Re: Setting up a bunch of boxen at a small school.
I've been running a small business network on about
16 linux machines and 1 mswindows machine since 1995.
At that time I found NIS' special /etc/passwd entries
to be a great aggravation. Ordinary passwd utilities,
like adduser, would choke on them.
Perceiving a lack of server power, I set up a network
of freestanding boxes, serving just a couple of applications
and DNS. Although the weakness of linux networking made it
a reasonable choice, it was an inelegant and tedious solution
with regard to administration. This with a stable and benign
user base of office workers.
Definitely serve the home directories.
Putting apps on clients is low maintainance.
Now I would look for other solutions than NIS, as I don't need
another abstraction layer of user groupings. It doesn't sound
like you need it either.
I hear that Staroffice is going to be a quartered stuck pig.
The one monolithic program is going to be split into separate
tasks. I have found SO to be agreeable to people only familiar
with MS Word.
Win95 and Win98 have each been more trouble on one machine
than the rest of the clients combined. The only reasons
to go with mswindows are application compatibility and accumulated
expertise.
rob Live the dream.
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