A little help

[mindswept]

Hi all,

This may be a little long winded but some advice would be greatly appreciated.

After to many frustrating years with microsoft software and sytems I have decided to give Linux a go. Fedora is a really attractive option but after probably to much reading I am confused at where to start.

I run a small business with only half a dozen workstations at most. While at the moment I am just looking to set up a file and possibly email server, a do wish a little later in the year to take over the hosting of my own site and mail.

I have an ISO of Fedora 8 and am really at a loss as to weather or not go simple or set up a fully fledged server now and grow into it. I have some experience with unix through the mac platform and generally adapt quickly to learning and change.

Any thoughts and guidence would be much appreciated, perhaps one day I can return the favour or help someone else out who is in my position...

Thanks ahead for any responses

[zcworld]

personal i would do the full server setup now

or you could do if you got an free pc or an good end system like with 2 GB of ram or more
run an VM copy of fedora in there as an full server website with like www / mail
so you know what your doing and use it as an test bed before you do it to the real box


if you do the full setup now
you can disable the services you dont need ATM via the termianl window -> type
setup and than pick like services from the menu list and disable them that way

[mindswept]

Would you recommend the how to? It looks fairly compehensive and pretty easy to follow. Although I am struggling at times with commands, it's been a while!

[zcworld]

look at the ISPconfig for Fedora
to handle the
Email / web hosting

you can run on that box
an privte DNS server
so that you can run privte / testing websites
that are only for local access use

for the filesharing : arrr hang 10
and i will see what i can find around

and use like samba for the network shares / file sharing on the network

personal : i would use 2 x
one for the file sharing
and one for the web / email

[zcworld]

give me about 5 hrs or so
and i will have an look at cubepanel

to see how well it does email

personal : for web hosting : its a SOB at best ( Point Of View)

but its a tab less massing around at start to setup


PS. go and get a copy of Vmware server
to play around with the fedora
install fedora once
boot up
and do the steps its went when you first start it up
shutdown and than do an copy of the fedora VM folder
incase its goes ass up
so you dont have to do an full reinstall :)

and give an shot to ISPconfig

[mindswept]

Thanks for your responses I am feeling positive about most of this.

The web hosting does concern me, perhaps it would be easier just to control my own domain with a few user accounts............

I have also been told it is not possible to have a linux server run email for windows based workstations..............I find this hard to believe. Although I have good experience in a different field,(Windows), I have seen Linux and Windows work together in many envirionments, VOIP, Fileserving, Application management etc, but admittedly never with mail...................

[zcworld]

I have also been told it is not possible to have a linux server run email for windows based workstations.

BS : Total BS

if you got like less than 20 users of your network
its not really going to kill you or hurt to much to setup each user Email account on an linux box

maybe like (first/lastname)
S.ZWorld@mysite.com
or
Shane.Z@mysite.com

there is an Commercial Email program i like i played around with it on windows
with AD support : never try it on linux with AD from w2k3 server

but still you got the painful act of setting passwords for each user