I am trying to cut cost by getting rid of my exchange box and go over to linux.
Is it possible to move exchange2000 useres and mailboxes from exchange to linux RHEL3? and how can i accomplish this?

There is an excellent article on migration from Exchange to Linux-based messaging programs in the February 15th article on InfoWorld. I have a paper copy, but I know the article is on-line -- compares several different Exchange alternatives.

I've got a free one right now (Kolab) which I'm trying to make work.

--tad

I think you would need to create the users manually (or at least write a script to do it) As for the mailboxes you should be able to do it with imap and a script like:
http://migrationtool.sourceforge.net/

thanks for the speedy response guys but i am a bit green when it comes to linux and was wondering if you could explain a little more. i read the article from Infoworld and it sounds good but we were looking for something free and built on Redhat AS3.

Someone told me i could use Openldap and join it to exchange+ads and pull the users+mailboxes that way.

does that sound possible to you? or is that guy just trying to sound smart

What all functionality do you want? What you're attempting is a pretty big job even for an experienced unix admin. OpenLDAP sucks the big one and there's not much in the way of shared calender support although that's changing. Mail would be fine, you could setup any IMAP server and let Outlook use that.

My main concern with a replacement item for Exchange is its ease of administration. While I'm fine with editing myriad text files, the others who I need to be able to administer the system are more used to a GUI. I'm looking for the best open-source package which does have a decent web administration interface.

Kolab seems to be all right, but I still haven't gotten multi-homing working on it. Anyone know of any others that don't require parting with $15,000?

--tad

You also could look at sendmail +cyrus +spamassassin + clamav for a nice mail server with the bells and whistles that is needed on a Windows desktop client. You might upset people when they lose tasks, shared calendar, public folders, etc once you move them onto Outlook with only imap folders. Bynari used to do a connector for Cyrus imap, don't know if it's still around but it's not free.

Use webmin for administration if you want a gui for other staff.

Suse enterprise comes with a bunch of yast tools that can be used to make up this kind of server really quickly.

One alternative is to use http://contribs.org/modules/news/ SME server which is a kind of all in one and very slick to get up and running.