08/12/2026
If your running a small business or non profit. Consider switching your IT environment from Microsoft to Linux. Ive been a Microsoft software engineer for over 26 years. Microsoft has a lot of hidden costs we dont think about. Biggest expense is email and office. Microsoft office use to be buy once own forever. Now its subscription based. Other expenses include things like backups, business software & web apps. Most businesses dont use one software to manage a business. They use 5 or 6 different softwares with subscriptions varying in price. For example, quickbooks. But quickbooks may not do everything you need. Sage is a popular alternative or add on. Next is data backup software. You can get "free" software for windows but typically requires an IT expert to set it up and administer it. Next major system is your inventory management. Lots of options out there for windows but all charge. Another one we dont think about is project planing. Jira is a popular option but not free. This list goes on and on forever.
So why Linux? Linux is very popular with IT professionals. A lot of engineers such as myself build a lot of apps for windows and Linux. However, Linux versions are often open source and 100% free vs windows versions that cost. Linux also includes most common software you need for free built into the operating system. Linux Mint for example gives you a full office suite out of the box and includes office chat software free. However you may have that 1 windows app you cant live without. Linux can run it using Wine or other ways of virtualization. You can even run windows on a virtual box for free. Linux also offers a full software store with actual free full version of software and most perform better than windows alternatives. Making them more productive than windows and helping you become more productive.
The major down side to linux is the learning curve. Linux mint makes that almost effortlesss by mimicking Windows appearance. You can get free windows themes to change the appearance to look just like windows. Unless your doing things on the backend, you cant tell the difference. But what if you do need to do things on the backend? Linux is still very much command line driven in this area. But Google is very helpful and linux is very forgiving. If i run a command that fails, linux will tell you what you did wrong and suggest the correct command. The first time i seen this i was shocked. It literally tells you how to fix its self when things break. Reducing time for enginneers to troubleshoot problems. All of these reasons and more are why i recommend the switch. If you would like to review the switch, give us a call. We can review your current setup for free and tell you if linux is right for you.
