Accelerating Linux

At that time, Mahaffeys' had just migrated all of its servers from AppleShare to Windows NT. The company then experienced a period of rapid growth—and, according to Walls, quickly outgrew NT. "We suffered frequent crashes and restarts [running on NT] just as we had with AppleShare," he reveals.

Next, the printer planned to try UNIX on for size. Walls came up with the idea to use Linux as a dressmaker's dummy: to ensure a good fit. "Since Linux is similar to UNIX, we thought we could use Linux for internal training, then switch to UNIX later," Walls remarks.