Helpdesk can be annoying, even more so if your using spreadsheets or text files to manage what you're doing. Back in June of `07 I was tasked with finding a helpdesk package to use. In previous lives I've used custom web apps, excel spreadsheets, trackit and many, many other solutions. Each had their own drawbacks and annoyances. I finally settled on a free one (the boss loved that) called SpiceWorks. Its an ad-supported free helpdesk software that runs on rails. Seems there is an ability to install on linux (with a lot of work) but more meant to run on a windows based system. It does have its own issues but for the most part, it works better than some of the paid solutions that i've used and tested in the past. Now almost 1.5 years into using it, we have well over 2,000 tickets tracked in the system and while we've had hiccups from time to time, its been for the most part rock solid. We've never lost any data, even during the upgrade process and at most the service has stopped resonding during very heavy usage. We haven't had this problem since the 3.0 upgrade, however.

If you are low-budget, or even high-budget I reccomend spiceworks. Their community is a big help, if you want you can get ads removed by paying a $100.00/yr fee and it just plain works. Not only does it do ticket tracking but high-level reporting, software and hardware inventory, basic vendor (called Service) tracking and email integration for easy auto-logging of tickets and up-to-date information being sent to the requestor as the ticket is worked.

Overall, a great little package and highly reccomended!