Alternatives to NetWare?
 

I'm thinking of setting up a *nix server as a peer on my network, and wanted to know of any FOSS software that is comparable to the functions of Netware.

My needs are quite simple and could be met through the use of serveral packages, but I was wondering if there was an all in one solution as well.

I'd appreciate suggestion on either all-in-one packages or indivgual programs that you have had good experiance using that meet my needs.

I need
- remote FTP access
- networked drives / network space (Preferably with a global directory for everyone, and indivgual drive space requiring a login)
- printserver que managing

This machine will be networked to a blend of mac's and windows machines, and both need the drive mapping and print que to work in a stable fashion

Really simple, right?
There's a part of me that almost wishes the Mac kernel could be compiled for X86 so I could use it since there are quite a few elegant solutions with well designed frontends for the mac.

Also, While we are on the subject, one of the machines I have sitting around is a G4 powerbook. loaded with the newest kernel, how realistic is it to use a laptop as a server?

sounds like you need samba and cups
the configuring of them for that complexity is not really up my alley though...I know a guide exists somewhere on the samba homepage.
Samba should work for both Mac and Windows, but NFS I think is better supported for Mac (not sure) as is just pure cups, instead of cups through samba.

remote ftp access can be achieved by proftpd vsftpd or similar.

Samba will help you with network drives and whatnot, but for logins/user management, you need to use OpenLDAP. Active Directory uses an LDAP base for its login management and kerberos for its authentication.

www.openldap.org
www.samba.org
http://www-1.ibm.com/linux/solutions...solution.shtml