[SWLUG] introduction

[Pete Phillips]

Evening all. Just joined the mailing list, so  quick intro (not sure
whether the home page was serious about this!).

My name is Pete Phillips, and I run an NHS medical device testing lab in
Princess of Wales Hospital, Bridgend. We have used UNIX since about 1987 (Convergent Technology Miniframe running System 5.1 if I recall, which we donated to Alan Cox
(yes - the very same) at the Swansea Uni Computing society when we moved
to SunOS in the 1990's. Moved all desktop and servers to Linux in the
late 1990's,  but still have a Sparc 10 as our web server :-( We have a
lovely new web server running Suse Enterprise but it hasn't been
commissioned yet. We use groff/TeX/LyX for text processing (openoffice
not really up to the job), R for statistics, Request Tracker for issue
management, and XML/AxKit for maintenance of our electronic woundcare
journal www.worldwidewounds.com and our dressings site
www.dressings.org. 


Currently have some Xeon based RAID servers running (with hotplug disks
etc), plenty of Transtec workstations, a number of dual boot laptops for
some sales reps we support, and a nameserver, firewall, Zope server etc
on slightly older kit.

We now run Suse on all our lab gear (around 17 staff in our lab, and
another 15 in the spin-off company Zoobiotic who *used* to be part of
our lab). 

I use Linux for everything, except music composition, when I have to use a
proprietary Windows programme. (shrug) :-(

Have used slackware, redhat and suse over the last 10 years.

Wife and kids also use linux mainly. Son just started at Cardiff Uni,
and has got his dual boot laptop working with XP but can't get Linux on
the network - if you know how to, I would appreciate an email. (he has
DNS working, but can't ping exernal IP addresses).

Also have an Iriver (noticed the list thread on this) which is a *way*
cool mp3/Ogg player, and a Zaurus running OZ 3.5.3 (you can see my
latest trials wrt upgrading this at
http://ccgi.philfam.co.uk/wordpress/2005/10/08/5  

So that's my potted history. 

Will try to make some LUG meetings soon.

Pete


--
Pete Phillips, Acting Director,     |   http://www.smtl.co.uk/
Surgical Materials Testing Lab,     |   http://www.worldwidewounds.com/
Princess of Wales Hospital, S Wales |   http://www.dressings.org/
Tel/Fax: +44 1656-752820/30         |   pete at smtl.co.uk