[ale] Commercial Users of Linux

[David Hamm]

Mark A. Robinson wrote:
> 
> There's a friend of mine that is interested in using Linux for running CAD
> apps and networking in his buisiness, and wanted to know from me what other
> buisnesses are using linux. Other than AOL and some ISP's, I could'nt tell
> him any specific companies.
> 
> If anyone could throw out a couple of companies (or industry types) that
> use Linux, it would be most appreciated.. If anyone could recommend a CAD
> package for Linux, that would be very much apprecated as well.

I use the hell out of linux in a 
commercial environment.  Both me and my assistant run Linux full time on
our desktops, we are the Sys Admins for a mid size company and most of
our work consists of network and hardware related problems.  
I have a 1.2.8 box as our bastian host on the internet, a 1.2.24 box as
our firewall, an internal ftp server with 12 gigs of storage thats been
in place for over a year and a half running 1.2.13, on our desktops we
are running RedHat 4.0 kernel 1.2.18 and last but not least I have a
P133 serving files to 12 Macintoshes with 16g of software raid level 0
as our primary production server.  I find the remote access to these
computers is invaluable and efficient.  In the months ahead we will be
installing a fram relay network connecting all of our branches.  Some of
the branches will also recieve servers which will be Linux.  The ablilty
to telnet in and resolve problems with low overhead is important for
us.  
One of the coolest things about linux is that it's UNIX and it scares
our prduction people so they don't play with the server which reduces
problems.  I must say I've yet to find a bug in Linux all of the
problems I resolved so far have been user related issues.  Like the Mac
user who changed the date on his Mac but didn't restart.  All of the
files on the server showed up as having been created in 2048 or somthing
like that.  A fresh boot for the Mac fixed that 30 minute goose chase.
Our business is a print for hire situation.  We buy expensive output
devices and print customers artwork and brocheures.  
As far as cadd goes you might want to get on the net and look around for
information on the campaign to get Intergraph to port Microstation to
Linux.  We also do work with Cadd software in one of our departments and
I'd suspect that Microstation is the most advanced cadd pacakge
available.  It's complicated but power always is.

Good Luck
David