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Linux fulfills many roles in the commericlal industries of Ireland. It is being used to supervise Windows NT boxes and reboot them when things go awry. It is used as an image server for bulk installation of PCs (and indeed for multi-platform and compatibility testing where each image contains a different operating system and configuration).

It is used as a serial port server (by a company developing software for communicating with data logging devices) as an alternative to carrying loggers, power supplies, sensors and cabling arund to individual desks). Network monitoring is also a responsibility that Linux carries well.

Then there are the more typical uses of Linux: as internet gateways, firewalls, email servers, ftp servers, file servers, print servers, (virtual) webservers, Radius, DNS, SMB networking, AFP networking, web proxies (by using squid) , LDAP directory servers, irc (Intenet Relay Chat) servers, games servers, news servers, open database connectivity (client/server database applications with Linux servers and Windows 95/98 clients) - the list goes on.

A graduate of Trinity recalls: "NT servers were the bane of our lives as undergrads trying to use PC's... half the time the network just wouldn't let you log on, decline to boot because the images wern't available, etc, etc, ad extreme nauseum".
This is pretty much a good case in point - Linux is much more stable than Windows NT, it requires less hardware resources, and is much more versatile and robust. One of the television broadcasters in Ireland use Linux to reboot their NT boxes when they lock up. Remotely rebooting an NT box is quite simple - by exploiting a flaw in NT - the NT server is sent a tcp/ip packet that it just can not cope with.

There are more sides to Linux than just 'server' and 'monitoring' roles. Linux is also used for developing Linux ports of software and websites.

• BlueTree
• Flogas Ireland
• RTE
• TradeSignals.com
• WIT