[nzlug] 'SME type' all in one distro recommendations

[Nick Rout]

On Thu, August 23, 2007 12:29 pm, Howard wrote:
> All, I'm looking at an all in one server distro for a small business,
> that is 90% 'web' managed.  Mainly for file storage, but also wanting
> things like acting as a mail proxy, ntp etc (all with a nicely
> integrated web based managment tool set)
>
> I have researched SME-Server (centOS based), and looked briefly at
> e-Box.  SME looks more mature (as per distrowatch) and seems to be more
> widely used.  Also has a reasonable community and plug-in architecture.
> SME has this 'ibay' concept thingy that looks weird, but could be useful
> for the client to manage files, post them to the web etc.
>
> e-box not as mature (not yet on distrowatch), but is Debian based,
> moving fast and looks like a lot of nice features.
>
> I've also seen clark-connect, but they seem to be flouting the
> opensource concept a bit, as 'higher featured' versions seem to cost
> (before downloading).

I believe that the added features are all written by them and/or involve
support through their online system. I am not sure what licence they
release their own software under but nothing in the GPL prevents you from
charging for binaries. Once you have bought the binaries you must be able
to download the source, but that doesn't prevent you from charging for the
binary.

Having said that i used clark connect as a gateway quite a few years ago
(when I had less boxes). I started to get a bit worried when there seemed
to be addons for everything and its dog. The concept of samba et al on my
gateway was a little uncomfortable so I went to ipcop gateway and any old
distro (redhat at the time i think) for a server.

SME has always been excellent, I used it for a while as an experiment and
liked it a lot.

But probably any distro can do what you want with something like webmin
added on. Perhaps usbuntu server + webmin?



-- 
Nick Rout