I recently became the admin for a network which was setup originally as a peer to peer with OS's xppro/xphome/win7home/win2000; each user signs on locally to each system and has admin rights; there are three workgroups in place as each workgroup has shares on an xppro machine serving a client/server database application serving each workgroup. I have been asked to link our canon document station into the mix and to provide a file server to store incoming faxes on as the document station has three incoming fax lines one for each department. They want each user to have a private and public file storage location on a server and also each workgroup will be able to access the fax file location for there workgroup but not for any other workgroup shares or faxes. I also have been instucted to provide a web server internally to our entire network and not to the WWW to serve an internal information blog for problems and resolutions and provide an internal IM system for managers to communicate to there team and team back to managers but team members will not be able to communicate amongst themselves and for a calendar system for management team to post when project dates and meetings will be held so each department will not schedule over top of one another when holding meetings in our meeting room. We are on a go green effort and budget is tight to the point no more servers will be purchased and software budget has been pinched. Need advise on how to proceed; will setting all these services on one machine using Slackware be advisable, I have a backup storage system in place for catastrophic emergency.
Thank you for any comments you may provide.

That's quite a few questions in a short amount of space...

I think the first step here should be to clearly define each goal for this project, and handle them all one at a time. If you need help with every one of these goals, you will be better off breaking them up into their own topics on the appropriate forums. It looks like you have gone out of the realm of just Slackware now, and are looking at some high-level concepts which aren't really Slackware related.

Just as MS3FGX, this is not a distro specific question and it is big enough to warrant moving to a forum with larger traffic.

To get things moving however, your subtopics should include CUPS, Samba, Apache, xinetd, a firewall to allow connections through that you want and drop the rest. Wow, there are a lot of topics. I guess you should also be reading up on a centralized authentication system, Active Directory, LDAP, etc) Are you also doing email, or a local messaging system? That would be another topic and a reason for an authentication system.

Thank you MS3FGX, I truly agree with tackling each one separately, and I will search more forums on where to post each process as questions arise. Finding the right flavor of Linux has been the largest of hurdles in my efforts to accomplish these goals. Slackware, according to my research appears to have the environment I am looking to attain I have downloaded an ISO and am going to test it out for install and setup of one goal to achieve a good feel. Thanks again and God bless.

Thank you icqraid. Your breakdown of items I need to be investigating is a great help. I am looking forward to this process. "Knowledge is a gift to be shared among minds." Dont know who said it but i have not forgot it. As to the email we have a hosting service the mail is being handled through at this time and the OS they use is Linux not sure what flavor but the kernel is 2.6.32-26.1.BHsmp. As far as local messaging they are wanting to use a internal Instant messaging. Thanks again and God bless.

Perhaps this is a subpart of your mission that we can help you with here. While I am pleased that you feel this way, may I ask what is is about Slackware that appeals to you?

A couple of weeks ago, I started setting up a new WWW server at work and chose Slackware for it. One of the key differences in Slackware from most distributions is how package management is handled. In most distributions you say "install package X" and it acquires the binaries along with all of the dependencies, including the optional ones. As far as how it is configured and whether or not it has all the desired features enabled is another question. Slackware differs in that it has the Slackbuilds repository where you download the source and a configured build script. The script is easy to modify for your needs. This is of tremendous benefit when you are trying to build a custom server. For example, in my case, I needed Samba with Kerberos and LDAP and was able to add a few lines to the configure section of the build script to create a customized package. Similarly, I ran into required customization to install the ODBC drivers to talk to our MS-SQL servers for the web site. I think with the tall order you are facing this will be something that you will become quite familiar with.

Thank you Noway2 for your reply. Sorry it has taken so long to respond, I have been extremely busy with reading, testing, reading and retesting. As for your question to why I have chosen Slackware as my OS choice is for its command line environment. I have been a die hard DOS fan since I was 16 and got my first 386sx/16 Gateway with Win31, I was able to write batch files to handle almost all the tasks that I needed to have done. But I was so fascinated with how close to scripts in my BBS(wow do they have these anymore) and the scripts for batch files in DOS. I also was impressed with the website for Slackware, I was just drawn to it as well. I have a lot to learn yet and the days of learning will never end. ( i like that feature the most ) God Bless