Hi, As I have mentioned before I have a small company, now all 4 machines have linux and I only dual boot 1 machine into NT when I have to run powerdesigner or Delphi 3.
Now a customer has expressed an interest in moving to Linux. But whilst out setup is fine for a small company of developers we would need to install very differently for them. Basically we would need the following 1. 100% controlled application installation and management. 2. Users to be permitted to customize preferences (themes, preferences etc) 3. Users to be able to roam and get their own setup on any machine (even if the machines capabilities are different eg higher resolution monitor). 4. Tight security control - no floppy drives for example. 5. Use of winframe technology to run windows applications (at least for a migration period). I would be looking at Debian with StarOffice 5 as the standard desktop. There would also need to be a AutoCad replacement. It seems to me that there are 2 common ways of working with multiple users on *nix a) A fast server and terminals - gives the control but not the distributed processing. b) PC's running linux connecting to a linux boxes as web/file/print/application servers. But in this situation the PC's all have independant linux installations and hence no central management control. Is there a 3rd way? I wonder if something like: Linux kernal and some configuration files on each PC but all other elements of linux accessed from a central server. Users home directories would be on the server as would /usr. Applications only need to be installed/configured on the server. Where there are different configurations required for the various hardware options then these would be on the local PC's (eg Xserver and XF86Config). Does this sound crazy? I am really new to Linux but this is similat to the way that we used to work Netware with Dos until windows came along and spoiled it. Are there any resources available that will let me find out more about managing Linux on large LANS (we are looking at a small part of a 3,000 node LAN)? Thanks Dave
