Tirsdag 06 februar 2007 17:55 skrev [EMAIL PROTECTED]: > On Tue, 6. February 2007 12:06:00 Verner Kjærsgaard wrote: > > Dear list and gurus :-) > > > > Say you have an organization (a school) with 15 teachers. All using > > SuSE10.2/LTSP4.2 and Kmail. Every teacher has his own list of contacts > > (E-mail adresses) in Kmail. > > > > This is not easy to handle. > > > > Can Kmail either self or indirectly make use of a remote, centrally > > managed adressbook or something? > > > > If not, any recommendations as to a good OpenSource groupware webbased > > thing? > > > > Other suggestions? > > AFAIK in the moment there is no SUSE based Groupware Server which offers > autoinstalled and preconfigured groupware functionalities out of the box > which is free of costs. > > A good and IMO the best and very powerfull server distribution which will > fit your needs is the former SUSE Open Scchool Server (OSS). It is still > offered and supported by Extis a german company. They also adopted its > future development. > > IMO OSS is the most powerfull Linux based Server solution for education > environments and the needs of a school you will find. There is a free (of > cost) evaluation version at: http://www.extis.de/oss_eval.html precisely it > points to: http://www.schul-netz.de/dh/?pfad=/openschoolserver/OSS2.0/iso > > Don't worry that it's primary documentation is in German, nevertheless it > is one of the best documentations in this field I'm aware of. And not to > forget Lars Rupp and Peter Varkoly (in alphabetical order ;-) are very > competent people behind it. > On the long run the costs for update, installation and general support are > worth one's salt. > > > As mentioned by Will Stephenson I also would vote for a KOLAB based > groupware. > > There is a free (of costs) Debian based groupware server distribution > offered by univention Germany. Since end of last year univention offers it > as free downloadable distribution. The univention groupware server (ugs) is > targeting the needs of a professional environment in a company. But IMO it > is also worth a closer look: > http://download.univention.de/download/ucs-cds/ucs1.3-2/ (as mentioned in a > German article in c't, the leading IT publication in DE, the installation > of ugs should be done after the ucs (univention coorporate server) is > installed first. This avoids some configuration steps which have to be done > if ugs is installed alone. Due to the fact that ugs is based on ucs a later > installation of ugs will only add the groupware functionality. german > article: http://www.heise.de/open/artikel/79250 ) > As for OSS support for ucs is offered for cash. And as said for OSS it is > worth one's salt too. > > > So which one will be the best for your needs? > + OSS comes alon with a lot of features which will be of interest for > your students, e.g. a web based forum, special preconfigured groups for > teachers and students which enables a taylored permisson policy for each > group (e.g. internet access for students, class based permissions, > age-group (german: Jahrgang) based permissions). > + OSS is configured and administrated via yast2 as in Opensuse > (+) The integration of opensuse workstations is well documented. (+) > because in the moment I don't know if it is available in English. > + OSS is developed for schools > > + UGS offers KOLAB2 as groupware solution, which IMHO is better than the > one in OSS. > + UGS is free of costs > - ugs is not primarily targeting the needs of a school > > + both offer full groupware support for GNU/Linux, Windows and also > MacOSX + both offer the perspective to have students accounts > (-) both are documented in German only. (-) because as far as I know > > I've installed both OSS and ugs in a couple of schools and youth > centers ?youth clubs? (german: Jugendzentren). Both of them work like a > charm! > > In the end the staff people's preference / knowledge for either suse or > debian was the reason for a decision in the end. > > The lack of a German documentation of both OSS and ugs offer a big chance > for your school. You may enter the Linux hall of fame and claim the merits > to be the first who made one of them available for native english speakers, > worldwide, if you will find a way to translate the documentation. May be it > might be of interest for a german course at your school? > > regards, > thomas
A big thank you to all of you, giving me so much valuable info. First; I'm danish, ahem...the school is danish. Never the less, I (we) read german documentation just as well. No sweat. I'll give Kolab a run first though. In fact, I just surfed to the website and it's downloading as I write this. Again, thank you! I'll keep you posted. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Med venlig hilsen/Best regards Verner Kjærsgaard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
