----- Original Message -----
From: "Terence Chang" <peanutlen@yahoo.com>
To: <plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 1:38 PM
Subject: Linux for small business


| Hi All:
|
| I only have experience on linux for desktop use 5% of
| my time. My friend would like to know if they can use
| Linux for the small business. This is what they have.
|
| 1. 20 PCs with either Win95 and Win98 installed.
| 2. A 7MB DSL line goes into the office.
| 3. One DSL/Router/Hug to shared the internet to every
| PCs.
| 4. One dual PIII 600 512MB memory server with Win2000
| and a shareware email server.
|
| This is what they need.
| 1. A firewall to secured the intranet
| 2. A mail server that can sent and receive company's
| email
| 3. A File server, so they can share the files
| (samba?).
| 4. Every employee will need to logon to the network to
| access internet/intranet. Is it something like domain
| controller, Active Directory and LDAP in NT
| environment?
| 5. Of course Apache Web Server and MySQL and PHP for
| internal web site. (I cna do this)
| 6. Virus protection.

Aside from the virus protection part, I know that this can all be done from
that one server. However, I am not so sure it's a wise move to have all of
that running on the same machine as the firewall. I'd recommend having a
separate computer for the firewall and another to do all the rest of what
they need.

|
| My friend try to cut the cost by not using MS
| solutions (MS SQL, MS Exchange, MS ISA, IIS, etc).
| What Linux Package should he buy to get all those
| capabilities? They are not going to get rid of win 95
| and 98, because some account software are installed.
|
| Is it difficult to setup that up? What will be the
| average price for all this? I think I will be the
| person to do this. It is a challenge to me though. :-)
| Can you do all this on that Dual PIII server?
|
| I use Mandrake as my second desktop, but i have never
| setup firewall, router and mail server on Linux. Can
| anyone provide some resource that I can check out?
|
| Thank you for help!
|

If you are familiar with Mandrake already, I'd stick with that. 8.2 installs
easily and has the options to automatically set all of this stuff up for
you. And so far, what I've seen with them, they have pretty good
documentation and wizards to help ya.

This stuff:   (MS SQL, MS Exchange, MS ISA, IIS, etc).   --- I personally am
not sure on. I think you'd have to change to something similar like MySQL
instead of MS SWL and Apache instead of IIS, MS ISA and MS Exchange.... I'm
not familiar with at all.