Re: [MLUG] Distro Suggestion?

[Herbert Wolverson <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 02:55:18PM -0500, Christian M. Cepel wrote:
> I had been planning on Debian just because it's respected for its 
> licensing, but I wanted some additional opinions.
> 
> Any suggestions for the best distro for the following??
> 
> o Print server
> o File sharing between Nt4, Win2k, MacOs machines (perhaps with it's own 
> storage space raided)
> o recipient of a network connection from a wireless bridge on top of the 
> location
> o router for that network connection to other machines and hubs.
> o Firewall
> o Mail server

Just about any competent Linux distro, or any of the BSDs will do this just
fine. Personally, I'd go with FreeBSD as my first choice, Debian as my second -
they are both stable, powerful and easy to update - and don't cram a bunch of
extra stuff into their default installs (ie. I don't have to spend time removing
stuff I don't want; I just add stuff that I do want!).

The downsides to both Debian and FreeBSD is that you'll not have the nice
graphical admin. tools that SuSE et al. give you. For me, that is an upside,
since I know the config files pretty well and don't want to waste resources on
prettyness... but many people don't like doing things the hard way (for which
I don't really blame them!).

Pretty much ANY distro/OS you use will be setup with:
* CUPS for print serving, probably linked to Samba.
* Samba for file sharing between NT4/Win2k/MacOS X.
* Netatalk if you need to talk to earlier Mac OSs.
* OS-provided routing/firewall services.
* An MTA. Personally, I use Qmail on FreeBSD - but Postfix is good too. Debian 
defaults to Exim, which works but I don't like it very much (personal preference).
Everyone's favourite security hole, Sendmail, is also pretty popular!

-- Herbert
_______________________________________________
members mailing list
EMAIL:PROTECTED
http://mlug.missouri.edu/mailman/listinfo/members