Does the operating system matter?

The Skype outage reminded me of a question that a chief financial officer (CFO) sent to the brilliant Kode Vicious.

It’s the typical question a non-technical person would ask, and the curiosity is legitimate: does the operating system you use to implement a solution matter? Here is an excerpt of KV’s answer for you to consider, dedicated to the finance managers and the technology managers of my beloved country:

Does the operating system matter?

The CFO, who signs as “Tired of Zealots”, explains that every time a project starts in his organization a small but loud group pushes him to pick an open source operating system, and gets straight to the point:

At this point, it seems like the operating system doesn’t really matter anymore, just so long as my application runs on it. What do you think? Should I just fire the loudmouths?

KV replies that he rarely condones firing the loud ones, that the “expert panelists” who declare the operating system a commodity have little intrinsic value themselves, and that the two most important measures of an operating system are security and efficiency. The heart of his answer:

The reason that the operating system matters, and will continue to matter as long as there are operating systems, is that the operating system is the ultimate arbiter between your application and the underlying computer. The operating system controls access to the CPU, memory, and all the devices. A good operating system is like good service in a restaurant: there when you need it and invisible when you don’t.

And his conclusion:

So, the short answer is, “Yes, the operating system matters.” And, please, don’t just fire the loudmouths. I might be one of them.

KV

The full exchange is in the original column.