Hello,

This is a large question, and deserves to be answered in parts....

Windows can do that to you. I get paid to fix broken Windows, and I love going home to my stable, working, happy, Linux / Mac environment. Linux is a NOS... Network Operating System. It is better to compare Linux with Windows 2003 Server, or Novell, although Linux has a desktop environment.

Any large distrobution of linux... RedHat/Fedora, Debian, Slackware, Mandrake, SuSE should have what you want to do available.


Major distros come with the packages available for installation. In the end, it all depends on what you would like to install.

Come visit us in the Linux forum to find out more. I do not want to re-publish the manuals here. There are a lot of options. Be aware that you will not get this designed and setup overnight. It is best to plan. Give yourself some time to plan.

Apache is a webserver. Sendmail / qmail are MTAs... programs that run in the background. You will also want to read about POPd, or qpop. If you want to check your email over the web, look at squirrelmail.

Linux programs come in either installable packages (depends on distro), or via source code that you download, compile, and install. Depends on how the gizmo you want is available. A wise Linux person installs the compilers, even if they do not know how to code, so that they can bring down source and make things if needed.

Linux is a NOS. It will do what you ask it to do. My main linux box does this: network routing across 3 network cards and 1 serial port, netware server emulation (mars-nwe), microsoft server emulation (samba), Apple server emulation (netatalk), Web server (apache), FTP Server (wuftpd), Firewall (IPTABLES), Desktop programs (Open Office, Palm Desktop, CD-Player, Calendar program, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Printers, other things), and it also functions as a Voice - Over - IP node for a ham radio software (IRLP). The computer is a 550 MHz pentium III with 512 MB RAM

Look up how to use ssh instead of telnet, and scp instead of FTP. Encryption is your friend.

Yes, if you enable a FTP or WebDAV service on them.

Come see us in the Linux forum.

Christian