There’s a definite bias toward your own small bubble of experiences, and this is true of IT departments as well. If you are in a school environment which is mostly Unix/Linux/Solaris with a smattering of PC/Mac, then the “cool” guys all know that only losers waste time with PC/Mac. When I was a grad student at NC State University (home of Red Hat), there were perhaps a few niches like this among the departments. The reverse situation can also be found on some school campuses and is expressed in equally strong attitudes.

For instance, I also worked at the School of Communication Arts in Raleigh for a while (when it was still pretty small). I taught networking, security, web design, and also helped run the IT department occasionally. However, the majority of the courses taught covered animation, graphics, digital film, and artsy stuff, and so naturally, Mac’s were preferred, and far outnumbered PCs. Networking hundreds of Macs wasn’t easy back then (for me at least), and so at one point I had a huge Mac OSX server shipped to me there, because I was considering allowing all the mac clients authenticate to it (rather than the NT servers). But despite my efforts, I knew that the really mad “props” would always go to the mac guys first, and their creative works.

And now to bring things full circle, I have been working for the last few years at a college on campus at TTU, which is probably like 95% windows, both server-side and client-side. Once again there’s a temptation at times to feel that my underutilized prior experiences (and skills) with Linux and Macs are drifting away like distant memories of some other culture I once lived in. For most people, I imagine this is the case for them too when integrating into a new workplace. It can be very difficult to resist and you are liable to be perceived in slightly negative standing if you do not ‘conform’ or cannot adapt. Some may revere your fierce independence, but ultimately, many more will (unspokenly) see you as stubborn, or inflexible, or XYZ (bad trait). Personally, I didn’t make much effort to resist, and I’ve enjoyed whatever was popular at the time where ever I happened to be, as a new learning experience. That probably had less to do with a desire for improved productivity and was more because I really like playing with new tech stuff.

Beyond the cultural issues, and personal biases, there’s another barrier between the camps that is controversial, murky, and seems to defy authoritative answers. In fact, there have been very few peer-reviewed economics articles I’ve come across which purport or attempt to settle the question of total financial costs and returns. The problem is that traditional business value strategies don’t apply equally well to these unique cultures because they are so very different. Like apples and oranges, these cultures include unique and only slightly overlapping sets of variables which can be compared, measured, and studied. In addition, they typically correlate with radically different kinds of business objectives which might be used to measure success. Nevertheless, I’m fascinated by comparisons of their financial and operational models for internal IT departments, and particularly for those IT departments who are transitioning between these radically different cultures (those moving to an all Linux server side shop).

As I alluded to before, there may be a bias against “foreign cultures”, even when a new (possibly superior) economic or business model will fit for the IT department and context. Often times, this can prevent people from being open to simple numerical measures of actual material facts. For instance, University PC shops might be surprised to learn that as of June 2009, Linux powered 88.6% of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, compared to Windows’ 1.0% (http://tr.im/wAaA) or that in December 2008, Linux powered five of the ten most reliable internet hosting companies, compared to Windows’ one.(http://tr.im/wAaH) Although Windows (and Apple) have spent a lot of money to help market, project, and create their culture, there really is plenty of room for debate over “core doctrines” such as TCO. For perhaps less frequently heard opinions on this, see the below further resources:

The Register: http://tr.im/wAbG
eWeek: http://tr.im/wAbY
RedHat: http://tr.im/wAea
Novell: http://tr.im/wAes

In some cases, the cultural barriers are geographic. Each community seems to have it’s own strongholds — Hollywood, for instance, in the case of Apple, and much of Asia in the case of Linux. Like teenagers listening next to a fence, when less and less is heard from opposing camps, they may be too quick to proclaim their “enemy is dead!!”. That was the feeling among many PC users on several occasions during the 1980′s regarding the health of Apple. But then Apple would ‘sneak up from behind’, and each time it seemed with a killer new product (media players, routers, and now the iPhone).

Similarly, if you are in the majority (a PC user) you may have noticed over the last few years decreasing volume level of rabid evangelists proselytizing the superiority and power of Linux. This is most true on the internet where nearly every service, tool, and product now has windows or mac GUI interfaces with giant Tonka Toy buttons and icons. But dare we ask across that fense, whether there could be a comeback? What if Linux could somehow leverage it’s advantages on mobile computing devices and their more limiting hardware platforms? Under such circumstances the importance of the operating system size, memory usage, and speed are still high ranking. This is where Linux could make big inroads — where fat bloated lazy “modularized” code is still having trouble.

But you aren’t likely to hear this ‘sneak attack’ unless you get closer to the fence. One place to look for these sorts of developments is at the conferences where “Platinum Sponsors” seem to increasingly include telecoms and computing corporations, side by side. With the LinuxCon 2009 (Sept. 23-29) just days away now, I would personally really like to see who else sees what I see. Netbooks, PDAs, and cell phones are ripe for Linux. Although the Platinum Sponsors currently show HP, IBM, Intel, Novell, QualComm, and Dell, I am left asking myself why Android isn’t more prominent? Doth these behemoths not know that Google art full of smart cool guys?

RESOURCES:
Linux Adoption (Wikipedia Article): http://tr.im/wA8J
Linux Conferences (Wikipedia Article)http://tr.im/wAel
Android OS (Wikipedia Article) http://tr.im/wCze