[ale] Small Office Server Distro Recommendation

Bob Toxen transam at verysecurelinux.com
Fri Apr 21 09:02:31 EDT 2006


I would either go with one of the major Distros, such as Fedora or SuSE
and enable the automatic updates or go with Slackware as a smaller yet
well-maintained Distro.

An advantage with Fedora or SuSE is that any Linux person can take
care of them so you won't "own" the problem for the rest of your life.
An advantage of SuSE (if you buy the CDs) is that you get real support.
I'd definitely avoid BSD as not as good as Linux and not as easy or
friendly to deal with.

Bob Toxen
bob at verysecurelinux.com               [Please use for email to me]
http://www.verysecurelinux.com        [Network&Linux/Unix security consulting]
http://www.realworldlinuxsecurity.com [My book:"Real World Linux Security 2/e"]
Quality Linux & UNIX security and SysAdmin & software consulting since 1990.

"Microsoft: Unsafe at any clock speed!"
   -- Bob Toxen 10/03/2002

On Thu, Apr 20, 2006 at 07:05:29PM -0400, Patrick Bartkus wrote:
> I have a friend who has a small, 2 1/2 person office. They have 3 PCs, a
> laser printer, a color printer, and a laptop.
> 
> He presently is running MS-Workgroup networking between the systems. He
> generally has the files on one system but sometimes he puts them on another
> system. Sometimes he looses where he has put his files.
> 
> I would like to suggest that he convert one of his outdated systems to a
> SaMBa file archive server and add a big disk or two. But I'm hesitant that
> administering it will be more than he can handle. He has a PhD but not in
> science :-). I would be willing to set it up for him but am not wanting to
> be his IT staff.
> 
> Do you have a recommended distro that he can easily administer? I was
> thinking FC5 with WebMin for a SaMBa config util but just not sure.
> 
> Patrick "Mr. Volunteer Tech Support"

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