Sounds like you've gotten a lot of good advice. But there is more money
to be saved by going a slightly different path. Put Linux on the
fileserver with qmail or postfix running and Linux on the firewall.
Ditch the Win95-Win98 OS's and the office software and install either
Redhat, Mandrake or SuSe as the primary desktop OS, install OpenOffice
and Evolution. There is all the software needed for an office avalible
on Linux now so they save $$$ at all levels.

If they move to a linux only environment they can have an ldap server
for the company and gain more speed from the hardware they have. They
will not need SAMBA (even if it is a cool app) and just use NFS. With
some simple configuration they can have their home directories follow
them around the office, so they can use ANY machine in the office to
work from as they need to.

Much less need of virus protection since Linux while not completely
immune from them is MUCH less effected by them.

Cheers,

Davidm

On Thu, 2002-04-25 at 13:38, Terence Chang wrote:
> 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. 
> 
> 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!
> 
> =====
> Terence Chang
> peanutlen@yahoo.com
> 
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