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
(text/plain)