Hey folks,

I'm a network engineer for a small school district, and I want to deploy linux. We're about to build an intranet server on SUSE 8, but I want to know what you folks reccomend as future steps....

I'll just leave it open ended and see what folks have to say..


Jonathan

SuSe is easy, but big for a web searver, some things to concider : a server wont need a big slow GUI, that can help increase speed of web pages being served

Quote:

Originally posted by SciYro SuSe is easy, but big for a web searver, some things to concider : a server wont need a big slow GUI, that can help increase speed of web pages being served

SciYro Has a very good point here, Red Hat (Now Fedora -- basically) is a very good server Distro.

This is interesting. The primary reason that we went with SUSE was that it's now owned by Novell, and, since we have a few Novell servers and are running groupwise we speculated that we may get better support on this end.

Isn't it possible to install SUSE without the GUI?

I was actually looking at Red Hat / Fedora but was over-ruled in the end.

We've already bought SUSE, so it will be the one we use for that one server, but we're not married to it. One particular "Distro" that I've been eyeing is K12LTSP (K-12 Linux Terminal Server Project) which is built, I believe, on Red Hat 8. Anyone have any thoughts on this one?


Thanks for your input,

Jonathan

You can choose which packages to install wth Suse. you can get a webserver install down to like 300mb. All Linux distros allow you to do this. It is not like MS which you need the GUI. I find Suse, RH and MD bloated. I would actually suggest Slackware ro Debian for the webserver.

I have used LTSP about one or two years ago. I found it easy to setup. If you are looking for a terminal server for Linux I would check it out.

dont forget that distros are just a collection of software, along usualy with some specific config and software made by the distro manufactorer, so if any distro has suport for somthing, then technecly every other distro can, you just need to get the source and compile the suport in

and theres some distro wich dont let you select what gets installed, but theres usualy a way around that (like installing the packages by hand instead of the installer program)

i say a webserver could use 200mb of space (but ya wont get much else)

This is great stuff folks, keep it coming.



I'm definately looking to deploy terminal services, it makes so much sense for our computer labs and libraries. We'll probably deploy at least one windows term server, but I'd really like to have a primarily linux environment in the labs. I'm also looking at the possibility of a Sunray setup in our CAD lab, but come to think of it, I bet we could do CAD on linux eh? I'd love the opportunity to work on SUN equipment but this isn't about me, it's about giving the students the most bang for the buck, so what do you folks think? (I know we could run Linux on the SUN server but realistically if we're spending the dough on the equipment we might as well use Solaris)

So is it realistic to run a good CAD program on Linux (this is probably a stupid question)?

Oh yeah, sure!

In my experience, CAD is lacking on the Linux side.
First you have AutoCAD. I've read a lot of forums about people running it with Wine, having widely varying luck with it. I'm running v.2000 at work (under Windows XP), and I would find it very hard to believe that it would run at any decent speed under emulation. It's such a bloated program, I would absolutely love a viable alternative.

I have heard of some versions of Microstation (Bentley) that were ported to Linux. Even under Windows, that is my CAD application of choice. It's just plain awesome.

I'm always keeping my eyes open for anything promising for Linux. Qcad looks promising, but when compared to both Microstation and AutoCad, it's so simplistic that it would be difficult to deploy in my field (architecture).

This is all of course just my opinions and experience. If I had a more powerful box, I might give AutoCad a try with emulation, but it seems that Autodesk is the Micrsoft equivelant of CAD industry. so currently, I'm waiting and hoping......

Here's an interesting article about one school's experience with a Linux terminal server project... It's some food for thought about "alternatives"...

A Computer Lab with No Windows

I have to agree about the CAD situation for Linux. I'm putting together a new workstation for myself as my main home box and it will be Debian/Sid and I'm now leaning towards VariCad. I have not seen any "reliable" way of running AutoCAD with Wine... I've been using AutoCAD since R11 and currently use AutoCAD 2002 for 8-10 hours a day. I do mechanical design and much of my work is 3D so VariCad looks like it might be a viable alternative... The price is attractive compared with the ongoing subscription pricing of AutoCAD too. Like others have mentioned, AutoCAD is the M$ of the CAD community so pushing past that barrier could be an issue!

VariCAD

Good luck with your venture!

By intranet server, do you mean routing, gateways, network services such as web and network boot kind of thing?

Plus, Windows can still download files from Linux servers....

No what I mean by intranet server is an internal web server (non-public) for use by users on our network.

Thanks for all the interest here folks, keep the advice coming. I think we will probably try a test deploy of LTSP.

For anyone wanting to do CAD on Linux, I'd suggest you have a look at LinuxCAD. It is supposed to be as close to AutoCAD as you can get (for now), and 1/4 the price. Or, google up the CAD availability with the keywords 'Linux' and 'CAD'. There are several options, with varying degrees of utility. For my purposes, at least LinuxCAD can produce layered parts lists.