This months newsletter is leading us towards the LinuxDays 2008 event in May, which has some major players already confirmed for the show, and we have some interesting ones in the pipeline. Here is this months index:

- Knowledge Base compares the popular Open Source desktop distributions

- A Client's view, is Michael Lawsons commentary on Open LDAP at Hopital de la Tour

- Open Source in the News, The DIP announces that all 9,000 student desktops will only use Open Source later this year

- Coming Soon, it's not only Open Source expertise, new training courses launched for the creative part of writing and designing websites as well as Video Gaming training camps for the holiday period

- LinuxDays Exhibition, a list of the current exhibitors and information on the seminars

Also, we are hiring, if you know someone who maybe interested, please ask them to contact me. I hope you enjoy reading this months LinalisNews and as ever, if you have any suggestions please do not hesitate to contact me.

Warm Regards

Steve Adams

sadams@linalis.com

+41 22 348 30 15

The recent launch of Microsoft Vista has encouraged many users and companies to consider migrating towards other operating systems including Open Source Software. In the long term, it is possible to realize savings on the total cost of the product, the price of licences and indirect costs including training and technical support. The use of Linux servers in companies is already widespread. The increasing use of Linux for the desktop is contributing to a wider deployment of this alternative to the Microsoft Windows operating platform. There are many Linux distributions that exist for the desktop. They all offer the equivalent functionalities but are different, in particular, by the type of support offered, their stability and their ease of use. We were asked to write a simple comparison of the main distributions for companies and private individuals by IB.COM and we are happy to offer you an early viewing of this article. Read more...

Michael Lawson, IT Manager of Hôpital de la Tour has kindly contributed the following article about his experiences of implementing LDAP in his organisation.

“Some years ago we were faced with a need to replace our aging Windows NT PDC/BDC servers. The "obvious" approach was to migrate to Microsoft's Active Directory, but instead we chose OpenLDAP for three reasons: a) the licencing: it is freely modifiable and redistributable; b) the commitment to open standards; c) the absence of a large commercial organisation controlling its direction (and the risks that might arise from this).

Our Windows NT PDC / BDC infrastructure also provided DNS and DHCP services; we therefore had to migrate these network services as well.

Our network is composed of some 300 plus PCs, about 50 servers, and operates over several sites, maintaining NT Trust Relationships with several other Windows domains. There are approximately 600 network accounts. The project was therefore neither insignificant in scale nor complexity; furthermore the hospital is a 24 hours 7 day a week operation: we had to ensure that downtime would be minimal and limited to a quiet period late in the evening.

Linalis managed the project, breaking it down into several phases, with the migration of DNS and DHCP services initially, followed by network authentication using OpenLDAP / Samba to replace our old PDC / BDC. Phasing it in this way proved to be a wise approach, and although the total elapsed time from completion of the first phase to being able to shut down our old Windows PDC / BDC, was considerable, the work was done transparently without measurable disruption.

More recently we wanted to take advantage of various enhancements to OpenLDAP and its management tools; however the initial implementation was on a commercial distribution of Linux which unfortunately did not lend itself up to upgrading: with this in mind we recently switched distributions.

We used the opportunity of this upgrade to restructure the servers and now have two Debian machines each hosting a Debian VM, with replication of DNS, DHCP and LDAP data between the VMs which perform the roles of PDC / BDC. So far this has proved to be robust and stable; it should also prove very straightforward to re-host the services on new hardware, should the need arise.

This type of upgrade, while simple in principle is none-the-less complicated in the detail: failure to prepare thoroughly inevitably leads to a high profile outage of network services, and a high pressure scramble to restore to the old configuration. Fortunately we managed to avoid this scenario as a result of adequate analysis of the requirement, and of making sure we had a small (but valid) test network using an identical network address structure on which we could run test imports of the LDAP directory, of DNS and DHCP data until we felt we had a recipe that would work faultlessly.

The upgrade took place a few weeks ago when we migrated DNS, DHCP and OpenLDAP data all together late one evening, on a fully transparent basis, retaining the network identity of the old PDC / BDC so that the client machines would not be impacted (we kept the same IP addresses for DNS). The preparation - which was very much a joint effort with us doing the work and Linalis providing the coaching - paid off handsomely: there were no user calls the following morning complaining of difficulty connecting, including those who are dependent on external domains with Trust Relationships.

You would not be reading this article unless we were grateful to Linalis for their assistance with this exercise. I think it is important to say a few words why.

Anyone with knowledge of Unix / Linux, will know that these operating systems impose a tough discipline: it is no good just clicking in a pretty GUI (which usually hides the details) and hoping for the best: you need a good understanding of the system. Whilst the learning curve is steep, the advantage is that a properly configured network is robust, fast and reliable. If you lack Linux skills (and most IT departments are light in this area), an external consultant who is a real partner is a huge advantage: complex and apparently risky projects can be achieved at modest cost with the appropriate transfer of skills.

Using Linux to run your network has been a viable alternative for a long time; there's no longer any excuse for not doing it !

The Departement d l'Instruction Publique has just announced that they will be leaving Microsoft behind and implementing an OpenSource-only desktop environment in all of the State of Geneva's schools later this year. For an online version of this Tribune de Genève article (in French only) please click here.

OpenOffice 2.4 is released. Click here for your download.

The EU Commission plans more use of open source, read here for more

Sun starts to certify Ubuntu on its servers, click here

Linalis is proud to announce the arrival of a specialist trainer with over 10 years of senior level responsibility for the production of public websites. Dr Cathy Needham has joined us on a part time basis and is now offering Writing Effectively for the Web (1 day) and Designing Effective Websites (2 days). These courses are currently available “on-demand”, so please contact us for more information.

Our sister company, Leman Games, is once again opening its doors during the summer break for two subsidised 2 week intensive Video Gaming training courses for the 12-20's. (In French only) Please read here for more details.

The fourth edition of LinuxDays will be held Wednesday 21st and Thursday 22nd of May 2008 in the Centre International de Conférences de Genève (CICG).

The Exhibition has become the uncontested meeting point for players in the “Open Source Software world” in Switzerland, and and neighbouring countries (France & Germany) and this year there are 40 conferences aimed at professionals as well as a wider audience. A 1.500m2 show room with more than thirty exhibitors and associations will also be present. Entrance to the show room and to all conferences is free of charge.

The conference themes for professionals are :

• Wednesday 21 May : Collaborative working, Telephony, Feedback from projects in Enterprises
• Thursday 22 May : Software presentations, Virtualisation and high availability, Position of large players in IT
  

The conference themes for the general public :

• Wednesday 21 May : Open Software in the field of Education
• Thursday 22 May : Multimedia, video gaming

Hosted by professionals, an Install Party will also be organised Wednesday and Thursday afternoons for private individuals who would like to install free Linux on their own PC's.

More information, a list of exhibitors and Conference program at : www.linuxdays.ch