Seven Years in Linuxville: Real-world Stories from a Longtime Linux User

Presenter: Peter Rukavina, President, Reinvented Inc.

War stories from the Linux front lines. Seven years ago, while working for the PEI Crafts Council, I was faced with the task of taking a 5000-record database of North American crafts-industry suppliers and making it available to crafts producers around the world. The solution that resulted, which I described at an Access conference in St. John's, NF in 1994 in a session called "Adventures on the Information Red Clay Road: Getting Wired, Cheap," involved a very low-cost Linux server, a 14.4 modem connection to the Internet, and a lot of fiddling around. Seven years have passed, and Linux has moved from a marginal hacker-supported operating system into the mainstream, and I've followed along. I've used Linux for everything from my desktop operating system to serving complex 50,000-page websites to millions of users. In this session, I'll tell the tales of using Linux for practical tasks, and will discuss the joys and pitfalls on using a "roll your own" operating system.