is there an open-source enterprise operating system?

Question

My buisness just outgrew itself, and we now have way too many clients to be using just a dell poweredge server with ubuntu on it. What I want is an open-source(preferably linux/unix based) enterprise network/server operating system with client support. Does anyone know of such a thing(similar to Novell's Netware) that is open source-like GNU/BSD/LAMP based? Because I refuse to shell out $900 out of my own pocket for Novell when there are so many other open-source projects out there. And I'm SURE one of them is an enterprise OS!!!!

Requirements: FTP, Active directory, Proxy support, client support(logging, group policy, etc.), DNS, print server utilities, and remote management/access.

Answer 1

Well you haven't listed any of your server requirements so responding with exactly what you need is not possible. Are you looking for something to replace Exchange, ActiveDirectory, PrintServer, file shares, etc...? Post a few more requirements and we'll be better able to answer you.

** Edit **
I think you have several options but the one I'd go with (mainly due to familiarity) is Solaris 10 on x86 hardware (unless of course you are buying server hardware too). Solaris 10 is free unless you want to buy a maintenance contract (which is not required). Solaris 10 handles these requirements out of the box:

FTP - pretty much any UNIX/Linux/BSD system has this.

Active directory - Active Directory is a Microsoft bastardization of the LDAP specification (at least that's how people have explained it to me before....I'm not an AD expert).

Proxy - Many open source proxy applications exist. Found this one below on SourceForge.

Policy support - not sure about how to integrate this if your clients are Microsoft based. Solaris supports Role Based Access Controls (RBAC) but I don't know if you can configure this to support non-Solaris operating systems. You may need to look at some projects that integrate LDAP and Microsoft clients (maybe take a look at the Liberty Alliance project).

I believe it handles the other requirements out of the box too but I've been away from system administration for a couple of years now (just doing it on occasion, but not for an enterprise environment).

Answer 2

Try Citadel (www.citadel.org), and it runs on Linux

HTH