Hi All

This site looks like a great resource full of friendly peolpe.

I have been thrust into the IT role of a small business 'cause I was the only one with even a vague idea about computers.

I have decided that if have to learn something I would rather Linux than Windows and so here I am!!

Unfortunatley our client computers must be Windows to run a required software program.

I am very chuffed with myself as I have got our Samba server up and going!!

See you round

Welcome to the revolution. Have you tried that program with wine ? Perhaps other people already have it running, you might find it listed here.

http://www.winehq.com/
or here
http://appdb.winehq.org/

There is also crossover office and vmware-server, which is free as in beer anyway.

What distro are you using and what exactly do you want to do with it ?

David

Hi David

Thanks for the welcome.

My company has 24 staff - most of whom have no computer skills what so ever.

The linux experiment started after the staff kept net surfing to stuffmycomputer.com and installing wreckitall.exe again and again.

There was some genuine reason for net access and the complexity of regulating net surfing with our requirement was well beyond my scope/time. I was sick of always playing catch up with virus/spyware programs and losing the battle regularly with the resultant failure of mission critical IT.

The basic security of Linux sounded appealing and there was littleto be lost giving it a go. So I had an anti-M$ dummy spit and found our pile of dead PC's and got enough working bits for a celeron 2.4 with 768MB ram and a 20gig HD and set up fedora core 6 with VNC server on it. Now if anyone wants internet or email they use a VNC connection (made easy with a batch file - just double click and enter your password) from their windows XP workstation. So far not a single problem with this which lead us to further our linux adventures.

With another journey to the PC graveyard and a new mb we had another spare pc - a P4 3.0 c 1GB ram and a 80GB harddrive. This has now been set up as a Samba Server and I haven't even had to look at it since it was set up.

This has allowed us to remove the fileserver workload from our mission critical database server - this was probably not a big deal as the fileserver doesn't do much but it was to play with.

My next task is to get filemaker server 5.5 linux version up and running on Fedora Core 6. We are having lots of problems with this as it is old software linked to GLIBC 2.0 - I have posted in the Fedora and Software Forums to see if anyone can help. If we get this going that should be the ned of windows servers for us.

May well have a look at Wine for the workstations at that point.

Thanks
Marcus

Seeing as you have older software that has older dependences (GLIBC 2.0, if I understand things correctly), why try to run a brand spanking new version of linux ? Why not run it on an older (but security patched) version that includes GLIBC 2.0 by default. Then no kung-fu required. The only issues then would be a lack of drivers in an older version of linux, but if you were to use an equally old pc, you probably wouldn't run into any problems, and if you did, well, it didn't cost you anything to try but a few hours max. If this box is going to be for this purpose only, and not much else, the approach I would take would be a bare bones debian server install, no X even. Then add only the bits you need, and nothing else, with apt, one bit at a time, then you can cherry pick what version of GLIBC you want to run. If worst comes to worse, don't set up apt(and disable the default online apt source), and just set up a cd (as the only apt source) with just that version of GLIBC. Run apt update, then "apt-get install GLIBC. Bingo.

Anyway, just few idea's.

David

P.S. Be careful using Debian. Once you use apt Fedora will be ruined for you forever. Don't even get me started on yum, or yum-ex. Good luck.

I was using Fedora as ir was the eveolution of Red Hat linux. I was looking to do this as the side of the Filemaker Server 5.5 box says software requirements: Red Hat Linux 6.2 or 7.0. My presumption was that the only hope would be using newer versions of the same distro.

My concerns with using an older version (I did find a site to download Red Hat 7.0 iso's) are
1. potential security flaws
2. hardware compatability. My main point here is that this data base is our mission critical software and I would like to run it on a shiny new (and hopefully reliable) server. I have no need to attach any peripherals to this server it just has to able work re SATA drives and network and chipsets and whatever basic GPU the server has.
3. A thought is too get 2 preloved servers (read cheap) and have a 'spare' configured and waiting to turn on and load the backup database files into - but we are a 24/7 company and I am the only person who wil be able to do that even with an idiots guide. Aslo if I am away (sometimes I get holidays) we would be stuffed until I returned from holidays. Boss would probably send big people to drag me kicking and screaming back from where ever I was. Hmmm, this option does sound appealing - possibly less work to train someone else in some really basic linux than to get legacy stuff running on a modern distro. My problem is when I say it uses linux they think it needs a supernerd to do anything and they all just close their minds. One person asked if it needs those punchcard things

A last question - a database server likes fast hard drives, fast network, a fair bit of memory and CPU doesn't really matter - is this correct?

Regards
Marcus

Didn't realize it was your mission critical app. Thought it was just that one last stubborn app before you could switch altogether. I looked filemaker 5.5 up on wine and it doesn't look like it's working, but it has a linux native client, so it wouldn't get as much effort. I understand you wouldn't want to gamble with it, but setting up a test server wouldn't be much of a gamble, just to see how things go. I don't think the version of linux matters much as far as whether or not it'll run, what matters is whether or not the dependencies are met. It will matter for support, if you still have support, that it hasn't been certified on debian, or another flavor of linux. But if you are 100% of the "support", that would be your call.

I'm personally a big fan of debian on anything server or mission critical. Have you looked at kexi ? Here is a link. http://packages.debian.org/stable/kde/kexi

Debian does run on the latest and greatest hardware too. Might be worth it to set up a test machine, see if it is something that might work for you, especially if the mac/windows version you are currently running is having some issues. If it doesn't, if it just humms along on it's own just dandy, I'm not so sure I would take a risk to fix something that isn't broken, when it's my ass on the line if it doesn't work. Which is exactly why Red Hat makes the big bucks, if you buy support from Red Hat, and something breaks, YOU won't be getting fired. Then again, if it was my company and my money on the line, I for certain wouldn't want my database gold hung out on an older constantly vuneralble windows box. (By older windows I mean anything not XP, it would be crazy to use vista for anything important, and win2000 support is ending soon, if it hasn't already.) There is a reason NASA doesn't use anything windows on the space shuttle. It's because M$ themselves tell them not to use it anywhere mission critical. If my retirement was depending on it, I know which gamble I would prefer to take.

You can set up linux to look just like windows, which might make a few people in your office feel better. There are XP themes for iceWM for instance, and I just read about a slackware based desktop that aims for a windows clone sort of feel. STX linux I think it is. Here, found a link, it uses the Equinox Desktop Environment, which feels somewhat like windows.

http://distrocenter.linux.com/articl.../05/22/1828207
http://ede.sourceforge.net/page/

I haven't tried it myself, as I use mostly newer hardware, and I'm a big Kubuntu fan, but I have used slackware in the past, and I liked it. Slackware also has a fantastic reputation, as long as you know what you are doing, or are capable of looking a few things up. To just run a client or two, any one used to windows should feel just fine with it. (With the right desktop.)

Good luck.....let us know what you decided on. Might help someone else make similar choices someday, and I'm curious how it'll go.

David

P.S. Looks like their site (stx-linux) is down for a redesign at the moment.

P.P.S. My vote would go to debian, if my ass was on the line.

Hi and welcome to LQ