foundation and we get hacking attempts on our web servers ALL the time. But, then again, we are running Microsoft IIS on NT4 (d'oh! It certainly was not my decision, btw, though the IT Department is quite resistant to anything but Windows :-(, despite my knowledge and experience with Linux and my RHCE status.
  • I would never use more for less. More sucks, thats why they developed less. Tststs...

  • You're a non profit organization.. why the hell would you even care whether or not you're using linux or windows. "One of the keys to cutting costs is the fact that we charge per server rather than per user as Microsoft does," he said. (stupid trustix guy) Plus what the trustix guy said was wrong. Of course windows charges per server. They've been doing that since the NT 3.5. And for any windows Sysadmins you know what I'm talking about because windows will ask you what type of license server you wish to run when you install. To waste soo much money on an IBM box with a Trustix Configuration is stupid. I agree with the guy about the 4 zone fire wall too. Who the hell would hack a site like that and even then talk about over kill. Now I would find it more respectable if they said due to lack of funding we ran our web/email servers on a 486 running a lite flavor of Linux. That'd be cool and economically feasible(and you'd be hard pressed to find a 486 that would run MS exchange 2000 :)) I've seen a 486 box process enough emails for like 50 people and still run web services.. (I dont expect THAT many people to be logging into the site for suicide support... but that may be me assuming too much)
  • Is this news? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by TrollBridge ( 550878 )
    Besides the appropriateness of a charitable organization using an OS that doesn't cost them anything, why is this news?

    For that matter, why is it news(worthy) when any company/organization chooses Linux? Just about every day I see one of these "Some Company/Organization Chooses Linux" stories. Is Linux in such a bad state that Slashdot needs to publicize everybody who decides to use it?

    • Yes, you are right. We need more inane advertisements of these Linux success stories!

      Must go now, I have about 5 separate stories of different companies/organisations running Linux to be submitted.

      I think we see too many of these server switches. When its a company switching to a desktop, that is big news...but every server switch is just one story in a swirling pool. I guess this one was posted though because it is the charity organisation Good Samaritans rather than some small unknown enterprise.
  • If it weren't for the fact that the people known as Samaritans were extinct today, the term "good Samaritan" would be horribly socially insenstive. The understanding of "good Samaritan" in the context of the myth depends on a general belief that Samaritans were NOT good to the Jews.

    The Good Samaritan parable would have an excellent modern analogy, let's say, in a Palestian rebel deciding one day to assist a wounded Israeli soldier. But if we started referring to that Palestinian as the "one good Palestinian amid the whole race of evil ones" I think it would escalate the war!

    Please consider that the impact of the Good Samaritan story stems from the fact that the Samaritans considered the Jews to be untouchables. What's more, the Samaritan in the story was breaking the law by helping the Jew. The priest and the Levite kept walking, which I imagine they were required by law to do.

    What I take from the story is that there were good and bad Samaritans, good and bad Jews, and all lived under a terribly repressive social order. Not unlike the present day.

  • did anyone else notice that good samaritan is actually TWO words? how is that the WORD of the day? (singular)
    • Notice the all caps. It's a name for service. In case you do not know try and subscribe. You get send a word (or phrase) everyday incl. meaning and origin. Each week tend to be theme based.

I've noticed several design suggestions in your code.

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