just some thoughts - today, I finished setup on a Dell PowerEdge 2200
server.

I wiped Windows NT Server and installed linux, updated many things but
most specifically - samba 2.2.1a and set it up as a Windows PDC and it
completely worked.

The acid test was a Windows 2000 Professional Workstation when I
'joined' the domain and created the 'machine trust account' on the fly
and it was completely awesome. After I restarted, I moved the users
files into their new domain/identity "My Documents" folder and logged
off again - less than 2 minutes later - their files were safely backed
up in the users' profiles directory and thus, it was evident that
'roaming profiles' was entirely functional.

There is some phoenomenal stuff happening in linux and I have to say
that just watching it run like a Windows server (thankfully, sans
NetBUI) can be an excciting thing and very high performance.

I have been watching the outrage on this message board about Microsoft
getting the fat order for Arizona Public Ed via @Home but hey, they have
the market and everybody's attention. Linux continues to increase market
share and get people's attention. I daresay, that a year ago, this
attorney wouldn't have allowed me to take the linux/samba route.

I have sent thru a separate thanks to the seawolf list because I had
leaned on them lately to educate me about things like software raid,
using non-officially supported binaries from rawhide to get things like
the latest samba working and others but we have a great lot here who
have helped me tremendously and so to you all, I thank you.

Lastly and perhaps most importantly...

we have in our valley (and on our message base) - Kurt Granroth who
without any notice here thus far, has now released KOffice 1.1

So I am going to beat my head against the wall and try to get KDE 2.2
running (I don't subscribe to the --nodeps method of install and I've
been either too chicken or too busy to learn about apt-get) and then
beat my head against the wall to get KOffice 1.1 running on an RH 7.1
machine (I'm quite certain that it won't be an easy chore).

I know that Kurt has had a low profile these past few days, no doubt
trying to package KOffice 1.1 for various distributions, do pr work,
etc. so to Kurt, I say a very big thanks.

Craig