Preface

Here I am looking very mysterious and hacker-ish.

I am a long-time computer enthusiast(way back to the commodore, time-sinclar, Atari 800) days. I now own a speciality hosting provider for universities and businesses called Hospemex.com.

I've been interested in Linux for a long time. I was trained as a Windows Engineer(MCSE) back in the 1990s. Windows 2000 was all the rage. However, every-time I would walk into a book store, there would be Linux, right in my face with free CD ready to be loaded and experimented with. I believe around 2000 I gave in to my curiosity and installed Linux. I loved it's graphical interface and wanted to learn more. I could see the potential of having a free open-source operating system. I installed a distro that isn't even around any-more. I can't even recall the name. I've since loaded BSD, REDHAT and SLACKWARE and Mandrake(back when it was still called Mandrake). It was always on a spare machine that I didn't need and my kids could experiment with.

Fast Forward to 2008 and UBUNTU is being touted as being a windows killer. After doing some reading, watching Youtube videos and hearing about people touting the SPEED superiority; I caved in and installed it dual-boot on my laptop. Little by little over time I found myself working more and more on the Linux side of my laptop. I truly began to enjoy the GNOME interface.

I now had a taste of the power of Linux on the desktop, but I wanted to see a server at work. Knowing that Ubuntu was based on Debian(and Ubuntu did not offer a server version at the time), I naturally selected Debian as the server to learn the ropes on.

As a freelance engineer, I began suggesting Debian as a file-server for many of my projects. My clients were very happy to see how much I was able to save them on licensing. Slowly I was converting almost all my clients to a Debian file-server when their time to renew the hardware, or wanted better performance from their file-server.

Fast forward again to the present, I'm continually buying collocation rack space and servers for my clients. I have a presence on 3 different continents, and my company provides services to 35 major companies, universities and governments, around the globe. I am not an expert in Debian Linux (by far). I am continuously learning and updating my knowledge on Debian; thanks to websites, bloggers, wiki sites, howtos etc.,etc.,etc.