Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 14:34:52 -0500 (CDT) From: Chris Dillon <cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us> To: Anthony Cordeiro <ren@kana.com> Cc: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com>, Stephen McKay <syssgm@detir.qld.gov.au>, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Need anti-exchange ammunition Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.20.9910261343080.48251-100000@mail.wolves.k12.mo.us> In-Reply-To: <19991026093644.A20925@kana.com>
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On Tue, 26 Oct 1999, Anthony Cordeiro wrote: > The problem here is a major one, and unless something > absolutely revolitionary happens, I'm almost willing to concede > that the free source crowd has lost the "messaging and > collaboration" market. People want point'n' click address books, > and whiz-bang one-button calendaring, and such. Exchange gives you > all of that and more right out of the box. Sure, it doesn't scale, > but all the person paying the bills cares about is that it works. > Stripping years off their IS staff's life is not their concern. > > This is a really tough argument that I've yet to win. NT > fanboys can say, "Look, I can just install Exchange, and Outlook > on everyone's desk, and all our users are happy". What can I do > with FreeBSD? Well, I can set up an IMAP server, okay. Oops, gotta > write some sort of script to sync the mail server user database > with the NT password database, well, okay. Calendar? Er, flat > files and grep? Address book? Well, we've got LDAP, sort of, until > Captive Directory shows up with its new LDAP with "extra > features", and it's not compatible with anyone's client anymore. > > Has /anyone/ managed to put together an elegant all-in-one > solution on FreeBSD that can run a whole shop, and keep all the > Outlook drones happy? We've had a bunch of arguments against > Exchange so far, but this is -advocacy. Anyone got a success story > for something other than Exchange? Well, if Horde's Kronolith calendar application is ever finished, it should integreate nicely with IMP, giving you that all-in-one feel. See http://www.horde.org. I've seen lots of other web-based calendars on places like Freshmeat, but I doubt those integrate much with anything else. The only problem left is the account/password sync between the NT and Unix boxes. I'm checking into that right now, since I'm stuck in the same dilemma (nobody is pushing me to use anything else, I just hate managing multiple accounts). So far there is Unix Services for NT which supposedly offers password sync of some sort and even NIS support, neither of which I have looked into yet since I can't get the damn Microsoft Management Console that it requires to work correctly. The other, better solution, is to have one central LDAP database holding all the account information that both the NT and Unix boxes consult. This seems to be easy enough to implement on the Unix side using PAM and nsswitch (or in my case, all I should need is an LDAPified Cyrus pwcheck daemon), but I can't find anything for NT that would do essentially the same. Not without forking out heaps of money and/or going to Win2000 with its Acrid Directory. -- Chris Dillon - cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us - cdillon@inter-linc.net FreeBSD: The fastest and most stable server OS on the planet. For Intel x86 and Alpha architectures (SPARC under development). ( http://www.freebsd.org ) "One should admire Windows users. It takes a great deal of courage to trust Windows with your data." To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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