The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 5 (of 5)

Linux at work?

How many of you out there are using Linux in your workplace? On a server? Or a workstation? Perhaps even developing commercial software to run on Linux? I was just curious, seeing as how my company seems to love .NET and scorn anything Linux-related. Personally, I also run Slackware at home, but unfortunately have no chance of sneaking Slack in at work.

Sean
Friday, June 25, 2004

I use it for proof-of-concept stuff at work. I work in a place where the security to the systems is very tight, and I maintain my own Linux machine in order to test stuff that would otherwise take forever or be politically impossible to get access to.

Production stuff is Solaris however.

Patrik
Friday, June 25, 2004

Linux is my personal workstation, and on several servers here. Production code was written in C, but runs on both Windows and Tru64 (yes, we still have Alphas). I also use Linux at home, both my wife's machine, my machine, and the firewall.

Danny Cox
Friday, June 25, 2004

My previous project was to help to develop some commercial software (an IVR server) for Linux; not my current project (something else, not an IVR server), which is .NET.

Christopher Wells
Friday, June 25, 2004

Linux in Production, and Development mission critical apps. Workstations are a mix, mostly due to MS Office/Exchange/Outlook.

Anonanonanon
Friday, June 25, 2004

We're mostly a Debian linux shop here, with a little bit of Windows thrown in to support the end users.

Aaron F Stanton
Friday, June 25, 2004

Windows XP for Workstations
Linux (Debian) Development/Test Server
Linux (Redhat) production server

Commercial LAMP development.

Almost Anonymous
Friday, June 25, 2004

Linux (RH9) or Windows XP, depending on preference.

It's about 50/50 in this office, personally I'm on Linux.

Edward
Friday, June 25, 2004

My previous position was with a local govenment agency (around 8000 employees) - any server our Network Admins could be made Linux was. Pretty much all of the desktops were windows but a good majority of our backend was Linux.

This doesn't count the minicomputers and such we had, but it was still quite a bit.

CF
Friday, June 25, 2004

I used to use UNIX at work all the time in early 90s. Man, was the UNIX philosophy getting crusty back then. Now I've very happy to be doing software development under Windows XP.

J.
Friday, June 25, 2004

Exclusively. Scientific computing.

Robert
Friday, June 25, 2004

We have several development linux servers. Linux images also run on the mainframe.

Desktops for developers are being evaluated, production mid-range servers are also an option.

someone
Friday, June 25, 2004

We develop drivers and kernel modules for Linux. We also develop user-mode libraries and example programs to demonstrate the library and drivers. We also do a lot of general Linux support (Will your system work with Linux? How do I install Linux on your system? I just installed Linux, how do I compile your driver?).

I don't write a lot of code directly (I'm management now), but I spend a lot of time mapping out the APIs and working on how the code should be structured. When are team was smaller a few years ago, I did most of the development myself.

We make high-reliability embedded systems for military/industrial applications. We're primarily a hardware company, but our boards need drivers. Linux is a big part of that. We support a lot of other OSes too (even DOS). We're platform-agnostic. We try to support whatever the customer wants to use.

We're mostly board-level stuff, but we do some systems integration. We've done some turn-key Linux systems complete with OS and applications, but those are rare (we're expensive).

Myron A. Semack
Friday, June 25, 2004

Mostly XP on the desktop here, but with a sprinkling of Linux workstations (one of them mine). The servers, save for one file server, are exclusively Linux.

ME
Friday, June 25, 2004

I work at a major mortgage company that is currently (gradually) migrating all application/analytics servers to SUSE Linux. Linux is definitely for real in the corporate market. For now Linux on Intel boxes is replacing Unix/RISC combinations like Sun Solaris/SPARC, so you probably don't see it's corporate emergence in Microsoft dominated shops.

But one advantage Microsoft has had in gaining server market share is that the Intel platform has great cost advantages over leading Unix platforms like Sun SPARC servers for example. That advantage will now be gone and even slightly reversed since Windows server licenses cost more than Linux distributions.

Stray Reader
Friday, June 25, 2004

Windows 2000 almost exclusively here, just about all of our embedded develoment tool chain is windows based.

E.Frome
Friday, June 25, 2004

Running one ancient Redhat 7 mail/intranet server along side one even more ancient NetWare file server. Considering upgrading to either RHEL3 or MS SBS2003. Serving 20 Windows XP and 98 desktops.

Chris Altmann
Saturday, June 26, 2004

I am porting Solaris code to RH Linux

Tom Vu
Saturday, June 26, 2004

Aaron: May I ask where you work? Are you hiring? :-)

debian geek
Sunday, June 27, 2004

Got both. Develop on Linux Boxen, and have windows boxes for email and Office apps. Can't switch either, the rest of the company is Windows based.

Snotnose
Monday, June 28, 2004

Hey Debian Geek -

We're in Indianapolis - send me your resume' and I'll look at it and pass it along. No promises - I'm not in charge here.

Also, tell me about yourself, seeing as I don't know you yet. You read JoS, so you can't be all bad. :) However...I have no idea what you're like or how you'd fit in. Don't tell me anything that you wouldn't want passed along to an interviewer, since I may just forward your email in entirety.

Aaron F Stanton
Monday, June 28, 2004

Hey Snotnose -

You might try out OpenOffice and Evolution Connector. If they work out for you, you might be able to drop the Windows box with noone suspecting.

Aaron F Stanton
Monday, June 28, 2004