“weather.com is moving its voluminous image and ad data over
to Linux. The company is making the switch in part because of the
talent supply from colleges and universities and, surprisingly,
because of good support.“
“The problem with weather is that no one can do anything about
it. That’s an advantage for weather.com, the Weather Channel’s
Website because it means everyone from golfers to travelers is
intensely interested in what the weather will be. When weather.com
picked Linux to replace Sun Solaris on the image servers on its
site, it did so because of its advantages and a couple of its
disadvantages as well.”
“The disadvantage — that Linux started as an low-cost, amateur
operating system among students and computer enthusiasts — was a
major plus for weather.com, according to Mark Ryan, chief
technology officer for the Weather Channel Enterprises. It meant
that talented young programmers were familiar with Linux. That was
in contrast to Sun Solaris, which weather.com had been using to
serve images.”