Re: Conversion to Linux
You want gradual, system by system? Okay: Can you give us a couple of examples of the systems you run and which are the most problematic? Also, you say that you're the only person in your firm with deep experience in the Lunixes - How many other people might end up responsible for these systems if you were to take leave? Feel up to the task of training 'em and documenting everything? I lucked out, the one time I was able to make this transition. I was a one man shop, working for a firm where my predecessors had failed to talk the previous generation of management into paying for a legal license for anything. Despite this, they replaced a couple of OpenBSD machines with a handful of new homemade Celerons running a proprietary operating system boxes and another firm's proprietary mail server. I walked in after everyone involved in those decisions had left, and was picking up the pieces. The mail server was incredibly crash prone, partly due to it being a Celeron with 512MB of RAM, partly due to the poorly maintained Windows install, and partly due to the lack of updates and support for any of it. Dug out the old Pentium III Xeon machines that these new Celerons had replaced and build a normal old Gentoo server. Moved over the easy stuff first - DNS, Apache (they'd moved the old webserver onto a Win32 build of Apache to save them from having to rewrite their configs - Made my life a lot easier, moving it back.) Given that proof of concept and the clear win of having replaced proprietary unlicensed software with open and freely licensed software, it was easy to talk the boss into plunking some money down to reverse engineer parts of the proprietary mail server and cut it over to something open source. I've never been in a position where I could do this since then, however. Working in a sizable department in a medium-large organization makes it a lot harder to find time to put together a proof of concept, train old employees on the new systems, and move away from deeply embedded Microsoft contracts. Good luck, but you've probably got a tough slog ahead of you, unless you're fortunate enough to either be in charge of your department or a member of a 1-3 man "department." Without that, you might just find that you're taking too big a first step. What open source tools can you roll out in your current proprietary environment that might ease the way? Again, good luck, Sean Crago Kathmandu
-----Original Message----- From: Sean Crago [mailto:cragos@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, October 31, 2008 11:11 AM To: Haworth, Michael A.; KCLUG Subject: Re: Conversion to Linux You want gradual, system by system? Okay: Can you give us a couple of examples of the systems you run and which are the most problematic? --------- 500+ WinXP desktop and laptop mix and 30 servers across three continents Exchange 2007 (kinda screws up using Evolution at this point, and probably not switching anytime soon) BES server Office 2003/2007 mix with everyone running Outlook 2007 - need pivot tables to work in OOo spreadsheet Vellum Graphite (has a *nix distro) Currently implementing Sharepoint - would love to find an OS alternate for this Access '97 database that must be accessible by about 45 users --------- Also, you say that you're the only person in your firm with deep experience in the Lunixes - How many other people might end up responsible for these systems if you were to take leave? Feel up to the task of training 'em and documenting everything? --------- Total of 6 people worldwide in our IT department - most are highly trainable or chomping at the bit already. --------- I lucked out, the one time I was able to make this transition. I was a one man shop, working for a firm where my predecessors had failed to talk the previous generation of management into paying for a legal license for anything. Despite this, they replaced a couple of OpenBSD machines with a handful of new homemade Celerons running a proprietary operating system boxes and another firm's proprietary mail server. I walked in after everyone involved in those decisions had left, and was picking up the pieces. The mail server was incredibly crash prone, partly due to it being a Celeron with 512MB of RAM, partly due to the poorly maintained Windows install, and partly due to the lack of updates and support for any of it. Dug out the old Pentium III Xeon machines that these new Celerons had replaced and build a normal old Gentoo server. Moved over the easy stuff first - DNS, Apache (they'd moved the old webserver onto a Win32 build of Apache to save them from having to rewrite their configs - Made my life a lot easier, moving it back.) Given that proof of concept and the clear win of having replaced proprietary unlicensed software with open and freely licensed software, it was easy to talk the boss into plunking some money down to reverse engineer parts of the proprietary mail server and cut it over to something open source. I've never been in a position where I could do this since then, however. Working in a sizable department in a medium-large organization makes it a lot harder to find time to put together a proof of concept, train old employees on the new systems, and move away from deeply embedded Microsoft contracts. Good luck, but you've probably got a tough slog ahead of you, unless you're fortunate enough to either be in charge of your department or a member of a 1-3 man "department." Without that, you might just find that you're taking too big a first step. What open source tools can you roll out in your current proprietary environment that might ease the way? Again, good luck, Sean Crago Kathmandu
Currently implementing Sharepoint - would love to find an OS alternate for this
One easy win is implementing more effective and open collaboration software than Sharepoint. It's a great document repository, but it sucks at pretty much anything else that I've ever seen anyone try to make it do. Might I suggest just firing up a web server and pushing out some new services? Have ye a wiki yet? What about other social networking software? If you don't have Office Communicator in the field, you could roll out an LDAP-authenticated Jabber system. If you guys are heading in the collaborative technologies direction anyway, the above may be easy things to tack on in a related side project. Roll out Sharepoint, a new Wiki (possibly embedded into Sharepoint via iframes), and/or an IM service under a fancy n00b friendly moniker all at once. Seems like the sort of thing my employer would do - Obvious cons, obvious pros. Complicated rollout, potential big morale boost from rolling out something easier to use than Sharepoint or a Wiki ala an IM system. Get a positive "shucks, that was easy" from the customers that might bleed over into training on the more complicated parts of the rollout. That said, I guess the key point would be to offer something new and not just change for change's sake. Most end users and management could care less what's on the backend. They want new but easy to use toys that help them increase productivity.
On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 11:25 AM, Haworth, Michael A. <Michael_Haworth@pas-technologies.com> wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: Sean Crago [mailto:cragos@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, October 31, 2008 11:11 AM To: Haworth, Michael A.; KCLUG Subject: Re: Conversion to Linux
You want gradual, system by system? Okay: Can you give us a couple of examples of the systems you run and which are the most problematic? --------- 500+ WinXP desktop and laptop mix and 30 servers across three continents Exchange 2007 (kinda screws up using Evolution at this point, and probably not switching anytime soon) BES server Office 2003/2007 mix with everyone running Outlook 2007 - need pivot tables to work in OOo spreadsheet Vellum Graphite (has a *nix distro) Currently implementing Sharepoint - would love to find an OS alternate for this Access '97 database that must be accessible by about 45 users --------- Also, you say that you're the only person in your firm with deep experience in the Lunixes - How many other people might end up responsible for these systems if you were to take leave? Feel up to the task of training 'em and documenting everything? --------- Total of 6 people worldwide in our IT department - most are highly trainable or chomping at the bit already. ---------
First of, let me just point out that your company is deeply invested in Microsoft at this point, and either way, you should state to your bosses now is probably the make or vreak time in moving to a more heterogeneous environment. = Desktops = Besides running office software, what are they commonly used for? And what are the average specs of these machines? Also, hypothetically speaking, are all the WinXP licensees valid? = Exchange = How much of Exchange's functionality do you all use? I've heard of at least two (commercial) drop in replacements for Exchange on Linux. If all you all do is email, then you may want to go with a simple Postfix setup however. = BES = I'm guessing this ties you to Exchange. But really, you don't need a 100% to Linux conversion to reap benefits. = Office Suite + Access = How well does OpenOffice.org 3 meet your current needs? Keep in mind that you can connect OO.org Base to a MySQL db. Of the remaining important features, you may want to way the cost of contracting someone to write that feature for you against MS Office 200x in the future. = Vellum Graphite = Will your current licensees transfer to a different operating system? = Sharepoint = As I understand it, your CALs for this are going to be very expensive, and you're going to need at least 500 of them. This one area alone could grant you a large amount of savings, the important thing is, what do you all need Sharepoint for? After you completely invest in Sharepoint, it may never again be cost effective to switch away from Microsoft. = Access = Again, without further details, I'd assume OO.Base can handle that. Additionally, given the large number of changes, you all may want to use unsupported Linux distros on the server side to lower costs, while I think RHEL is worth the price, I don't think you're going to be able to sell it amidst all the other changes. I suggest Centos or Debian on the server side (I personally prefer RedHat based distros) and if you can convert the workstations, Ubuntu may be useful there, but I have no experience with Ubuntu myself. Now may be a good time to repoll the available skill sets of your team to see how well they can make the transition. -- Fedora 9 : sulphur is good for the skin ( www.pembo13.com )
With that large of a setup I honestly think you ought to not look at Ubuntu and instead look at Red Hat or SuSE. Ubuntu has good community support and offers some commercial support, but they are on another planet compared to Red Hat and SuSE. For the x86 world, Red Hat is probably the best supported, and Red Hat has the largest network of support engineers and cooperating vendors. For example, Red Hat is soon about to fully support Exchange 2007. Fedora 10 is featuring Samba 4 and _native_ Exchange 2007 MAPI support. _Native_, no OWA hacks or other such, so Evolution will work out of the box. If you're in an Exchange 2007 environment this will make a migration much easier for you, as you can deploy the workstations while keeping your mailserver, doing that final migration last. Since Red Hat Enterprise Linux is based on Fedora, you can expect the Ex2007 support coming very soon, or you can probably port over the Fedora 10 packages yourself. Red Hat also has by far the best training programs of any Linux vendor, and the RHCE is the gold standard in Linux certs. It's a much easier sell for business types than Ubuntu and possibly SuSE (my understanding is that in the mainframe world SuSE is the more popular). If you go with a Red Hat scenario, I'd recommend using Fedora for your workstations and Red Hat Enterprise Server for your key servers. That would be the most economical. I'm a Red Hat Certified Engineer, so I can help you with detailed questions if you need them. Good luck. Jeffrey. P.S. This isn't meant to disparage either Ubuntu or SuSE. Both offer good support and are good distributions, but my experience has been that Red Hat's support, training, and professional services are far superior for businesses. Businesses care more about those things than they do about the minor differences between distributions. On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 11:25 AM, Haworth, Michael A. < Michael_Haworth@pas-technologies.com> wrote:
500+ WinXP desktop and laptop mix and 30 servers across three continents Exchange 2007 (kinda screws up using Evolution at this point, and probably not switching anytime soon) BES server Office 2003/2007 mix with everyone running Outlook 2007 - need pivot tables to work in OOo spreadsheet Vellum Graphite (has a *nix distro) Currently implementing Sharepoint - would love to find an OS alternate for this Access '97 database that must be accessible by about 45 users
-- "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." -- Thomas Paine
On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 5:29 PM, James Sissel <jimsissel@yahoo.com> wrote:
And companies like to have a good company to support the OS which gives them someone to sue if things go bad.
#include <ianal.h> But there wouldn't be any grounds to sue a support company "if things go bad", because support contracts aren't written in a way that exposes the support company to any liability for "bad things". The contracts require that the support company "respond" to problems within certain time limits, but they cannot guarantee that that response will result in the resolution of the problem to the satisfaction of the customer. And that's because it isn't possible to make such a guarantee. MS doesn't guarantee it to their customers, nor does any other proprietary software company, and neither do Red Hat, SuSE, or Canonical.
In fact, if you read most software EULAs, you will find that they "do not guarantee the fitness of the product for the purpose intended." So it may not even work as an operating system. I really wish people would start reading before clicking to agree and stop spouting this crap about having someone to sue. Honestly, when is the last time any of us have heard about MS getting sued be someone other than a government? Brian Kelsay ________________________________ From: Monty J. Harder Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2008 12:09 AM On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 5:29 PM, James Sissel <> wrote: And companies like to have a good company to support the OS which gives them someone to sue if things go bad. #include <ianal.h> But there wouldn't be any grounds to sue a support company "if things go bad", because support contracts aren't written in a way that exposes the support company to any liability for "bad things". The contracts require that the support company "respond" to problems within certain time limits, but they cannot guarantee that that response will result in the resolution of the problem to the satisfaction of the customer. And that's because it isn't possible to make such a guarantee. MS doesn't guarantee it to their customers, nor does any other proprietary software company, and neither do Red Hat, SuSE, or Canonical.
On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 5:24 PM, Jeffrey Watts <jeffrey.w.watts@gmail.com> wrote:
With that large of a setup I honestly think you ought to not look at Ubuntu and instead look at Red Hat or SuSE. Ubuntu has good community support and offers some commercial support, but they are on another planet compared to Red Hat and SuSE. For the x86 world, Red Hat is probably the best supported, and Red Hat has the largest network of support engineers and cooperating vendors.
For example, Red Hat is soon about to fully support Exchange 2007. Fedora 10 is featuring Samba 4 and _native_ Exchange 2007 MAPI support. _Native_, no OWA hacks or other such, so Evolution will work out of the box. If you're in an Exchange 2007 environment this will make a migration much easier for you, as you can deploy the workstations while keeping your mailserver, doing that final migration last.
In all fairness, Redhat hasn't announced RHEL6 yet. RHEL 5.3 was just announced however, but that isn't going to be based of Fedora 10+ -- Fedora 9 : sulphur is good for the skin ( www.pembo13.com )
Yes, but if he has a specific need to support Exchange 2007, he can rebuild the Samba 4 and Evolution packages that will ship in Fedora 10 (and are available now in the beta) on his RHEL 5.x systems. Considering that I don't believe any other major distributions are shipping Samba 4, rebuilding for RHEL 5.x would be much easier than repackaging them for something else. Also, I was recommending that he use Fedora on the desktop, so he probably wouldn't have to do any work at all, as Fedora 10 will be out long before he'd deploy. Besides, he doesn't need Samba 4 on his servers for what he's looking to do. Jeffrey. On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 5:39 PM, Arthur Pemberton <pemboa@gmail.com> wrote:
In all fairness, Redhat hasn't announced RHEL6 yet. RHEL 5.3 was just announced however, but that isn't going to be based of Fedora 10+
-- "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." -- Thomas Paine
On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 1:38 AM, Jeffrey Watts <jeffrey.w.watts@gmail.com> wrote:
Yes, but if he has a specific need to support Exchange 2007, he can rebuild the Samba 4 and Evolution packages that will ship in Fedora 10 (and are available now in the beta) on his RHEL 5.x systems. Considering that I don't believe any other major distributions are shipping Samba 4, rebuilding for RHEL 5.x would be much easier than repackaging them for something else.
Also, I was recommending that he use Fedora on the desktop, so he probably wouldn't have to do any work at all, as Fedora 10 will be out long before he'd deploy. Besides, he doesn't need Samba 4 on his servers for what he's looking to do.
I am a RedHat fan myself, just wanted things to be clear. -- Fedora 9 : sulphur is good for the skin ( www.pembo13.com )
WOW!!! I am pretty much overwhelmed at this point - I knew that I was flirting with a completely new world, I just didn't know how big the world was. There have been a LOT of answers, suggestions and recommendations and I am still working to sort through the emails. I have just gotten done downloading Fedora (still looking for a trial copy of Redhat on their site) and will probably install it on this laptop tomorrow (HP nc6910 currently running Ubuntu 8.10). I am also trying to ensure that I have it on my calendar to be at the next meeting so that I can talk with some of you if you are available, there are multiple changes being considered on our network and (of course) most of them hinge on keeping or eliminating Windows as the Corporate OS. I am not the sole person behind this potential change, I am just the one who was foolish (?) enough to say "umm, yah - I have messed with Linux for a bit, I could probably work on figuring that out...". Michael Haworth ________________________________________ ---snip---
To be honest Fedora is a good test-drive of RHEL. The logos and look and feel are a little different, but under the hood they are pretty much the same. From a server perspective there's really not much of a difference, as a lot of the more noticeable changes in the newer Fedoras are desktop stuff. I'd recommend trying the Fedora 10 betas, however, as they should have the Exchange 2007 support in them. Since you're looking to deploy on a large number of systems, I suggest you look into Kickstart. It's Red Hat's automated installation tool which may make your life a lot easier. Jeffrey. On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 1:19 AM, Haworth, Michael A. < Michael_Haworth@pas-technologies.com> wrote:
WOW!!!
I am pretty much overwhelmed at this point - I knew that I was flirting with a completely new world, I just didn't know how big the world was. There have been a LOT of answers, suggestions and recommendations and I am still working to sort through the emails. I have just gotten done downloading Fedora (still looking for a trial copy of Redhat on their site) and will probably install it on this laptop tomorrow (HP nc6910 currently running Ubuntu 8.10). I am also trying to ensure that I have it on my calendar to be at the next meeting so that I can talk with some of you if you are available, there are multiple changes being considered on our network and (of course) most of them hinge on keeping or eliminating Windows as the Corporate OS. I am not the sole person behind this potential change, I am just the one who was foolish (?) enough to say "umm, yah - I have messed with Linux for a bit, I could probably work on figuring that out...".
-- "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." -- Thomas Paine
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 2:19 AM, Haworth, Michael A. < Michael_Haworth@pas-technologies.com> wrote:
there are multiple changes being considered on our network and (of course) most of them hinge on keeping or eliminating Windows as the Corporate OS.
You should stress to your supervisors that having a single "Corporate OS" locks you in and limits your options. The Internet is built on open protocols; the rule has always been that a protocol isn't ready for prime time until there are at least two independent software implementations that interoperate with each other as well as they do talking to themselves. Even when you don't have open source software, having open protocols gives you the ability to plug in a server running any OS. So ask yourself if you really need the proprietary extensions that products like IIS use. If you can turn those off, your users will not notice when you swap in a server running a different OS.
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 1:19 AM, Haworth, Michael A. <Michael_Haworth@pas-technologies.com> wrote:
still looking for a trial copy of Redhat on their site)
RedHat does not offer trial copies. The closet you can get to that is Centos (which is arguably closer than a trial copy would be) -- Fedora 9 : sulphur is good for the skin ( www.pembo13.com )
Hehe I don't think you looked too hard. This link was from their products page: http://www.redhat.com/rhel/details/eval/ I'd recommend talking to a Sales Engineer at Red Hat and asking their advice if you're serious about a move. They can really help with the nuts and bolts. If you want a referral, let me know and I'll email you off-list. Jeffrey. On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 1:07 PM, Arthur Pemberton <pemboa@gmail.com> wrote:
RedHat does not offer trial copies. The closet you can get to that is Centos (which is arguably closer than a trial copy would be)
-- "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." -- Thomas Paine
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 3:32 PM, Jeffrey Watts <jeffrey.w.watts@gmail.com> wrote:
Hehe I don't think you looked too hard. This link was from their products page: http://www.redhat.com/rhel/details/eval/
I'd recommend talking to a Sales Engineer at Red Hat and asking their advice if you're serious about a move. They can really help with the nuts and bolts. If you want a referral, let me know and I'll email you off-list.
Jeffrey.
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 1:07 PM, Arthur Pemberton <pemboa@gmail.com> wrote:
RedHat does not offer trial copies. The closet you can get to that is Centos (which is arguably closer than a trial copy would be)
I stand correct. Thanks Jefferey. -- Fedora 9 : sulphur is good for the skin ( www.pembo13.com )
OK, so I have Fedora 9 installed on a HP nc6910p laptop - installation went smoothly and everything seems to be working correctly - but, when I try to access the internet for updates, packages, or just browsing, I get no response from anything. I have verified that the wireless is configured correctly and connected. I can ping both the gateway and external (google.com). lack of experience is leading me to nowhere right now... On the flip side - Loving the interface (Gnome) as it is what I am used to - aside from the networking not working correctly there seem to be (outwardly) very few differences between Fedora and Ubuntu (but they are built from different distro's, correct?). If I were to show this to the powers-that-be, they would dig it just as much. I do like that on install it asked if I wanted to used Kerberos credentials for logins... so I am guessing that I can use the existing AD credentials in Server 2003 to authenticate sessions... might take a little work to figure out, but nothing that can't be solved (once it understands that there is a network to talk to). Tried the Fedora 10 Beta, but the GUI installer kept crashing after partitioning and I could seem to find a text installer at this point - so I will wait it out on that one... Michael Haworth
There are several key differences, but most are under the hood. To overgeneralize, Fedora is the more "high tech" distribution and Ubuntu is the more "user friendly" one, but as you can see, there's a reason I say "overgeneralize". :) The most noticeable visible difference is the fact that Fedora uses the traditional Unix model of having a superuser account, whereas Ubuntu by default has a locked superuser account and requires the use of 'sudo'. Different philosophies, but you'll find the method Fedora uses to be far more common in the Unix world. I believe Ubuntu is the only major Linux distribution to do things that way. As far as the Fedora 10 installer, you can get a command line only installer by typing "linux text" at the GRUB prompt. If you don't see a prompt, hit Esc when you see the GRUB loading screen. Let me know if that doesn't work and I'll check on it for you. Been a while since I've done a text only, non-kickstart install. As far as the network settings go, do you have your default gateway set up properly? If you can provide a 'netstat -nr' it may help a bit. I did a quick google, and came up with a good link about AD integration: http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba_&_Active_Directory You may want to search Red Hat's and Fedora's sites for distribution specific instructions. You probably want to research eventually transitioning to LDAP instead, however I wouldn't make that move until you're done with everything else. Jeffrey. On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 1:50 PM, Haworth, Michael A. < Michael_Haworth@pas-technologies.com> wrote:
OK, so I have Fedora 9 installed on a HP nc6910p laptop - installation went smoothly and everything seems to be working correctly - but, when I try to access the internet for updates, packages, or just browsing, I get no response from anything. I have verified that the wireless is configured correctly and connected. I can ping both the gateway and external ( google.com). lack of experience is leading me to nowhere right now...
On the flip side - Loving the interface (Gnome) as it is what I am used to - aside from the networking not working correctly there seem to be (outwardly) very few differences between Fedora and Ubuntu (but they are built from different distro's, correct?). If I were to show this to the powers-that-be, they would dig it just as much. I do like that on install it asked if I wanted to used Kerberos credentials for logins... so I am guessing that I can use the existing AD credentials in Server 2003 to authenticate sessions... might take a little work to figure out, but nothing that can't be solved (once it understands that there is a network to talk to).
Tried the Fedora 10 Beta, but the GUI installer kept crashing after partitioning and I could seem to find a text installer at this point - so I will wait it out on that one...
-- "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." -- Thomas Paine
Figured out the networking issue - ID10T - Wireless router hiccupped and froze - was issuing IP's but not allowing port 80/443 traffic. --snip--
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 3:00 PM, Haworth, Michael A. <Michael_Haworth@pas-technologies.com> wrote:
Figured out the networking issue - ID10T - Wireless router hiccupped and froze - was issuing IP's but not allowing port 80/443 traffic.
You either chose your laptop well, or are fairly lucky to have wireless "just work". Fedora is fairly conservative when it comes to drivers, specifically non-open drivers. -- Fedora 9 : sulphur is good for the skin ( www.pembo13.com )
Fairly lucky... -----Original Message----- From: Arthur Pemberton [mailto:pemboa@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, November 03, 2008 3:34 PM To: Haworth, Michael A. Cc: watts@jayhawks.net; KCLUG Subject: Re: Conversion to Linux - part 2 On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 3:00 PM, Haworth, Michael A. <Michael_Haworth@pas-technologies.com> wrote:
Figured out the networking issue - ID10T - Wireless router hiccupped and froze - was issuing IP's but not allowing port 80/443 traffic.
You either chose your laptop well, or are fairly lucky to have wireless "just work". Fedora is fairly conservative when it comes to drivers, specifically non-open drivers. -- Fedora 9 : sulphur is good for the skin ( www.pembo13.com )
If you're looking to authenticate via active directory on login, do a google search for LDAP integration, you'll find lots of information about it. Most corporate AD allows LDAP connections, so you should be able to use LDAP to access your AD...and eventually transition away from AD into pure LDAP! On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 2:19 PM, Jeffrey Watts <jeffrey.w.watts@gmail.com>wrote:
There are several key differences, but most are under the hood. To overgeneralize, Fedora is the more "high tech" distribution and Ubuntu is the more "user friendly" one, but as you can see, there's a reason I say "overgeneralize". :)
The most noticeable visible difference is the fact that Fedora uses the traditional Unix model of having a superuser account, whereas Ubuntu by default has a locked superuser account and requires the use of 'sudo'. Different philosophies, but you'll find the method Fedora uses to be far more common in the Unix world. I believe Ubuntu is the only major Linux distribution to do things that way.
As far as the Fedora 10 installer, you can get a command line only installer by typing "linux text" at the GRUB prompt. If you don't see a prompt, hit Esc when you see the GRUB loading screen. Let me know if that doesn't work and I'll check on it for you. Been a while since I've done a text only, non-kickstart install.
As far as the network settings go, do you have your default gateway set up properly? If you can provide a 'netstat -nr' it may help a bit.
I did a quick google, and came up with a good link about AD integration: http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba_&_Active_Directory
You may want to search Red Hat's and Fedora's sites for distribution specific instructions. You probably want to research eventually transitioning to LDAP instead, however I wouldn't make that move until you're done with everything else.
Jeffrey.
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 1:50 PM, Haworth, Michael A. < Michael_Haworth@pas-technologies.com> wrote:
OK, so I have Fedora 9 installed on a HP nc6910p laptop - installation went smoothly and everything seems to be working correctly - but, when I try to access the internet for updates, packages, or just browsing, I get no response from anything. I have verified that the wireless is configured correctly and connected. I can ping both the gateway and external ( google.com). lack of experience is leading me to nowhere right now...
On the flip side - Loving the interface (Gnome) as it is what I am used to - aside from the networking not working correctly there seem to be (outwardly) very few differences between Fedora and Ubuntu (but they are built from different distro's, correct?). If I were to show this to the powers-that-be, they would dig it just as much. I do like that on install it asked if I wanted to used Kerberos credentials for logins... so I am guessing that I can use the existing AD credentials in Server 2003 to authenticate sessions... might take a little work to figure out, but nothing that can't be solved (once it understands that there is a network to talk to).
Tried the Fedora 10 Beta, but the GUI installer kept crashing after partitioning and I could seem to find a text installer at this point - so I will wait it out on that one...
--
"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." -- Thomas Paine
_______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
-- Nathan Cerny ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One bright day, in the middle of the night, two dead boys stood up to fight. Back to back, they faced each other. Drew their swords, and shot each other. The deaf policeman heard the sound, and put those boys back in the ground. If you don't believe this lie is true, ask Harry the blind man, he saw it, too. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
participants (8)
-
Arthur Pemberton -
Haworth, Michael A. -
James Sissel -
Jeffrey Watts -
Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO -
Monty J. Harder -
Nathan Cerny -
Sean Crago