I recommend Red Carpet, but I’m biased.
Mangetout, yeah, those rpm commands from Draknek are to be run in a terminal window. As popular as graphical interfaces are, Linux still makes good use of the command line.
Root is the superuser on Linux machines (akin to the Administrator on Windows boxes). When you’re at the command prompt in Linux, if you’re not root it ends with $ but if you’re root you get # to let you know.
So if you’re trying to get root on a machine, you know you succeeded when you get a command prompt that ends with #. On a MS-DOS command prompt, there’s a quick command to change the prompt, allowing you to set it to #.
Progress update:
I installed SME Server on the test machine and it does look like it will be great for the mail server and gateway - the console screen is a bit scary (although I don’t really know why - I did start my computing career back in the days of DOS), but it’s easy enough to web into the thing and get the same functions in a nice graphical layout.
I’ve also played around(probably a bad choice of words) a little with the terminal and have managed to successfully import a PGP key and install Webmin on the redhat test machine.
It is starting to make sense…
I’m trying out Mandrake 10.0 now (still installing at the moment), chiefly because it seems to have a lot of the applications I want bundled in with it, which saves the hassle of installing them myself. It also promises to have GUI configuration of system services and settings built in, which sounds nice (not that I intend to forever put off using the command line).
I’m faced with a difficult decision right now; I have right here in the office, an IBM eServer that currently runs Win2K server. Although I would describe myself as an adept Windows user and not entirely ignorant about networking and system configuration, there are aspects of the Win2K server setup that currently elude me (Exchange server setup, domain control stuff, active directory etc). My company is willing to pay to send me on a certified MS course to get up to speed, but we’re talking about several thousand pounds.
I’m starting to wonder if I shouldn’t actually focus on Linux (I’m going to have to learn something after all), install that on the IBM hardware and ditch Win2K altogether. There would be none of this client licensing bollocks and it would arguably be a stronger solution anyway.
What do you reckon?
I’ve been in the Linux world for about 5 years now, and haven’t really kept up with Microsoft since making the switch. It took me a while to really get the essence of the difference between them.
With Microsoft, every new thing they come out with is a new thing, and you learn it on its own without building on what you already know.
With Linux, the initial learning is more difficult. It’s hard to find a basic introduction to some of the techniques and concepts, information comes from many sources that you have to sort through, and there’s more you need to know to get started. But once you know the basics, things like configuration files and editors, piping output from one command to input for another, and managing processes, you use those things everywhere. The initial stage is confusing, and it helped me a lot to have friends who were very good at Linux to lead me through it. But that basic design is spectacularly flexible. Every new application fits within the existing conceptual framework.
I also think Linux is improving faster than Microsoft. Even if you decide Linux isn’t what you need yet, keep evaluating it and consider switching in the future.
As for a graphical configuration tool, SuSE has yast and yast2, which might also be what you’re looking for. And SuSE Enterprise Server also runs on some high-end IBM hardware.
DISCLAIMER: I work for Novell, which owns SuSE. I’m a tester on ZLM/Red Carpet, which is their Linux management application. I’ll try to describe it as fairly as possible, but I don’t know if I can be completely unbiased.
Thanks.
Hmmm… the Mandrake configuration wizards didn’t turn out like they were craclked up to be; the mail configuration wizard, for example, only allows you to change one or two settings in the Postfix service.
Update:
OK, some of the fear is subsiding now and I actually managed to set up a working Samba share (probably not that significant an achievement, but I feel quite good about it). I’ve been using the command line and it’s starting to make sense (it isn’t a million miles away from MS DOS (if you’ll forgive the comparison), with which I am very familiar).
I’ve settled on Redhat 9, for no particular reason other than it seems to be widely used, so there’s quite a lot of info out there about it.
I just need to set up the mail components now; I couldn’t seem to get what I wanted out of Webmin, but I’ve found a nice little web-configured mail server solution called SmartPost. Trouble is that there are pages and pages of installation instructions - I managed to muddle my way through about two-thirds of these, starting off not knowing what I was doing at all, but discovering that it started to make sense, but when something doesn’t quite work, I lose it completely.
Is there any kind soul out there that feels like holding my hand through the installation process, either by email or in this thread? I really need someone to bounce my naive newbie questions off and to explain exactly what it is that I’m doing (or rather, what it actually means).
I would highly recommend that you check out linuxquestions.org . This site has been a tremendous help to me. It has both distro specific and general linux forums. Every question I’ve submitted has been answered quickly.
Slackware 10 / 2.6.7 kernel