On Tue, Apr 20, 2004 at 02:57:53PM +1000, Simon Bryan wrote: > OS Lindows
Debian unstable will give you more flexibility. Whether that's a positive or a negative is your call. Debian does have the Very Funky FAI, which can do automated installations. There's a program callec unattended (unattended.sf.net) which does equivalent things to Windows boxes. For making it look windows-like, there's no shortage of window managers out there. The two big desktop systems, GNOME and KDE, both have a fairly windows-like feel to them; I've had windows die-hards work quite happily with both of them. There's also more "niche" WMs out there, including one which is intended to completely (and I do mean *completely*) replicate the look, feel, and mechanics of XP. There are some truly sick people out there. > Office APps Open Office and ABIWord OpenOffice is probably going to give you better results as an all-round office suite, although it is the most god awful resource hog. > Email Yahoo Mail using Web Browser You can also run your own webmail server using something like Squirrelmail. > Photo Manipulation GIMP Ayup. King of kings. > Publisher (They like the templates) ????????????? I'm not 100% sure (because I don't use OOo) but I think OpenOffice has a publisher-like tool in it. > Printer HP2100 As has already been mentioned, PostScript-native printers are the best. The HP1200 and HP1300 series printers work fairly well for non-PS printers, and they're pretty cheap. > Plus we will need to connect Scanners, USB Digital Camera Just make sure it's compiled into your kernel, and the hotplug infrastructure seems to take care of it fairly well. I believe that certain people in the GNOME project (*cough*jdub*cough*) have been doing work on making digital cameras work seamlessly. I'm sure Jeff can expand on that. > I am setting up a Samba domain and would like to make it an AD look alike, That's some low ambitions you've got there. I'd expect you to be able to pull off something *much* better than AD... Setting up the server is fairly straightforward these days, and hooking clients up to it is a piece of piss. On the UI side, I've worked with ldap-account-manager (AKA lam) and it's pretty good, and I've recently heard of another one which is supposed to be even better, but for the life of me I can't find it's name now. Supposedly does everything include scrubbing the kitchen sink... gq is a pretty decent all-purpose LDAP editor, too, for when you need to make strange changes. > I did read about this somewhere but am having trouble finding it again. There's a pile of stuff on samba.org; I think O'Reilly e-published the latest edition of Using Samba, so ora.com is a good place to look; there's also been a couple of "Samba 3" books published recently, written by members of the samba team, which are probably worth a look. > PS, this is in the Hornsby area of Sydney if anyone wants to help Have a look at the lists at lists.cbnsw.org.au and subscribe to the more appropriate ones. You might find people willing to lend a hand. - Matt -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
