I've used mandrake before, but now I'm in an office where we're modernizing our systems from green screen AS/400 clients (mixed with a few windows boxes of various ages). First step for me is to get DSL into the office for email/web access, but I cannot afford to purchase Win 2003 server and Exchange 2003 or whatever they're calling them now.

What are some suggestions for a single machine that will run our (to-be-created) web site, email, firewall, and remote access for when staff is on the road? Is this a bad idea? Thanks for your opinions!

kbbabb

p.s. don't get me wrong, we intend to pay for the linux products so we get support. I just don't feel like giving any money to gates...

Fedora Core 4 or RedHat Enterprise
Qmail (possibly toss in Squirrel Mail)
Apache
iptables

Define "remote access" a little better.

/me shrugs

I absolutely agree on the windoze part ;-)

I am very happy to use Postfix/Squirrelmail for mail and Apache for web... But when that is said, I would never use Linux for a webserver. I prefer FreeBSD since I feel it is more secure out-of-the-box. (yes, yes.. I know that is propably not a popular statement in this forum )

Distro: Redhat Enterprise
Mail: head straight off to www.qmailrocks.org and you'll be done in a day...
Web: Apache
Firewall: iptables

I rather use Gentoo. Other distributions are bloated. You can compile programs like Apache, Squirrel, qmail, Squid, and many others with the features that you need. The server is only secure if the firewall and its services is setup properly. Use nessus to test the firewall.

Stay away from USB modems. Use ethernet modems.

very cool info so far, thanks!

We'd like to do secure remote access to info on workstations at the business. Things like customer lists, odd documents, access to certain applications as if we were right in front of the workstation. I'm not exactly sure what we'd need to do that - I have no experience there whatsoever. Maybe something like a VPN with some remote admin program?

And I absolutely agree that none of these things are worth anything at all without proper setup.

Thanks again for all the replies.

For remote access., you might try something like Webmin. As for a good server, I like Slackware, but if you need commercial support, I'd reccomend RHEL or SuSE.