Today's daylog is brought to you by the letter L and the letter T.
L is for Linux and T is for time. You may ask what these two in common but for me its a big thing. I know enough about Linux to be dangerous and I have been trying to move towards open source programs and operating systems throughout my company. But it all boils down to time, lack of time to be specific. Maybe thats why I feel it will take some more, something better to move linux to greater acceptance.
Before you reach for that downvote, let me explain some things first. My first experience with Linux was Red Hat 7.0 and I worked for about 3 weeks on before being frustrated and stopped using. Later I tried Slackware and Red Hat 9.0, all had problems, perhaps because I wasn't using it for my day to day computing needs. I took the plunge and am currently dual booting Windows XP Professional and Fedora Core 1. I enjoy it for somethings but find myself going back to Windows quite often. (Which I know is contrary to everything this site and the people who hang out here feel.)
I am the computer department for a personal bank here, which means I deal with everything from helpdesk requests to network administration. It is overwhelming at times but I still find time to hang out here while I wait for patches to install or wait while I install something.
Back to the time issue. We needed to come up with some external system to track our outgoing and internal wires. (This was requested by the auditors, bless their souls :() So I thought, I could create some form of database and turned to handy-dandy Access to create this. I didn't even think of using MySQL or some other database. Why? Because of TIME. I know Acces, I don't know MySQL. I can create an easy to use form with Access, I would have to learn how to do so in any other form of RDBS. No point in me using it.
Another time issue. I wanted to setup some form of Helpdesk request tracking program. So I fired up Google to try and solve this issue cheaply. Found some open source projects, downloaded it, and then realized it would take too long to configure from source, need to make sure I had everything it needed. So I thought to myself "Self you have a Debian box up, see if it is a package you could install." Lo and behold it is. Great, ran dselect and installed the package, now it should work right? Wrong still more customization and need to figure out where the files are, which file to edit, etc. It should just work.
End of rant, but time is preventing me from using open source and linux in my company.