February 19, 2001. I can still recall the feeling of deja vu from just six months prior when we were scrambling to get systems ready for the Year 2000. Now, it’s time to move on and face new challenges, but there are still some lingering issues.

The day starts off like any other at work. I’m checking email as part of my morning routine, and I see a message from our support team about a server going down in our production environment. The server is running an old version of Red Hat Linux 6.2. We’ve had this problem before, but it’s always been hard to get management to upgrade because the servers are so old, they barely show up on the network map.

“Let’s reboot,” I think, and hit the reset button without much hope that it will actually fix anything. To my surprise, it works! The server comes back online, and we’re able to see all the services starting up as expected. It’s a small victory, but one that feels significant in our ever-evolving tech landscape.

After getting things back up and running, I decide to take some time to think about our technology stack. We’ve been using Linux for years, but it still faces resistance from management who prefer the “stability” of Windows servers. I’m part of a team that believes in open source and has been advocating for more widespread use at work.

As I type up my thoughts on an internal wiki page, I can’t help but reflect on how far we’ve come since the dot-com bubble burst. The Linux community is still pushing forward despite the skepticism from corporate environments. In our tech stack meeting last week, a colleague made a joke about how “Linux is just for geeks and hackers,” and it got me thinking—why do people still view it that way?

I remember when I first started working here in 1995, Linux was barely considered as an option for servers. Now, it’s a staple of our infrastructure, running critical services like Apache and BIND. But there are still days when the old guard resists change.

While I’m pleased with how far we’ve come, there’s also frustration. VMware is starting to make waves, but it seems to be more about the virtualization aspect than anything else. Our developers are still using IDEs that are a decade old, and we haven’t even started discussing adopting agile methodologies or continuous integration tools.

As I finish up my notes, I realize that while Y2K is behind us, there’s still work to do when it comes to getting everyone on board with the latest technologies. The Linux desktop isn’t as big of a player yet, but we’re definitely seeing more interest in it among developers and operations teams.

I head into our tech stack meeting feeling ready to push for change. We have a lot of ground to cover, but one step at a time. The world is moving fast, and if we’re going to stay relevant, we need to keep up. Linux might not be as widely accepted in corporate environments yet, but it’s getting there. And who knows—maybe by the end of 2001, we’ll see some more progress.

---