Nadim,

If you are comfortable with openSUSE 11, then by all means use it! While it is true the majority of the people on this list do use debian or RedHat based products, SUSE is supported by several of us members. Many of the people on this list and others have steered away from SUSE due to the Microsoft agreement they entered into. This is fine (No flame wars please!), but SUSE has been working with Microsoft for a year now, and have made SUSE very simple to work along with their products. You will find the opensuse.org website and the suse.com website provide more than enough information to assist you in getting everything configured to work together simply and quickly. Don't get me wrong, I am "not" a Microsoft fan. I do not condone the agreement Novell entered into, I do believe in interoperability as both operating systems and add on software target a specific user.The more support that Linux gets in working alongside the windows platform, the easier it is for the programmers have it to port additional software to work with Linux.

You will find that openSUSE will allow for file sharing with Windows users with Samba. Follow the wizard in the YaST control panel. Printer sharing is also easy in YaST. There are several Novell bundled apps that will also assist in this configuration. I am running openSUSE 11 on a gPC that I purchased from Wal-Mart last year, and I use the gPC "server" for everything, including backup's. The setup is very simple..

Best wishes,

Michael Sammartano

---- Nadim Hoque <nadimhoque@gmail.com> wrote:
> I recently built a server (a q9300 core 2 quad, 8gb of ram, 1 terabyte
> of hard drive space) and I was hoping for now to have it as a simple
> file server and perhaps other types one day. There are about 25
> computers on the network (24 windows 1 mac). Right now I am
> comfortable with opensuse 11, but I am willing to change to another
> distro (I liked fedora but I don't like selinux part of it) that is
> more suitable to a server. Also there is a program that is called
> Geosystems and according to the company the program can be run from a
> server on different computers. I don't know exactly know how this is
> supposed to work, but most likely I need this computer to have WINE
> installed to make it work (the company did say some of their clients
> use linux). The most important thing though is that it must be easy to
> use (very few CLI operations) because we do not have an IT department.
> If I do than is there a good step-by step guide on how to set up a
> server for files as well as an application and maintenance of the
> server. Also, I might need to know how to use a database program (like
> filemaker or access) and again it might have to run under WINE or
> something. I am for FOSS, but I do need to figure this out or I might
> unfortunately have to use Windows Server.
>
> Nadim Hoque
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