INDUSTRY PROFILE"We basically moved into the shop because the company outgrew my bedroom," explains EverythingLinux's managing director Anthony Rumble emphatically. "But also because I got sick of my home being my office, it just wasn't any fun any more."

While the rest of the retail industry was locked in heavy conversation with Web designers offering names for processors they were not sure how to achieve, the Linux based EverythingLinux Web site was already doing a roaring trade. And the man behind the name is Anthony Rumble, who has spent a good deal of his working life using Linux to invent business processes before the spin doctors provide them with a title.

In fact Rumble claims to have invented Australia's first online fully ERP integrated B2B solution for station sales organisation Corporate Express in the mid 90s -- all based on Linux, of course.

"This keeps happening to me," Rumble muses appearing slightly disheartened. "I do these things, just because it makes sense, or just because I can, and then they invent a name for them."

Rumble's thirst for all things IT began in the unlikely setting of Bega, a New South Wales town better known for cheese production. With his father the owner of the local radio station, Rumble was always going to be a bit of an outsider in a predominantly farming community. However, into this rural setting came a man by the name of Rosenbaum, and IBM representative who would periodically fly down to update the station's accounting systems.

"He always had the latest gizmo to show off, and when he was down I would follow him around," Rumble says. His eyes twinkle as he describes a modem with acoustic coupling Rosenbaum brought along one year.

Eventually Rumble was sent to boarding school in Goulburn, and experience which he describes in no uncertain terms as "nasty".

"We were just a bunch of kids thrown together, most of the rest were farmers kids," Rumble said. "I just never had anything in common with any of them. I was writing programs with a pencil and pad in my spare time, because I didn't have anything else to work on, and most of them hardly knew what a computer was."

By this stage Rumble was already spending his holidays "working" at the local Tandy store, where he used his rapidly expanding programming skills to design a mini accounting system.

"It was fairly simple, but it worked, and I even got paid for it," Rumble said.

Rumble even finally found his niche in the school theatre group where he ended up running the lighting and sound.

"I knew more about it than anyone else in the school, and when I left I made sure there were other students trained to take my place," Rumble said, with a touch of nostalgia.

After doing a stint working in high frequency radio, which he describes as closer to voodoo than science, he began writing code for a multi-line, multi-user systems with a company by the name of Innovations.

He also briefly attended University, but left in disgust when a lecturer gave him zero for a programming assignment.

"I had been programming commercially for years by this stage and the guys teaching us has not written a single line of commercial code," Rumble said in disgust.

He picked up some work modem testing for NetCom through a separate company by the name of TCG, and worked part time in his parent's ice cream store until he came across an ad for a modem testing engineer.

"I called up this very bored sounding HR guy who started reading from a list of questions," Rumble said. "When I kept on answering them he seemed to wake up a bit, and by the end of the call he basically said, 'get in here as soon as you can'."

It was while working at NetCom he came across an article by a unknown Finnish programmer called Linus Torvalds, about the kernel of the Linux operating system, which he had released and asked for feedback.

At this stage Rumble had already managed to sneak into Sydney uni on the odd occasion to use the Internet, and met with a man by the name of Mat Perkins.

"Basically Mat and I had the first non-university Internet connections in Sydney," Rumble says without battering an eyelid. "If you were into Linux you had to have Internet access."

Wanting to share the experience around, Rumble stuffed his bedroom with as many modems and as much computer equipment as he could, and began offering Internet access at $5 per month.

"I had to cover my operating costs," Rumble offers as an explanation for the charges. "Within about four months I had around 4.5 thousand users, and I was running their Internet access all out of my bedroom."

And then his parents sold the house.

"They didn't really have any idea what I was doing, and they wanted to go up north to buy another radio station," Rumble says, hardly bothering to hide his disappointment.

When his attempts to convince Telstra to allow him to run an appropriate telephone connection into his new flat he gave up and forwarded his clients on to fledgling ISP Microplex.

"Everyone knows what it is today," says Rumble. "I was running an ISP out of my bedroom, but it wasn't called that back then, it wasn't called anything."

By this stage it was about 1994, and Rumble took a job with stationery suppliers Corporate Express.

"I set about organising their networks and Internet connections, and eventually came up with the idea of providing a lot of their billing and ordering services over the Internet connections I was setting up," Rumble said.

At this stage universities were the principal users of the Internet, and Corporate Express' major clients.

"We set up the online ordering for Monash," says Rumble. "And next thing we were being inundated with 'me-tooism' from all the other universities, meanwhile the parent company in the states was doing its best to kneecap the idea, because they hadn't come up with it in the first place."

Rumble points out that not only was the system he designed responsible for 47 percent of the company's sales at last count, it was also entirely Linux based, and one of the few profitable B2B service offerings available even today.

After losing patience with company politics, Rumble eventually left Corporate Express, and decided to start up EverythingLinux as a B2C operation approximately two and a half years ago.

"Working for yourself is definitely a buzz," he says peering off into the distance. "But ultimately I want to be building a business that I can sell for obscene amounts of money, and this isn't it. So I'm focusing on what we do well and keeping my options open."

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