For the past year I’ve been trying my hardest to learn Ubuntu from head to toe. Mainly the LDAP+Samba feature for sharing files with certain access rules. I have been EXTREMELY unsuccessful thus far. I was reading the Ubuntu Server guide and found a reference to something called eBox. I guess it’s like a visual web based platform for configuring Ubuntu. So I Googled it and found that it was really a version of Ubuntu that was preconfigured for easy deployment. I downloaded the installer disc and within 1 1/2 hours I had a fully operation server with file permissions and users setup. The 2 best parts of it: It functions as a Domain (one user can login at multiple computers) and the software is completely free!!! My church uses Novell for both of their servers and Groupwise for their email. First of all, hosting their own mail server is dumb. They had bandwidth issues and that resulted in AT&T revoking internet for a certain amount of time. 2nd, Groupwise (their version) can’t handle iPhones or smart phones or other mail clients other than Groupwise Client. That’s retarded right?! 3rd, their Novell contract (Netware, Groupwise, eDirectory, etc.) cost $1000/year! That is why I have a job today. In 2 months I have found free replacements for their server, email and their calendar (done by ServiceU for up to $800/year). Google Apps Non-Profit handles their email and calendar (which just got resource scheduling!) and their server would be done using eBox. I can replicate all of the functions of their current server and with some practice add additional options (VPN, Web server, much easier configuration and maintenance compared to Novell) for free! I love open source products. I’ve become so inspired by open source that I am working on creating a suite of open source, web based tools for photography studios. Because the only open source thing for photo studios right now is GIMP and I’m sorry but that just does not even come close to the caliber of Photoshop. I’m working on a replacement for Successware (client, billing and order management) at the moment and then later I will work on an open source project that provides web based ordering galleries (similar to Photo Cart) and then probably a replacement for ProSelect but that will not be web based (most likely Java, C# or C++). The ProSelect replacement MUST be cross platform though. It has to support at least Mac and PC if not Linux as well. I’m not that far on even starting any of this but I hope to get the Successware replacement published to SourceForge by the end of August. Any MySQL and PHP knowledge/advice is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Tristan