[plug] Choice quote for Jacqueline (another)

[Craig Ringer]

> - Users turn on a computer and have an interface to login with their own 
> usernames and passwords.
> - All usernames and passwords are stored centrally to be referenced from 
> for login/email/anything else.
> - Ability for users to change their own passwords easily and quickly 
> without IT staff assistance
> - Server managed updates to client systems (even Linux does have 
> software that needs to be updated)
> - Documents / Other user data and profile information is stored on a 
> central server so they can roam to any computer on our network (and so 
> that the data is backed up centrally).
> - Non-cluttered desktop and menu system that is easy and logical to use.
> - Groupware software with ability to share contact lists, calendars, 
> tasks lists etc with specific other staff.
> - Ability to run some Windows applications for specific areas (such as 
> Accounts) through an emulator or even a virtual session of Windows 
> (because like I said - we have all legal versions of Windows and Office 
> for all of the computers we have currently).
> 
> Being able to expire passwords at set dates and have set intervals 
> before this date to notify staff either via an on-screen message or via 
> email would be fine.


I've got every one of those except the groupware and windows apps 
working very nicely on a network with 486 clients :-) that network boot 
and then run as X thin clients in an environment with IceWM, Rox-Filer, 
Mozilla, AbiWord and OpenOffice. They also telnet in to an old SCO box 
to use one of our legacy (very, very legacy) systems. Its working pretty 
well and I'll be migrating the rest of the client machines over soon.

The staff here have never had "groupware" software, and haven't 
expressed any real interest in it. Its gone in the "just not worth it" 
bassket for now. That said, I believe Evolution can be attached to some 
kind of Outlook-like server to achieve the result you want.

On the windows apps side - the only windows apps our users run are a 
telnet client and Eudora, so its not relevent for us. You could always 
try VMWare.

However, such a set-up imposes significant load on your LAN (though 
shockingly small for what you're doing, X is really efficient) and 
server, so its probably more suitable for situations where you have 
existing OBSOLETE client machines you can't do much else with and the 
boss won't replace.

-- 
Craig Ringer
GPG Key Fingerprint: AF1C ABFE 7E64 E9C8 FC27  C16E D3CE CDC0 0E93 380D
	-- if it ain't broke, add features 'till it is. (or:)
	while (! broken) { features ++ ; broken = isBroken(features) }