Independence
Several years ago, my office moved every machine to Linux. Servers and desktops were migrated to the respective versions of Ubuntu, and our embedded Linux firewall appliance replaced a big Cisco router. We all held our breath.
Today I tease our CEO, a 51 year old grandmother, that "I'm gonna switch her to Seven" if I want to rile her up. Other than the inevitable hardware failures and a couple of headscratchers early on, we have enjoyed no downtime under Linux instead of the two hours of downtime per week in the organization under Windows XP and Server 2003.
Two hours a week may not sound like much, but this is two hours where the company isn't making any return on it's payroll dollars. Worse, it's spending these by pulling a tech from the project they were working on to repair the issue. Within our organization, two hours of workstation downtime equates to eight man-hours of lost revenue. If its a server that went down, I don't want to talk about it.
For the last couple of years, we have enjoyed true independence as we are able to work without interruptions from buggy software. We can use our IT department to create new products and services instead of fixing what we have, even though we pay top dollar for something we never really own, just license.
One thing you didn't mention is independence from software mandated hardware upgrades. Linux servers generally run headless, so no resources are tied up creating a GUI no one will see. Between this and a general lack of bloat (comparatively), a modern Linux server can run happily on hardware that Windows servers will turn their nose up at. We replaced an IBM x-Server dual Xeon rack mount with an Intel Atom 330 and actually increased access and decreased response time.
We chose to not cut our tech budget just because we're more efficient now. We use this money to give back to the open source community as well as fund our own internal projects. Several of these have spun off to create revenue streams of their own. Our firewall appliance is one example, and there are soon to be others.
Bottom line... You are right Jack. The independence we enjoy in the shop is due to our decision to move to Ubuntu 10.04 instead of Vista. It was the best choice we ever made.
