I am currently running a windows 2000 small business server doing the following tasks:

e-mail: receives incoming mail for my domain on port 25, serves to users by webmail, POP3, IMAP4, and the exchange protocol (Microsoft exchange)

domain: works as an windows domain controller, thus giving users the ability to have one single account which can be used on all computers.

web server: Serving simple (html) web pages and e-mail. (ISS)

File sharing: Sharing files over the Microsoft protocol.

dns server: Keeping track of the computers on the local network, and relaying to Internet dnses.

printer sharing: An HP ink jet 850c connected on USB shared over the windows protocol.

My question is: How much of this can be done with linux, with which applications? And what cannot be done.

I would regard running a graphical interface ( X ) on this server unuseful use of recourses.

What distribution is recommended?

What should i be aware of when starting?

Does anyone have experience on this?

There are no limitations to Linux.

Which ever one you like.

http://distrowatch.com/

Don't expect to learn everything at once.

Slackware will do the job perfectly.

E-mail: Postfix as MTA. Squirrelmail as webmail. You just have to uncomment two lines in /etc/inetd.conf and restart inetd to enable IMAP and POP3.

Postfix is not included, but a package for the latest Postfix can be found at www.linuxpackages.net.

Web server: Apache. The most used web server in the world. Included in Slackware.

File sharing: Samba. Allows file sharing between Windows and *nix using the SMB (Windows) file sharing protocol. Samba performs better than Windows. Included in Slackware.

Printer sharing: Samba. Check that the printer is supported in GNU/Linux. A lot of HP printers are supported.

DNS server: BIND. BIND is clearly the most used DNS server in the world. Included in Slackware.

Maybe not. However I wouldn't like to write my own applications, I would like help with finding what's already been done.

I do believe some are better suited for GUI-less servers, and include more of the required / wanted applications on the disc. Am I wrong?

Is anyone able to give more concise / constructive replies? This really doesn't help a lot. EDIT : it seems objorkum already gave one.

How easy is it to make these work together?

Does MTA stand for Mail Transfer Agent?

How about the windows domain?

[list=1][*]MTA indeed stands for Mail Transfer Agent.[*]You could use samba for your windows domain.[/list=1]
Its fairly easy to get the various components to work together, but you may have to do a bit of reading. Some distros are easier to configure than others and if you are a total Linux noob, I suggest you take a look at Fedora/Redhat (or free Redhat rebuilds like CentOS) or Suse because of their good gui configuration tools.

samba doees nt domain, but NOT active directory

I have been running linux on a few desktop computers for a while. And have gotten a fairly god overview of the system. It would, however, be my first attempt on a linux server. Changing configuration files shouldn't be a problem if I know what to change.

Does anyone know any good web pages on this subject?

What exactly does the AD do? The only thing i would like is to keep track of user names, passwords, UIDs, and whatever needed so that the users can have one account that works on all the windows computers. I thought the AD was only a way of storing that information, i wouldn't mind if it stored it in the on/off state of the keyboard LEDs as long as it works. ( although i would need more than 3-bits storage capacity)

nt domain can store all that, AD just allows you to orgainize it in a much more complex way, while in NT domains all the users, groups, etc. are in one big pile, not sorted like AD.

although i dont know of a way to do AD with linux, it looks like an NT domain will work for you

objorkum recommended me to use slackware, is fedora core 3 any worse? I have far more experience with that distro.

I see that sendmail shippes with FC3, in which way is that worse than postfix.

I seems like FC3 includes squirrelmail. How do I enable it? ( I have not got a working webserver, so please include how to enable that as well.)

What differences will the end users see between a w2000sbs and a linux domain server.

fedora core is more bloated than slackware and includes a lot of things you don't need, however if you are not installing X then I'm not sure of the performance differences. Fedora core also customises a lot of the software before including it on the distro, slackware just takes the software as is.

Sendmail has a much, much steeper learning curve to it than postfix, postfix can *almost* be used straight 'out of the box'.

You need to install the httpd server, or compile it from source if you wish, then you should be able to do 'service httpd start' or something like that, can't remember exactly

The end users on the workstations should see no difference between the windows server and the linux server.

I set up a test server (FC3) and tried to install a mail server on it. It was much simpler than i had thought. Adding services ( httpd + dovecot ) with the tool system-config-services did most of the job, thereafter i edited the squirrelmail config file a little and added the required alias in the apache config file and i were basically up and running. I dindn't download anything.

I feel confident that i can setup a linux mail-/webserver that's up to my requirements now, but I am still utterly confused when it comes tho the samba powered domain server. And I haven't gotten to look at BIND yet.

Does anyone know a good step-for-step howto for setting up a domain server as like the one i will need as possible? it would be really nice to have it as a point of departure.

you use the samba tool, there is one in FC3 which works great and includes apache 2.0.52 (i think thats the right version)

FC4 is due out 6/6/05

You may want to look into bind;
http://www.rhce2b.com/clublinux/RHCE-19.shtml

What do you mean?

Is there a samba tool including apache?

I really can't get your meaning.

Yea, i know. I will probably use it for the final setup.

I still wonder...

anyone?