Linux client image advice

[Lauren]

Hi, i am an intern this summer at a local company and i am working with linux. I have to work with old pc's, that are still usuable just old, so we are putting linux on them, most likely redhat enterprise ES. My job is to find the best:

email client (one like outlook, only for linux)
be configured to accept network IPs, gateways, etc
access to local shared drives
have a browser to be able to run browser based applications (i.e. 11i)
have backup process for data files and
automated process to install image onto an old PC

what do you suggest for each of the categories?

I am thinking for the email client either evolution or mozilla's thunderbird, and for the browsing either mozilla's firebird or firefox, and as for backup i have looked into tar, but thats about

HELP! As i stated before, i have not really worked with linux much so any advice would be great! Thank you!

[pthread]

Hi, i am an intern this summer at a local company and i am working with linux. I have to work with old pc's, that are still usuable just old, so we are putting linux on them, most likely redhat enterprise ES. My job is to find the best:

Damn you, I wanted an internship this summer... now I am forced to socialize and call up old friends (or spend time on these message boards).

email client (one like outlook, only for linux)
be configured to accept network IPs, gateways, etc
access to local shared drives
have a browser to be able to run browser based applications (i.e. 11i)
have backup process for data files and
automated process to install image onto an old PC

I am thinking for the email client either evolution or mozilla's thunderbird, and for the browsing either mozilla's firebird or firefox, and as for backup i have looked into tar, but thats about

Your email client decisions are good, evolution is more like outlook, but thunderbird offers some nice features too. For users that are used to outlook though, I would stick with evolution personally. In addition, your browser decision to go with firefox is a good one, has a built in pop up blocker, its pretty quick.

Now for backups, tar is only one part of the equation. How do you want to back stuff up, on another computer? I have a script you can use, if that is what you are after, because in reality you would have to use a script. All a script is is a combination of commands and programming concepts that does a bunch of stuff for you automagically when you are not around. You add the script to your crontab, and it runs automatically every x number of days, hours, minutes, blah blah.

Access to local shared drives will come from samba (assuming you mean windows drives) and mounting them with the mount command.

As far as automatically installing the images on the drives you have options like running a tftp/bootp server.

And finally, network info is generally best gathered from a dhcp server. Your distro will probably use dhcp by default, and I would be shocked to find out you didn't have a dhcp server on location.

At any rate, why don't we take the problems one at a time? It might be easier to get into more detail... take your pick...

[Linc]

redhat enterprise ES. My job is to find the best:

Slackware man!

email client (one like outlook, only for linux)

Sylpheed or Thunderbird.

be configured to accept network IPs, gateways, etc

DHCP?

access to local shared drives

Samba or NFS depending on if you are sharing with windows boxes too.

have a browser to be able to run browser based applications (i.e. 11i)

There are tons! Be sure to try Firefox though - it's *fast*.

have backup process for data files and

Tar works best. It's easy to set up and "just works"(tm). Barring that you can also use rsync.

automated process to install image onto an old PC

Not dificult to do with DD or a simple file ciopy depending upon your requirements.

[Lauren]

Haha, you can take my internship! Youd do a lot better of a job than me, im sure of it! Anyways, yes lets take this a little slower...i think for the most part ive got a lot of it under control, ive downloaded, Redhat ES, mozilla..im going to download firefox as well. I am now in the process of downloading samba to use as a way to acccess drive shares...but my problem is the whole automated process to install image ontoan old pc...what does this mean exactly? Someone suggested kickstart, is that a good way to go? Thanks!

[pthread]

Check this out, and see if you think kickstart is for you:

http://www.bigwebmaster.com/General/How ... HOWTO.html