distri for heterogeneous academic network
 

Hi All!

My workplace has quite a heterogeneous network: my research group has a preference for Apple hardware (and we use their Mac OS X rather than PPC Linux); the university at large provides Netware file storage and printing services, and there may also be local printers through SMB. And we connect to Unix servers through ftp, telnet and probably SSH (untested; most people use Hummingbird running on Windows, whatever the default protocol there is).

I'm getting frustrated with the standard desktop distributions (RH, Fedora, MDK; haven't actually tried SuSE/SUSE yet) and started wondering whether there is a distribution that provides simple interfaces for these different network components. I guess that with Novell's acquisition of SUSE, they're at the head of the game, but it may be a while before their next release. RH Enterprise Linux WS came to mind, but their website isn't really informative.

The critical components would seem to be netatalk and novell login. I gather that Samba is adequately configured in all mainstream distributions. I have also yet to see painless configuration of CUPS with Netware printers - RH9 didn't cut it (and Fedora never seems to get beyond beta quality).

So here's that aching question again: which distribution?

Many thanks for your suggestions,

Samsara

This looks promising:

http://www.ignalum.com/

Looks good.
Not exactly "bleeding-edge" , but I take it , that' s not the prime concern for a setup , like you described.
Save for the Samba- and Kerberos-issues , they mention on their site , I think this might indeed be what you're looking for.

I know , what my pc is doing tonight ;)