Bobcat Open Systems is a company dedicated to solving your computing and networking problems using "open-source" or GPL-ed operating systems, applications, and tools.
"Open source" means that some entity holds the copyright to the source, but it is open to inspection, and to some extent, modification by others than the copyright holder. If the copyright holder goes belly-up, you can still fix or modify the source code, recompile it, and continue to use the software.
"GPL" refers to the General Public License (sometimes called a "copyleft") which means that anyone can sell, rent, or give away some given software, but they must provide the user, on request, the source code for it. Further, the user can similarly modify the code, and sell or give it away, but they must also provide the source code.
What this means for you is that such software tends to get bugs fixed sooner, and in the hands of the user, usually at no additional cost, than with commercial software. In general, most such software is freely available (no restrictive licensing), costing little more than the price of the media and shipping. In fact, I can install the latest version of Linux (the operating system), a suitable windowing system, and a suite of applications and tools on your computer(s) without violating any licensing restrictions.
With commercial software, you pay up front for a license to install the software on one or more computers, and that may include some limited customer support, but not usually for long. Bug fixes are usually part of the next version of the software, assuming the seller owns up to the bugs. And, of course, the next version upgrade will usually cost more money.
What we are selling is our expertise in installing and using Unix (Linux is a variant of Unix) and the associated applications and tools. We charge by the hour or by the project, depending on the customer's needs.
You may not be able to replace some of your specialized applications that are designed to run on the Windows OS. But most Linux distributions come with several word processors, spreadsheets, web browsers, and email applications. There's even a freeware work-alike for Quicken. But, if you must have your Microsoft-based application, you can set up the computer to have both Windows and Linux installed, so that you can either boot to one OS or the other, or you can install a commercial product, VMware, to allow both OSs to run simultaneously.
We certainly do, as long as it's for a Unix or Linux platform. At the risk of overworking a phrase, "We don't do Windows." We work primarily in C and Perl (and Perl/CGI, Perl/Tk, and Perl/DBI), but can probably craft something for you in Java or PHP.
Yes. Most Linux distributions include services for incoming and outgoing mail, using sendmail for SMTP, and servers for both POP and IMAP.
Yes. There is the standard NFS server as well as an SMB server that emulates an NT server.
Absolutely. The de facto standard of web servers is Apache, and is in use in more than half of the web servers in the world. This system, of course, is using Apache. If you are serving up HTML, CGI, PHP, or Java, Apache will handle it just fine. If you are doing ASP or some other proprietary arrangement, it won't work, but can probably be converted to another (better?) method.
If you are running Oracle, Oracle will be happy to sell you a license to run it on Linux. Most other databases will need to be converted to something that runs on Linux, like MySQL or PostgreSQL, but that's not rocket science.
Absolutely not. You can convert a workstation or one server at a time. As mentioned before, you can add Linux to an existing Windows workstation so you can work either alternately, or back out if you change your mind. Most linux-based word processors, for instance, can import .doc files.
IBM has thrown their marketing power behind Linux, and, in fact, has ported Linux to their "big iron" mainframe computers, and ported their big-time database application, DB2, to Linux.
Oracle has started to convert all of their corporate computing to Linux, and heavily supports Linux.
I've been doing Unix-based projects as a contractor for the last ten years. One of my most recent projects was to port a major application from HP-UX (Hewlett-Packard's variant of Unix) to Solaris (Sun's Unix) and Linux. I've been running Linux for over five years, and currently have five machines running Linux, including three workstations, one notebook, and our company firewall.
For a comprehensive listing of my qualifications and accomplishments, see my resume.
Sorry. I'm an engineer. I go for high functionality, not eye candy. That doesn't mean that a Linux/Apache web server can't be flashy. I'll be happy to work with your web designer to provide a happy mix of flash and functionality.
Give us a call at 800-929-5513, and let's have a chat about your needs and what we can provide. The initial consultation is free. Email also works.
Ok, you may well be able to handle it. Here are some helpful resources.