Hi everyone, I work for an IT company with a policy of "We don´t support linux"

Anyway I am just wondering if anyone has setup networks that would compete directly with SBS 2003. And even better if you have setup both so you can compare them.

*Mail server
*Web server
*Remote workstation access
*Possibility of checking emal over http
*Other stuff 2003 does.

Bascially I would love to become a linux admin in the future but at the moment its quite a niche market where I live.

Other than remote workstation access, you've named tasks where Linux has long exceeded any MS product's capabilities. Remote workstation access... well, linux can access windows desktops using the rdesktop protocol, and natively via X or vnc.

Thats really cool I didnt know that you could connect to windows hosts via rdp from linux! I will have to try it. What about some sort of a single console that lets you setup all of the below?? Or is the only way to do it setting up each indivudal component?

Well, a lot of people hate it (and I no longer use it), but I used to use webmin for administration. It was great, simple, and I could access it from any web browser anywhere. YMMV.

In general, things in the *nix world tend not to be as tightly integrated as Microsoft products. Novell I think is working on an apps suite to change this, and other vendors are too. But too tight integrationalso causes problems (one thing failing can send the whole stack down). I've always found Apache/sendmail/Dovecot/HORDE quite nice to do everything a MS product can for free. For remote access, I like SSH, but if you must have a GUI and X forwarding won't do, then I've heard good things about VNC though I've never used it. In general, *nix solutions tend to be just as capable, if not more so, than MS ones, but not as tightly integrated (again there are exceptions) and possibly a bit more troublesome to set up.

Group calendaring?

That's been holding me back from totally dumping Windows.

Tons of iCal-compatible software out there.

It's not the same. Those are peer-peer and not client-server.

I would greatly suggest you take a look at someting we have been playing with and seriously implementing:

CITADEL/UX

Many new features have been added and there are many more on the way. EXTREMELY fast even from Webclient.

Kim,

You might also want to consider looking at:

Bynari and/or Scalix (formerly HP OpenMail)
Both have plugins to Outlook (the horror of it all) and can make things a bit smoother. However, they are not necessarily FREE unless your implementation meets the criteria. Have a look.

David