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Our Blogs Open Sauce How much have you saved by using GNU/Linux?
Our Blogs Open Sauce How much have you saved by using GNU/Linux? | How much have you saved by using GNU/Linux? |
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| by Sam Varghese | |
| Tuesday, 21 October 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 3 So, how much have you saved by using GNU/Linux and other free and open source software? Have you ever tried to tote up the savings - apart from the intangibles? Featured Whitepaper
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I guess that the amount saved would be directly proportional to the degree to which one uses FOSS for one's personal work. The person who depends on a GNU/Linux desktop and no more will probably be able to count the cost of an operating system, applications software and maybe anti-virus software as savings. Others, who use FOSS more extensively, can compare the free software they use with a common proprietary alternative and list that as a saving. The savings on hardware upgrades are also considerable; GNU/Linux can do a lot with older hardware, cast-offs which can be obtained free. But enough of the generalisations, let'e get down to specifics. As usual, I don't depend on anecdotal evidence. Let's take my own case - I don't have exact figures but estimates are enough. I moved to GNU/Linux on the desktop in August 2000. At that stage I was running Windows 98. I never had to buy a Windows licence for my desktop after that. I don't need an Office licence either. I have the best CD- and DVD-burning software in the market (k3b) without paying a penny. I could go on and on but let me stop with that. Let me put the estimated savings at $A3000 - I used the same hardware from 1999 till 2006 through three Debian upgrades and that would never have been possible with Windows. Not unless one was prepared to really be a masochist. A year before I switched desktops, a friend set up a Slackware server for me so I could host my own website and mail server. (I later migrated it myself to Debian). The box that functioned as the server was a Pentium 60 with 32 meg of RAM. Apache did the job of web server and sendmail was the mail transfer agent. If I had to use Windows at that stage, the option would have been NT 4.0. And one would have had to run separate boxes for the web server and the mail server. That means we are talking of two fairly robust PCs, two NT licences and one Exchange Server licence. IIS, which evokes words like Code Red, was free along with NT, I recall. I would put the expenses, the bare minimum, at $A3500. Remember, PCs weren't cheap in those days, certainly not half as cheap as they are now. |
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