On 27/07/10 21:26, Paul Morgan-Roach wrote:

> I'd primarily look at http://ebox-platform.org for the ebox package.
> It ticks all the boxes for a drop-in replacement for MS SBS and is
> getting better with each version (asterisk is a recent package addition,
> for example). I've got a couple of deployments out there and it's very
> good. Ironically though support for joining linux clients is limited and
> tbh it's a bit of a pain getting linux clients connected, but it's on
> the wishlist for future releases.

ebox is on my list next to clearos for those sort of duties. Version 2 
looks very promising.

> In the Fedora/Red Hat camp Free-IPA is an awesome project that
> serves
> as an all encompassing replacement for Active Directory by linking
> kerberos, 389 directory server, PAM and FreeRadius. This is rapidly
> maturing and is massively scaleable - I've been testing this since early
> versions, and it does what it says on the tin!

Now that does look interesting. I shall be giving it a try.

> It's been said before but what the open-source community needs most
> is  a full replacement for Exchange, with sharing of tasks, public
 > folders and calendars. Egroupware is good but some people genuinely
 > prefer software to web-apps and this is one area that's lacking.

Email is the thing which I am scratching my head over most. 
Unfortunately it is one of the things which has to be there from day 
one, and work extremely reliably as the company grows.

> From a security perspective there are a wealth of open-source
> firewallolutions out there. I favour IPCop due to the number of very
 > well written plugins available, but pfSense is also an awesome BSD based
 > project.

I stayed on the Smoothwall side of the fence when IPCop was originally 
announced as a fork, and haven't looked at it for a long time. I haven't 
used Smoothwall for some time either. As this is an Ubuntu list, and to 
keep the overall number of different distributions to a minimum, it 
would be nice to look at something Ubuntu based though.

> From a personal perspective, on the desktop a major tool that
> doesn't  have a functional replacement is MS Project. I was using Planner
 > until recently when i found out some major features were missing (but
 > appeared to exist!).

As a former project mangler myself, I rarely ran the sort of projects 
which got much benefit from Project type applications. What used to 
happen was a load of charts would be produced early on in the project 
and distributed, then printed out by assorted departments, stuck on the 
wall and then either misunderstood, ignored completely, or just not 
updated and used to start arguments about why something wasn't going to 
happen when it said it was on version 1.0 of the plan.

> Another business tool that is missing is a
 > replacement for AutoCAD - other than those though i don't think there
 > are many applications that don't have a linux based counterpart.

It is a fair point. I'm not sure there is going to be a need for high 
end CAD in this business though.

> Other than that, I'd like to wish you good luck.

Thank you.

> Having a client who
> specifically wants an open solution is a positive thing....and a great
> opportunity to spread the word.

That's what I'm hoping.

-- 
JimP


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