If you were to make the move from Windows to Linux/open source.....

[p858snake]

I'd start with the servers - most of our servers are Linux-based now anyway, so they obviously work okay. File servers, in particular, are dead easy to set up and no-one will even notice they're Linux based.
...snip...

If you're keeping you're AD controller perhaps for the email part you could use exchange, I know a ISP in australia, who tries to use opensource where possible but exchange worked out best for them especially across multiple platforms. They did a blog posting about their reasonings behind it which can be found here Microsoft Exchange at Internode | Internode Blog.

And here is a newspaper article about a school in New Zealand that went Open Source (From memory theres a little spin in it) NZ school ditches Microsoft and goes totally open source - education, Linux, linux.conf.au, Microsoft - CIO

[Number6]

Well I'm biased as I am a Dev for Karoshi. But it is the setup of the servers and web management tool that makes it above a vanilla Ubuntu server, but if you have the knowledge then you could create your own setup using a vanilla system, Karoshi is really designed for people that don't want to do the fiddly bits.

I have no problem with anything that takes the fiddly (aka time consuming) bits away from me

Is it possible to get at the fiddly bits if required though?

How does it deal with email?

[dhicks]

If you're keeping you're AD controller perhaps for the email part you could use exchange

What is it, exactly, that Exchange does that is particularly valuable? Email is, you know, email - you can choose from a bunch of different webmail clients for free and have everyone using the same system cross-platform for no money. What else does Exchange offer?

--
David Hicks

[Number6]

What is it, exactly, that Exchange does that is particularly valuable? Email is, you know, email - you can choose from a bunch of different webmail clients for free and have everyone using the same system cross-platform for no money. What else does Exchange offer?

--
David Hicks

Shared calendars...

[p858snake]

Email, Calendars, Distributed Address Books all in one package that is designed to work together for the couple of things I can think of.

Then there is also the access methods it allows, for example: POP3, IMAP, The outlook remote connection thingy, Outlook Web Access.

[webman]

@p858snake: the open-source Zimbra package does all of that + more.

[Disease]

Speaking about email on Linux, one of the first tings I might like to do is offer internal pop3 email for the kids and also their own webspace, what would I need to achieve that? I would also needs some srt of free email monitoring software.

[webman]

@Disease

Email: Zimbra - POP, IMAP, Web access - whatever you want. Email filtering can easily be added (I did a write-up on this on the EG wiki, but during the latest upgrade they moved from DokuWiki to MediaWiki so the formatting got screwed up). It would log and deny messages that contained bad words.

Webspace: Yes, easy. Apache with mod_userdir. I did this guide on our own wiki - FTP and Web server [Bishop Barrington IT Wiki]

[Number6]

@p858snake: the open-source Zimbra package does all of that + more.

Not exactly cheap though is it?

[webman]

@Number6 The open-source edition doesn't cost anything apart from your own hardware and time; and this is probably fine for the majority of organisations. If you want push or other enterprisey features (compare here) then you pay for it. What you save on MS licensing will probably be more than enough to cover it (again, depending on requirements, YMMV...)

[Disease]

Thanks Webman, will definately look at that.

[linuxgirlie]

Yeah the system isn't "locked down" if you go onto the server you can access everything as a normal ubuntu server, so you can install other packages etc etc if you wish.

[webman]

Is Karoshi all web-based now or is there still a GUI? Is it based on the LTS version(s) of Ubuntu?

[Number6]

Yeah the system isn't "locked down" if you go onto the server you can access everything as a normal ubuntu server, so you can install other packages etc etc if you wish.

Thanks again. Does it have an inbuilt email server?

[Number6]

@Number6 The open-source edition doesn't cost anything apart from your own hardware and time; and this is probably fine for the majority of organisations. If you want push or other enterprisey features (compare here) then you pay for it. What you save on MS licensing will probably be more than enough to cover it (again, depending on requirements, YMMV...)

Having looked at the website it does look a pretty good package.

And the open source free version is adequate compared to Exchange?