[Samba] Is samba right for me?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 04:08:38PM -0400, Chris wrote:
> I am currently a college student looking for ways to prepare myself for any
> Server Administration job once I get out of college.
> I've been going back and worth between Freenode IRC channels (#linux and
> ##windows) trying to decide what to learn.
> On one hand, we have Windows Server 2008 R2, people in #linux keep on
> telling me to just go ahead and use it because "samba can't provide
> everything Server 2008 R2 does."
> The more and more I read up on Samba (especially Samba4; which I realize
> isn't going to be released stable for a while) it feels like it
> *can*provide all the features Server 2008 R2 does.
> Can you do a bit of myth debunking for me?

If you want to be an admin of samba boxes, then play with samba.  If you
want to be a windows admin, then go play with windows (samba won't be
any help learning that).

> Would you suggest samba for managing Windows clients (any other tools you
> can recommend in addition?)
> I really would like to use Samba + Linux because of the cost of ownership
> and the open-source community, I just want to make sure it's up to par with
> Server 2008 R2s offerings.

Linux + samba is a great way to get a cheap and reliable fileserver (and
to some extent a domain controller) for windows clients.  Administrating
it is nothing like administrating a windows server at all.  It is simply
an alternate choice of server. So if you want to learn to administrate
a windows server, then that's what you will need to learn on.

-- 
Len Sorensen