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Editor's note: This article was originally published in November, 2013. It was last updated in April 2017.
Take a look at the next desktop PC or laptop you come across. Odds are good it won't be running an open-source operating system. Microsoft's closed-source Windows has by far the highest share of the PC client operating system market, followed in a distant second by Apple's macOS. Linux and other wholly open source operating systems have only a tiny market share.
It's not hard to see why. Despite the advances made by distributions such as Ubuntu, desktop Linux is still miles behind Windows and macOS in terms of the look, the feel and the slickness that most office workers have come to expect. The vast majority of companies simply aren't prepared to make office workers use an open source OS and most office workers aren't prepared to use them, either.
Even if you want to stick with a closed source operating system (or, the case of macOS, partially closed source), your business can still take advantage of a vast amount of open source software. The most attractive benefit of doing so: It's generally available to download and run for nothing. While support usually isn't available for such free software, it's frequently offered at an additional cost by the author or a third party. It may be included in a low-cost commercially licensed version as well.
Is it possible, then, to run a business entirely on software that can be downloaded for free? There certainly are many options that make it possible and many more that aren't included in this guide.
Very few companies using Microsoft Office actually require support from Microsoft, so using an open source alternative can make good financial sense. Open-source suites are compatible with Microsoft Office file formats such as .doc and .xls. Though their feature sets aren't quite as comprehensive as Office, that's unlikely to matter most people only use a fraction of the available features available anyway.
Here are four open source alternatives to Microsoft Office:
The following financial packages provide open source alternatives to commercial packages such as Quicken, Sage or QuickBooks:
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is complex and can be very costly. But open source alternatives to SAP or Microsoft Dynamics do exist. Here are three:
Commercial customer relationship management (CRM) software is available from niche vendors, software as a service providers such as Salesforce.com and large software vendors such as Oracle. Here are three open source alternatives:
Private branch exchange (PBX) hardware used to be very expensive, but software-based PBX releases bring the price of PBXs down. The open source PBX market is dominated by Asterisk software.
Content management systems power websites and many of the world's largest sites use an cross-platform, open source CMS such as the following:
Ecommerce software packages, such as the three cross-platform products listed here, include everything from product presentation to shopping carts, checkout and payment processing.
Open source security tools If you havent been looking to open source to help address your security needs, youre missing out on a growing number of freely available tools for protecting your networks, hosts, and data.
Open source network management tools Can open source products deliver enterprise-grade results? To answer this question we tested four open source network monitoring products: OpenNMS, Pandora FMS, NetXMS and Zabbix.
Paul Rubens is a technology journalist based in England.
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How to run your small business with free open source software - CIO