SOGo-Competition for Zimbra and MS-Exchange 1
Messaging is easy, but Enterprise Calendaring is hard. I’ve just learned about the guys over at SOGo who have a GPL/LGPL competitor to Zimbra and MS-Exchange. Sure, you pay for support, but using the server software doesn’t cost anything.
- If you want to connect MS-Outlook clients, that’s fine.
- If you want to connect smart-phones, that’s fine.
- Thunderbird seems to be their main integration client, which is nice. That’s what I use.
Anyway, go take a look.
I’ve just pulled the VM appliance VMDK down and will be playing with it on ESXi in the next few weeks. They claim it was setup for VirtualBox, but I’d rather not run this sort of thing on that VM technology. This could be perfect timing for my company – we have been planning a Zimbra upgrade and honestly, it scares me.
There are lots of search hits on SOGo on freshmeat.net – that’s encouraging to me.
Check back here later. If SOGo is great, I’ll certainly write more. If it is crap, it will be in the comments below.
This could be good, really good. I’m hopeful.
2010 Article Summary
I was going to create a Top 10 List of 2010 here. Then started looking through the articles and some constant themes can out.
- Virtualization For Desktops and Servers
- Disk Encryption
- Backups Rock!
- Risks and Concerns for Cloud Computing
- Quicken Runs on Linux – ’nuf said.
- Security Isn’t Easy
- Passwords – Never the Same and Use a Password Manager
- Desktop Security Tips
- Browser Security Settings
- WiFi Router Security Checklist
- Privacy Is Gone Online
- Don’t Use Adobe Software
- Windows Software to Avoid
- Free Security Tips Ebook
- Dealing with Computer Viruses
- Been Hacked?
- How To Build A Home Server – Cheap
Previous Best Articles Here
Happy New Year!
Brother HL-2140 Laser Printer Tips 1
Tips consolidated from these posts.
Below are tips to get the most printing out of an inexpensive Brother laser printer, beyond what the default setup would provide. Users are reporting 500-1000 extra pages out of toner cartridges with these tips. I haven’t used the printer yet.
Linux Related Presentation Ideas Needed 1
Last night I did a little presentation on Using VirtualBox on a Desktop. I’d give myself a D+ for a grade on the presentation. Fortunately, it was a small and highly interactive crowd. I tried to cover too much stuff. Also, I showed how to do this on a Windows host OS with a Linux client OS to a Linux-specific crowd. Initially, I’d planned to show an install on a Linux host OS too. The physical machine had a really slow disk controller, so I wasn’t able to create a virtual disk to install the OS into. I tried it a few weeks ago on the test machine and it took 45 minutes to create a 10GB .VDI file. On my home machines, doing this is just a few minutes.
The good thing was that I covered some of the key performance choices in virtualization – multiple times. The good news is that the newer VirtualBox releases choose most of these settings automatically. I should probably create a blog entry for each of the different client OSes that covers performance choices. Anyway …
Success with Linux For Non-Techies
Last week, I visited some relatives. Their computer running MS-WindowsXP had at least 1 rootkit installed and a number of viruses and spywares. This machine was running Firefox with NoScript (disabled) and Thunderbird for email. The main user is not very technical, but uses Firefox, Thunderbird, Quicken, and Investor’s Toolkit most days. I knew that solving the issue on Windows was going to be a problem again and again.
Linux to the rescue.
Solved-Quicken 2011 Working on Linux 39
This article is extremely out of date and probably not very useful for steps to get quicken working on current Linux releases.
For many people, Quicken is the program that prevents them from switching to Linux 100%. This week, I finally took the time to install Quicken 2011 Premium under Linux Lubuntu 10.04 LTS and get it working very nicely.
Below are the steps and comments for how to accomplish this. I did reference the WINE-HQ Quicken App Instructions to make it work, but some of those steps were less than clear to me. WINE is Wine Is Not an Emulator.
I’d bet these steps will work for older Quicken versions too. I’ll test it with Quicken Home & Business 2008 in a few days, but expect it will work just fine for the things I do, which are fairly extensive.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that Quicken would work under WINE, heck Microsoft Office 2003 works too (except Outlook).
Solved-Increase KVM VM Image File Size 3
Seems that 2GB isn’t enough for some specialized PBX Linux solutions to build, so I found myself needing to increase the size of a KVM virtual machine image on running Ubuntu Server 10.04 Lucid Lynx in the VM. This technique probably will not work for sparse or VMDK-based VM images. It should work for Xen and KVM IMG-base VM files, however. Anyway, below is how I did it.
Linux Training and Documentation Resources 2
If you want to learn something about Linux, there are a wide range of learning materials available out there.
Much is for beginners, but there are some intermediate and advanced course materials available too.
The best place to begin is with the documentation from your distribution.
Internet search engines will find lots of documentation for other distros too, but knowing that Distro-Z is based on Distro-Y means that the documentation for Distro-Y probably works for Distro-Z too. A concrete example – Ubuntu is based on Debian, so if you use Ubuntu and can’t find the document under Ubuntu, look for it under Debian.
Eventually, you will want know something that isn’t in those documents. To address this, each major distro also has forums and email-list-servers.
Be certain to spend at least 45 minutes searching the forums for your question and answer before you post. Read the Acceptable Use Policies for each forum too. Basically, if you are on-topic, respectful and cordial, then you won’t have any issues.
Some general information about Linux and HowTos also exist.
- Linux Documentation Project – All things Linux (How Tos, Guides, etc)
- HowToForge.com – Famous for Perfect Desktop X and Perfect Server Y how-tos.
- Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts – find your local LUG (Linux Users Group)
- Linux Hardware Compatibility List Not all hardware is happy with Linux
- LPI Practice Exams and Tutorials
- Linux Certification Documentation Project
- Linux Professional Institute Tutors
- GNU/Linux Manuals Claims to be suitable for LPI Exam Prep
Because Linux is very much like UNIX, much of the information and techniques used and documented for UNIX systems over the last 30+ years will work on Linux. Don’t be afraid to read UNIX How-To Guides that you find out there.
Books – I find that anything written in a book is out of date by the time it gets published. That doesn’t mean you don’t want a classic like UNIX System Security in your collection, just that the details of an implementation covered in the book are probably out of date. The architecture coverage is probably just fine.
Just because you can do something doesn’t mean it is a good idea and doesn’t impact your security. When you read any online information that tells how to do something – ask yourself how it impacts your privacy and system security.
Linux Backups via Back-In-Time
One of the main reasons that people give for not performing backups is that it is too difficult. The Back In Time program solves that issue for anyone using Linux, Ubuntu, Redhat, Slackware, etc. Both Gnome and KDE version are available.
Back-In-Time uses file system hardlinks to manage snapshots efficiently. This trick has been used for 20+ years on UNIX operating systems to provide backups. That means it has been well proven, but it also means this technique doesn’t work on Windows because hardlinks in Windows work differently. After the first complete copy is made to the backup area, any snapshots made after that point use hardlinks for each file that doesn’t change. Basically, it costs ZERO storage to make additional hardlinks. Neato.
Diagram of Linux Distro History
A picture is worth …. 1,000,000 words in this case.
This link shows the way that different distributions are related, started, and some died. It only shows the most popular distros, perhaps 300 of them. I didn’t count.
