I have had extensive experience with the installation, configuration and maintenance of Linux systems. I started playing with Linux in the early 90s, with a 0.99 kernel distribution from Softlanding Linux Systems that came on 40+ floppy disks.

My distribution of choice became Slackware which I liked for its ease of installation and cleanliness. I watched Slackware grow and develop and regularly purchased CDs of the latest version of this distribution. I built and configured a number of Slackware servers, used for tasks such as dial on demand WWW proxy servers, mail servers, and browser based database access systems.

I have had experience with RedHat Linux more recently although I have to admit a preference for downloading source and installing from scratch compared to using RedHat's RPM packages and the dependency issues which can occur with them.

Linux has proven to be a stable, robust operating system and together with Apache, MySQL and PHP it offers a great development platform for web applications. I have recently been working with the Asterisk PBX, an open source PBX supporting standard telephony devices as well as Voice over IP connections/devices.