Re: Considering a Transition from Windows to Linux

Robert Harris wrote:
KDawg44 wrote:
On Aug 16, 11:28 am, KDawg44 <KDaw...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi,

I have seen Vista and helped a few friends with it. Without getting
into too much detail, it is the biggest pile I have ever seen.

That being said, I run the IT for a company and we currently are using
Windows XP and Windows 2003 server. The way that Vista points to the
future is not good and I am investigating a migration to Linux in the
organization.

First off, I am a huge fan of Linux. I have several Gentoo Linux
boxes at home. That being said, it is different running a few boxes
at home than in an organization. There are many compatible pieces of
software for Linux to make my users comfortable but there are a few
things that are needed that I do not know if there are replacements
for.

1.) Adobe Suite - We use Fireworks, Photoshop, Illustrator, and
Flash. I have used GIMP but am not that comfortable with it yet.
This is probably the least of my concerns as we could have a few XP
PCs just for this.

2.) Exchange server - This is my largest concern. My organization
makes large use out of Exchange. This is our mail server, how
resources such as conference rooms, etc, are booked, calendars are
viewed, tasks are kept track of, etc. Is there an equivalent to
replace this with?

3.) Directory/LDAP service - As big a POS anything with Microsoft is,
Active Directory is nice. Group Policy greatly eases my
administrative tasks, having a directory service to validate
credentials and having roaming profiles etc. make everyone's life
easier. Is there a replacement with this type of functionality? I
have taken a brief look at SAMBA but have not attempted to deploy
this yet. It looks like a beast. Any thoughts?

4.) Printing services - We obviously have many network printers. I
have heard CUPS is a pain in the *** to get going.

5.) Which Version? - Like I previously mentioned, I run Gentoo on two
boxes at home and a laptop and I LOVE it. However, this would
definitely not be the version of Linux to deploy. What is the easiest
distro to deploy in large quantities while still giving me the control
that I desire? Ubuntu? What is better for a server?

This is not a project I am rushing into.... I plan to deploy this in
my home network and if I can do well with that, investigate what it
would take to move to Linux in the organization (and convince everyone
else they should do this as well).

Thanks for any advice.
And one other questions, what is a/are good Antivirus and Antispam
program(s)

Thanks.



For your interest, here's a few notes about my company's setup. We have around 35 client PC's (all windows of some flavour - but no vista), an old NT 4.0 server, a Debian 3.1 server, and a new rack with three Debian machines that is gradually being brought into service (with openvz virtual servers on these machines).

Phew!

There is no drop-in replacement for Exchange Server. But there are
excellent IMAP mail servers (like Cyrus), file servers (Samba) and print
servers (CUPS). You can run LDAP to validate credentials and have
roaming profiles. But you must walk before you can run.


Also consider Zimbra for your email server (which is web based, but supports IMAP clients). We use dovecot at the moment, but are considering moving to Zimbra.

Are you planning to migrate your Windows clients or just your server? If
you are talking about Vista, then presumably you are migrating your
clients, so why not take it a step at a time, e.g.

1. Migrate your "Office" work to openoffice.org

At our company, we have a few that have MS Office, while most use OpenOffice - since about version 2.0 of ooo, we've had no serious issues with compatibility.

2. Migrate your email clients to Thunderbird

Apart from a couple of users that like to sync their calendars with wince phones and therefore prefer Outlook, all our computers use Thunderbird with IMAP access to the dovecot server. OE is banned.

3. Migrate your web browsing to Firefox

IE is banned at our office except for the very rare site (such as a particular bank's site) that insists on IE. Almost everyone uses Firefox, but a few prefer Opera. It's virtually impossible to enforce a ban on IE using technical methods, so I threaten people with wire cutters (for their network cables :-) if I see anyone using it.

The point is, even when using windows clients it is far more secure (and far cheaper) to use open source applications like these, and most users have no problem with them. And it will make any later transition to Linux desktops (Kubuntu makes a good choice, I think) easier.

4. Migrate your calendaring to Google calendar (IMHO there isn't a clear
winner in the calendaring stakes at the moment).


I haven't figured out calendaring yet (Zimbra may be the answer for us).

You will be half way there. Then migrate about your server to Linux.
Then migrate your clients.


In many ways, a Linux server is far easier to work with than a windows server. By the time you have figured out how the client access licenses work on windows, you would already have a Debian server up and running.

You will need to study LDAP and Samba in the meantime.

clamav is an excellent Antivirus program (which of course you won't need
once your clients have been migrated to Linux) and spamassassin is an
excellent Anti-spam program.


You'll want clamav to scan your incoming emails to protect your windows clients - there is not much need for antivirus for Linux clients. However, there is still the possibility of using Wine to run windows viruses...

Robert
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