DarkWyrm Unabridged

These last few weeks have had a lot of ups and downs, and I've learned a lot in the process. First thing that I've learned is that Linux Administration is hard to learn quickly. I twiddled with Zimbra for a few days and learned that it's kinda a picky. Interface-wise, there aren't any groupware packages out there that are usable, open source, and easy to set up. Pick any two, instead. Scalable OpenGroupware is usable and open source, but a pain to set up. The documentation isn't exactly great, either. I've managed to set up a nice Courier mail server with a MySQL backend and I'm in the middle of setting up OpenLDAP services so that I can (theoretically) set up SOGo. Not easy, but maybe I'll write a HOWTO if/when I get it going. *shrug*

My school is going through some changes between this year and next. In an effort to save some money, I volunteered to research some alternatives to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. So far, the only workable, totally free solution which should meet its needs is Scalable OpenGroupWare (SOGo), currently running on CentOS 5.3. It's a groupware solution which is totally free, mature, and supports CalDAV, unlike Citadel. With me being a big Ubuntu, this is a bit of a jump, especially when I'm kind of new to Linux in an enterprise context, but I've learned quite a bit already. What have I learned? The combination of Postfix and Dovecot is pretty darn easy to set up e-mail. There are also some definite head-scratcher moments when dealing with PostgreSQL, having only worked with SQLite before. Next stop, OpenLDAP. Oog. Even if my boss decides to ignore me, and my FOSS advocacy, at least it won't have been for nothing. It's been fun, too. :-)