Welcome to whych.net

I started out as a communications engineer for the military and then ended up in inertial system design.

During this time I devoloped an interest in personal computers. (When I was at university, everything was done on a mainframe with punch cards, something that put most electronic engineers off the idea of computers!)
I progressed from there to taking an interest in networks and the internet.

I decided to make a career in IT and supported and administered Microsoft Active Directory based networks and the software a typical firm would run.
I also supported SQL Server and as a result spent some time designing sites running databased Internet sites - from Internet shopping stores for Collectible World Studios to active content sites for organisations like BETA UK.

I have always been interested in Linux since the original Slackware versions.
A couple of years ago, after a long layoff from Linux, I decided to give openSUSE 10.1 a try and was very impressed by the way that it autodetected my hardware and installed perfectly on my AMD 64 system. With WinXP-64, I had to find the correct drivers before most of my hardware would work!
When my Exchange Server broke down and I had problems restoring it because of all the flaws that M$ never tells you about:

• Your first AD server is the main domain controller. If it breaks down, you will never recover it unless you use the EXACT SAME hardware, which is impossible if it has been running for a few years.
• Your Exhange backup database has to be backed up to exactly the same machine because it is unique to that Exchange server install.
  Since the Server has crashed, you can never reinstall the server from fresh and recreate the database from backup.

As a result, I decided that I needed a change from Microsoft and all the viruses and trojans that are written specifically to run on its desktop software and switched to Linux.