[Techtalk] Poll: who uses Linux in a business setting

[jennyw]

I'm a consultant. I setup a file server once for a client on Linux as a
replacement for a dead NT server, and I have hosted a few Web sites, but
that's pretty much it.  Unfortunately, most of my customers have Windows
setups, and it can be hard to argue to include a Linux box.

For example, a customer wanted firewalls at five offices, and to connect
the offices over a VPN.  I thought about doing this in Linux, but I ended
up choosing SonicWall because: 1) They're vaguely cheaper; 2) They use up
much less space and consume less electricity; 3) If I get abducted by
aliens, they'll be easy enough to support (for one thing, they can always
call Sonic); and 4) Sonic keeps upgrading their products to protect
against new types of attacks.  About the last one: if I had installed
Linux firewalls, it would take me more time to keep up with developments,
hence costing my customer more (this is a non-profit).

I suspect that if I wanted to do more Linux stuff, I'd need to find
clients who already use Linux.  Unfortunately, I suspect that if someone 
already uses Linux a lot, they're looking for experts, and I'm definitely 
not an expert on Linux, either as a programmer or a sysadmin.

There are just too many simple things I don't know how to do on Linux. For
example, without looking stuff up, I don't think I'd be able to swap NICs.
X is always confusing -- I'm never sure if I've set it up optimally.  In
fact, I'm not even sure that XFree86 *can* take advantage of all the
capabilities of new graphics cards. Also, I wouldn't very effective at
performance tuning, or streamlining a kernel.  The worst, though, is I
can't easily tell when a system has been compromised, and I also don't
know a lot about disaster recovery, such as recovering deleted files,
booting from floppy to salvage a messed up installation, or even imaging a
computer.  Recovery for me would be re-building the system from scratch
(unless all the data is in a separate partition) and restoring from
backups.  Of course, on Windows, you have to rebuild almost as a matter of
course.  ;-)

Jen