On Wednesday 23 July 2003 02:08 am, Patrick Jacques wrote:
> Hey everyone,
>
> I'm hosting a round-table discussion at 29th St. & Bell this Friday
> covering the topic of NT server replacement using open source software.

NT server replacement is easy. Windows workstation replacement is the hard 
part. 

My brother is tired of cleaning out viruses and etc. from the workstations he 
supports. He is also tired of the accountants and secretaries and etc. 
sucking up all the bandwidth looking at web sites they have no business 
viewing, installing unauthorized software on their machines, etc., and he has 
no real authority to do anything to them when they do so. (Yes, he has 
pointed out to their managers that this places the corporation at risk from 
the BSA etc., but they take an ostrich attitude). As a MCSE type, he would 
personally like to upgrade all their machines to Windows XP and lock them 
down so tight that you could hear the accountants scream all the way in his 
office, but, alas, the machines are largely Pentium II 233's with 64mb of 
RAM, and thus the Windows 98se currently running on them is likely the best 
that can be done -- with Windows.

With Linux on their workstations, on the other hand, he'd have blessed relief. 
Evolution is immune to Windows viruses, it runs fast enough on those decrepit 
old machines, OpenOffice does what they need it to do, and they can try to 
install Windows software all they want, it ain't happenin :-).  The main 
problem he's facing now is access to the Windows NT server. He'd like them to 
log in, and be able to access only their files on the Windows NT server. But 
smbmount requires a specific user ID. Unless he ties people to specific 
workstations (which he does not want to do), he's stumped. 

-- 
Eric Lee Green  mailto:eric@badtux.org
Unix/Linux/Storage Software Engineer needs job -- 
see http://badtux.org for resume