NewsForge: Gambling on Linux Pays Off in Nevada

“When Churchill County School District in Fallon, Nev., asked
Dan O’Barr to find a replacement for an aging and expensive PIX
firewall in 2000, the technology manager for the school district
learned it would cost $20,000 to upgrade the hardware and acquire
additional licenses through Cisco Systems. O’Barr decided he had
nothing to lose by trying to create a firewall with Linux. Even
though he didn’t have much experience with the operating system at
the time–and virtually no experience using it in a firewall
environment–he was confident that he could learn how to make it
work.

“O’Barr ordered a small rack-mounted server from Dell Computer
Corp. for about $1,300, downloaded a copy of Red Hat Linux, and
proceeded to create a firewall. The result was a firewall O’Barr
says was as good or better than anything the school district ever
had with the PIX system–at a significant cost savings.

“After that success, O’Barr was hooked. He learned everything he
could about Linux, becoming a vocal proponent–and a thorn in the
side of Nevada’s Department of Information Technology, which had a
history of support for Microsoft products. He became well-versed in
Linux, eager to try it on other projects. He would soon have his
chance…”

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