Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What does Surfing Penguin do?

A: We are system administrators for businesses who do not need a full-time system administrator. We save you money on software and hardware whenever we can.

Q: How do you do that?

A: We use and install Linux servers wherever practical. Linux is free. Why buy a $3000 software license for your server when Linux will do it for nothing?

We use your old hardware whenever possible. Linux takes much less overhead because it doesn't have to run a graphical interface (GUI). Our DNS server, for example, is a 233 megahertz machine with 128 megabytes of memory.

Q: But I have a lot of Microsoft software. Is Linux compatible with Microsoft?

A: Yes, for the most part. Large corporations have been silently using mixed Linux and Windows environments for quite some time.

Q: Do I need to give up my Windows applications like Word and Excel to use Linux?

A: No. Those applications are on the desktop. Running Windows on your desktop does not affect the computers that run behind the scenes (servers). You only access these servers for data (file server, DNS server, etc).

Q: Are there free versions of other software that I use every day?

A: Probably. There is software that can read and write Microsoft application files, though, if you would rather not pay a lot of money for the latest version of Word.

Q: Do I need to run Linux on my desktop to use this free software?

A: No. Open Office runs on Windows or Linux. Look at: http://www.openoffice.org. You can download a free copy of their product from there if you like. That's where we got ours.

Q: Doesn't Microsoft object to there being a free version of software that does the same thing as their premiere office suite and that has compatible file formats?

A: Yes, much the same way, I suppose, that Ford objects that Chevrolet is in the business of selling cars.

Q: What do you run at Surfing Penguin?

A: We are a mixed shop. Some of us run Linux because we like it, some of us run Microsoft. Our goal is to do our job without spending more money than we have to. All of our servers (web server, DNS server, File Server) run Linux. On Windows, we run MS Word or Open Office. On Linux, we run Open Office.

Q: I didn't find my question here!

A: Well, send us an email! :) Here's our Contact Page.