Hi,

I am attempting to provide a friend with a complete linux solution and have him avoid Windows.
he runs a non profit group and his windows needs would be:

windows 2003 small business 5 cals
Windows Media services 5 cals
Windows XP upgrade 1 license
MS Office 2003 standard 4 licenses


I really like what novell offers and am currently looking at that


SLES 9.0 (Small Business Suite)
Novell Enterprise Desktop 9 (maybe 10 if it come out on time) 5 licenses

I need a media services streaming package that would be full service as an alternative to the MS package.

Anyone with expierence in this have any ideas on where to look? It can be a commercial package.

thanks,

Well, your OS and desktop application suite needs are easy to fill. For that you could use just about any distribution - though if it's business critical I would choose to run something like RHEL and pay for the support. OpenOffice is a great replacement for MS Office. I've been using it on my Linux and Windows boxes for the past year and haven't had a problem. Not sure about a steaming media package, though...

I believe The Novell Small Business Suite (if I am correct) Includes SuSE Linux enterprise server 9, 5 desktop OS licenses (all supported), an intranet portal system like MS Sharepoint, OOo, and support for a year that can be upgraded to better support service (24/7/365) all in one cardboard box (again, If I remember correctly). That would be everything I would need except for media streaming, and since the people there would be new to linux the media streaming would need to be somewhat straight forward.

I am looking more towards Novell for two reasons (If there is a better complete linux solution that wouldn't require a steep learning curve for the recipients, let me know. I'm all ears :-) .)

1. I have had (not all the time but a few) bad experiences with Red Hat's support services in regards to service friendliness and the last thing I need is someone telling me that Linux is never going to be used again because they were ill treated. Novell on the other hand has been much more receptive (In my personal experiences dealing with both companies).
2. Suse's centralized management with YaST will be easier for them to learn than Redhat's since they will be coming from a Windows point of view.

thanks again for all the help.