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linux.conf.au linux.conf.au: The Beeb and the penguin
linux.conf.au linux.conf.au: The Beeb and the penguin | linux.conf.au: The Beeb and the penguin |
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| by Sam Varghese | |
| Sunday, 27 January 2008 | |
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Page 3 of 6 And, surprisingly, he says that Linux is preferable as a platform for his kind of work due to the degree of commercial support. Featured Whitepaper
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"We still use BSD for some of the work. For example, the libraries that we want other people to use, we make sure they're ported to BSD because we want it to be ... that's why we use it. ...some proprietary manufacturers of broadcast equipment, they use BSD inside their equipment. So we know there's still people using it there. But in terms of the systems that we're using in production, Linux has better support. So you can buy support, excellent support, for Linux, and that's what productions and companies like the BBC want," he says. "They want support for a system. If they buy some hardware, they want it to be supported. ...one big problem, when developing free software, and wanting a company to use it is support. Although the whole system is not completely supported yet, at least the hardware and the OS and so on is supported; so if we have problems with graphics cards or memory or CPU not being as fast as reported, we can go back to get support. "For example, we purchased Dell hardware and there was a problem with the raid controllers and you can go back to Dell and they'll fix it and they'll give us the right drivers for Linux. I just don't see that with BSD." He says the BBC selects what is considered the best tool for the job. "The BBC's been using Linux and free software for quite a while. On the website - the news website - which is the most popular site in the UK, or one of the top 5, we've been using Linux, Apache and Perl for many years because it works. It's the best set of tools for the job." There are areas where support for Linux isn't that good, he points out. But when it comes to the web, file serving or storage, this doesn't apply. "...storage is a big issue for the BBC because now that a video is created digitally, you need a lot of storage because videos are very large. And the bulk of the proprietary offerings are often running on Linux, often without advertising the fact, but in their hardware they're using Linux. And the BBC - they don't care - if it's the right tool for the job, it's only natural. I think the BBC has the right approach, where they just look at the options and they pick the right tool for the job. Linux isn't being used on the desktop in the BBC, so that's probably not the right tool for the job at the moment." |
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