How to impress your manager with linux

[r0ck]

Ok, so here's my story.

We're doing surveys sometimes in our group, and our beloved project mangers always give us paper word documents that we fill out, then someone (like an admin) collects everything, and enters the results in an excel spreasheet and then someone else (like another admin, haha) makes a powepoint, cause the first admin doesn't know how to use .ppt.

So when I had to do a survey on my own, I searched freshmeat for some survey tools that you can install on linux. I've setup phpsurveyor (now called limesurvey), and in no time was able to make my own survey where people can do them on my linux box. I was able to do everything without and paper or multiple documents.

Needless to say my manager was impressed and he's all giddy to use the tool himself.

So my question to you guys is the following . What other success stories do you have with linux where you used open source tools to make a difference in for linux, your work place, yourself. I'm intereted to know what other cool linux tools (apache/php/mysql) are out there that can put a dent in the stupidity of using word, then excel, the powerpoint then word again, you get the picture. Got some co-workers that are pretty bent of keeping all information in excel spreadsheets, so now I'm looking for a cool tool that can keep track of inventory like PCs, Sun stations, switches, and other items/objects that you want to flag as hardware or some piece of equipment.

[cybertron]

Being able to simulate ~10x the number of users in NotesBench versus running it under Windows. It should allow us to replace hundreds of PC's with a couple of racks of blades eventually, although getting it running smoothly has been interesting since until recently there was no one around using it so there's been a lot of trial and error.

I also got some custom scripts running on a Linux box to monitor our dozens of big servers, but unfortunately the person who was in charge of those is no longer here so the scripts aren't being used anymore.

[bwkaz]

When we finally fixed our wireless security, we had to create several different networks because we had to create several different security levels. (That's what happens when your wireless devices are crap.) The APs that we use had to map each set of security settings to a different VLAN. (Our switches did have 802.1q support.)

So we have to route the traffic from the low-security VLANs to specific machines on the high-security VLAN, after ensuring it's valid traffic. We have four different VLANs, so one person in our group wanted to buy six plastic NAT boxes (!) to route and firewall all that traffic. But of course Linux is doing all that (and more: we've added a separate VLAN for guests to use, with very basic, traffic-shaped Internet access), for the cost of a few hours of setup. (We yanked one of the client machines that was laying around doing nothing.)

[psych-major]

My employer is in the process of considering SugarCRM as an alternative to M$ CRM. This comes at the suggestion of one of our clients who is currently using it as the CRM for a fairly large company.

Personally, I got tired of all the headaches of dealing with my employer-provided NAS via WinNT and Netware, so I set up my own Slackware file and web server. Now my coworkers are storing their stuff on it too cuz it's always accessible and "just plain works" :D