“More and more corporations and small businesses are taking the
Linux plunge these days, and for good reason. The low cost of Linux
combined with an abundance of geeks who eat, sleep, and breathe
UNIX has created a win-win situation for IT managers and geeks
alike. Since it’s usually a younger junior systems administrator or
“that kid from the design group who knows a lot about computers”
who introduces Linux into the workplace, there’s already someone
in-house to move into a full-time systems administration position
with no training required.”
“In other cases, Linux is just stumbled across on accident, as
illustrated by one of my previous contracts. About two years
ago, I was brought into a large manufacturing outfit to improve
their network. They were having problems all the way around the
board, from poor network performance to their NT file server
grinding to a halt because they lost their systems administrator
and never bothered to hire a new one.“
“When I was brought in to take a look at their network and to do
an initial inventory, I found an old Red Hat Linux 4.2 disc kicking
around in their supply cabinet. It turns out that an intern who was
working for them introduced them to Linux but wasn’t skilled enough
to do a full installation. Since they needed a zero-maintenance
solution and part of my contract was to get their entire LAN up on
the Internet with full e-mail and remote access capability, I
decided that Red Hat Linux 5.0 (remember, this was 1997) would make
the best replacement for their dying NT server.”