Programmer finds happiness in moving Microsoft out of his life
October 7, 2004
Mike Owens credits a little penguin for reviving his moribund interest
in technology.
A chemical engineer by degree, programmer by choice, the 33-year-old
North Richland Hills, Texas resident says he was close to turning his
back on computers as a profession five years ago.
At the time, he was working and playing exclusively on Microsoft Windows
machines.
"Even from a programming standpoint, it was a nightmare," he says. "It
just never worked right, and you spent more time trying to program
around the bugs than you did doing anything really creative or
productive."
On a whim, Mr. Owens began experimenting with the open-source operating
system Linux, whose mascot is a pleasant, pudgy penguin. He immediately
felt an affinity with the operating system and the dedicated volunteer
developers who tend it.
"It's technology with love in it," Mr. Owens says.
Since then, he has woven Linux into every facet of his personal and
professional life.
At home, he runs a network over a Gateway server loaded with the Gentoo
flavor of Linux, a highly customizable distribution. On his Dell laptop,
it's Linux running the desktop. Even his portable music player uses a
database run by the free system.
"I don't use anything Microsoft, and I haven't for years," he says.
At work, it was not a change without pain. Mr. Owens had landed a job as
chief information officer for Century 21 Mike Bowman Inc., where 150
real estate agents and 30 staff members rely on him to keep their
Microsoft systems running.
"I don't care who you are. You will almost certainly have to
interoperate with Microsoft products in one way or the other," he says.
But, like many Linux switchers, Mr. Owens was enticed and excited by the
help available from others of similar mindset. He joined the North Texas
Linux Users Group (NTLUG.org)
, a haven for geeks with a passion for building and tweaking the OS.
And he began to explore ways the real estate office could be converted
from Microsoft, exploring solutions that others had developed and made
available on the Internet.
Microsoft products may dominate the world, but grass-roots groups such
as NTLUG are booming all over the country. Although Linux is installed
in perhaps 5 percent of the world's machines, it is gradually gaining
status and increasing its reach as more programmers and IT managers warm
to its benefits, especially for Web applications.
Only this week, for example, AT&T announced it is testing Linux software
as a replacement for Microsoft's Windows operating system on 70,000
personal employee computers.
It's cheap, as in free, but it's reliable.
"Linux and its associated software runs so well for so long that I can
go for six months or longer and never have to look at it," Mr. Owens
says.
With the permission of Mr. Bowman, Mr. Owens and the real estate
office's staff of four began devising ways to replace Microsoft products
with Linux equivalents. As they did, Mr. Owens says, the economic
benefits inherent in Linux became obvious to management.
Today, Mr. Owens and the Bowman IT staff have converted most of the
major real estate office functions to Linux.
And, in Johnny Appleseed fashion, Mr. Owens has spread the seeds of
Microsoft discontent to a family friend's law firm and a cancer care
service, both of which adopted Linux.
Still, Mr. Owens acknowledges, his parents and his Web designer wife
remain immune to his Linux evangelism. All still use Microsoft for
personal computing, and that's OK, he says.
"I've come to realize that I can't say Linux is for everybody," Mr.
Owens says. "You don't have a lot of fancy bells and whistles with Linux
yet, but it's getting there."
