OpenSUSE as a corporate server

[Tux-Tux]

Dear friends!
In my small company (10+ people) recently a had a Win2003 server and because of some modernization I have to reinstall the operation system. My first idea was not to use Windows (the result of regular system faults because of viruses and some difficulties with several Linux clients - for example CIFS bug in OpenSUSE 11.4 kernel) and to change it to UNIX-like system.
As well as we are not enough "enterprise value" company, I m thinking about open source and openSUSE as well (with SAMBA server as the most part of our computers are WinXP).
What should be the recommendations of the community? Do you support my choice? And what will be your recommendations?
Thanks for all in advance!

[hendersj]

On Thu, 15 Sep 2011 09:36:03 +0000, Tux-Tux wrote:

> Dear friends!
> In my small company (10+ people) recently a had a Win2003 server and
> because of some modernization I have to reinstall the operation system.
> My first idea was not to use Windows (the result of regular system
> faults because of viruses and some difficulties with several Linux
> clients - for example CIFS bug in OpenSUSE 11.4 kernel) and to change it
> to UNIX-like system.
> As well as we are not enough "enterprise value" company, I m thinking
> about open source and openSUSE as well (with SAMBA server as the most
> part of our computers are WinXP).
> What should be the recommendations of the community? Do you support my
> choice? And what will be your recommendations? Thanks for all in
> advance!

You can use openSUSE in this way certainly. Something to consider is if
you want professional support or want to rely on the community for
assistance should you run into trouble.

If you want professional support, you would better go with an enterprise-
grade product like SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

It depends on what the needs of your organization are and how tolerant
the business is of any potential downtime. Only you and your
organization can perform that risk assessment.

Jim

--
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

[Tux-Tux]

Dear Jim,
Thank you. I think SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is a good solution. But it seams that costs are more oriented on large companies with large revenues. It seams that even a year ago the costs were more comfortable for small companies.

[john_hudson]

If you feel you can go without professional support, you may want to decide whether to choose openSUSE:Evergreen - openSUSE or Portal:Tumbleweed - openSUSE as opposed to periodic upgrades.

[Knurpht]

Go !!! It's very well possible. With openSUSE ..... with regard to Jim's comments. And why just the server, and not the desktops as well ?

Three years ago I started 'open sourcing' an organization, 30 people, using 15 pc's and a couple of laptops. Today, it's openSUSE everywhere, 11.3 and 11.4, NIS, NFS, a simple server. There were problems, yes, Canon printer/copier, nasty laptops, but today it's a very stable environment. The installs are the same on each machine, incl. server and a admin-machine. Updating is first done on the admin-machine, then the rest is 'zypper dup'-ped.
IME windu people get used to KDE or GNOME easily if there's no Windows available. In the above mentioned organization I took care that all the apps used in the offices were available in the desktop container in KDE.

[Tux-Tux]

Dear Knurpht, me and our office manager we both use Linux openSUSE, but many of my colleagues have to make PowerPoint presentations and there's problem with our clients as the don't like pdf (myself I make very good presentations in openOffice, and I like it more than MS one (because of some professional details), but the export between these programs is really very poor. And that's the reason. Otherwise I'm sure in case of good format supports I could switch all my colleagues to Linux.

[malcolmlewis]

Dear *Knurpht*, me and our office manager we both use Linux openSUSE,
but many of my colleagues have to make PowerPoint presentations and
there's problem with our clients as the don't like pdf (myself I make
very good presentations in openOffice, and I like it more than MS one
(because of some professional details), but the export between these
programs is really very poor. And that's the reason. Otherwise I'm sure
in case of good format supports I could switch all my colleagues to
Linux.

Hi
I use Codeweavers cross-over with MS office (2003 lol) on openSUSE and
SLED11, it works fine.

--
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.4 (x86_64) Kernel 2.6.37.6-0.7-desktop
up 3 days 0:18, 4 users, load average: 0.24, 0.22, 0.21
GPU GeForce 8600 GTS Silent - Driver Version: 280.13

[lwfinger]

On 09/15/2011 04:16 PM, Tux-Tux wrote:
>
> Dear *Knurpht*, me and our office manager we both use Linux openSUSE,
> but many of my colleagues have to make PowerPoint presentations and
> there's problem with our clients as the don't like pdf (myself I make
> very good presentations in openOffice, and I like it more than MS one
> (because of some professional details), but the export between these
> programs is really very poor. And that's the reason. Otherwise I'm sure
> in case of good format supports I could switch all my colleagues to
> Linux.

I don't know about OpenOffice, but LibreOffice' version of Presentation can read
and write both Microsoft PowerPoint 97 and 2007 files. I just saved a
presentation prepared at SuSE in the .odp format, saved it as .ppt and opened it
in a Windows XP virtual machine that has Office 97 installed. The format
conversion looked pretty good to me.

[vindevienne]

I have been looking at installing a linux server for both server based applications and file sharing. The current environment uses a workstation as a server and because there is not a heavy work load there is no problem. However all opensuse workstations, with the exception of 1 which will become dual boot will be migrated to windows 7. The openSUSE desktop works reasonably well in specific situations but is not a good general purpose desktop and for me is not cost effective. There are also too may problems with KDE and LibreOffice/OpenOffice.

I think that I am beginning to favor ubuntu server with their long term support releases. My concern with openSUSE as a server is that upgrades can be difficult and time consuming and they come around far more frequently than windows upgrades. As my requirements will result in a server with low usage it would be nice if ubuntu or opensuse would sleep or at least go into a low power mode when idle but I am not sure either will do that. I am also considering moving the web server and database server components onto windows workstations and getting a NAS box.

For samba with vista and window 7 you need a version that supports SMB2 and uses SMB2 ( Minimum of 3.6 for support?) or a move from a windows server to linux with samba may result in a loss of performance.

[hendersj]

On Thu, 15 Sep 2011 19:16:02 +0000, Tux-Tux wrote:

> Dear Jim,
> Thank you. I think SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is a good solution. But
> it seams that costs are more oriented on large companies with large
> revenues. It seams that even a year ago the costs were more comfortable
> for small companies.

You might talk to someone in sales and see if they have pricing for
smaller businesses.

Jim



--
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C