New Guy

[bosco555]

HI All,

I am new here, Gianni is the name. just a quick introduction and to say Hi.
I found these forums in google and thought "where were you guys all my life?".

I have been searching high and low, but the easiest search brought me here.

I do have, as we all do, a quick question if I may impose:

I have been searching for a Linux alternative to Windows servers. I do network and computer support and many of my clients are non-profitable organizations.

Linux would be the ideal solution, but which one? Can you guys recommend and advise me about which flavor to go for?

Please remember that my clients cannot afford exorbitant amounts for software. Also many of them would like to have shared calendars and tasks.

thanks in advance and best regards to all

gb

[elija]

Welcome to the forums, Gianni, I'm sure you will find them very friendly.

The question you are asking is a difficult one. Seven different people are
likely to give you seven different answers

I use Ubuntu 6.06 lts Server, which is kind of cool as it is pure terminal
although you can install a GUI if you wish. It was easy to set up and I
found a great guide called "The perfect server" at howtoforge.com.

Another one that seems to get recommended a lot is CentOS which is a
"de-branded" and recompiled Red Hat Server OS. I have no idea what it is
like.

The simplest answer is to try several and see which one you get on with the
most.

I have just done a quick search at howtoforge and they have guides for both
of these.

Good luck with which ever one you choose.

[darkrose0510]

Hi bosco, welcome.

There's a poll for most popular server distro, have a look at that for some ideas, personally I use Debian on my servers (web/mail/dns).
Server Poll 2008

[bosco555]

HI Guys,

thanks a million for the replies. I will check the above links and see what comes up. I have also looked at some open source collaboration suites, but they are just as expensive as M$ Exchange...what to do??

All we basically need is File/Print services (samba does that just fine), email (antispam and antivirus), and some sort of software to share the calendars.

I will take a look at ubuntu as well as debian. They can be configured using webmin, can't they?

thanks again and best regards

GB