Newbie-help!

[h90]

in the main office I have 3 computer.

1 Good one, with accounting software, modem, fax, allinone device, 2 laserprinter connected, carring also the salesguys files. Running winxp pro

I don't want to change that computer at the moment

2 other one older one newer computer, with network, nothing connected on USB, no floppy, no CD-Rom (but I have one to install). Running WinXp. I tried to restrict user rights, But as soon as I am not looking my staff is playing games, downloading porn, trying to hack into the other sales guys folders, try to copy customer informations to bring them out of the company. So my idea was to change these computers to Linux.

The problems I see here:

The printer Brother HL-5150D is connected to the computer 1 at WinXP and will be used with sharing on the network. Internet is running over another WinXP computer which is gateway.

My staff should be able to print

Some of them should be able to watch internet

they should get their files from the main computer on winxp (maybe we can change that somehow) and use it on openoffice.

USB should be disabled

No games

No sound

(that sounds hard, but they can do 12 hours absolut nothing if you give them some games).

First question is with distribution, I think of either Ubuntu or Suse, but open for every recommendation.

Second I am pretty sure that I can not manage that alone, would anyone come and help me, when I am stuck? I offer $$$$ + all you can drink....

h90

[bino]

My employees were the same way- they hate me now because they can't do anything I don't want them to.

You can accomplish all of this and more in Win XP Pro. In addition to user rights- have a look in the "policy editor" to gain even more control.

If you can't figure it out, let me know! If you're in Bangkok, I'll come and consult for you!

[h90]

bino: I did not know the "policy editior". I still want to change to Linux, but now I have time Will make the change to Linux, when I buy my next HD.

If I would have known that before............

Thank you very much!

Michael

PS.: No Sexy Lady on the Desktop anymore, lol!

My employees were the same way- they hate me now because they can't do anything I don't want them to.

You can accomplish all of this and more in Win XP Pro. In addition to user rights- have a look in the "policy editor" to gain even more control.

If you can't figure it out, let me know! If you're in Bangkok, I'll come and consult for you!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[bino]

bino: I did not know the "policy editior". I still want to change to Linux, but now I have time  Will make the change to Linux, when I buy my next HD.

If I would have known that before............

Thank you very much!

Michael

PS.: No Sexy Lady on the Desktop anymore, lol!

You will find the policy editor to be a wonderful tool. With a bit of creative thinking in how to apply it, you can restrict almost anything you want to any user you want. I get a perverse thrill out of the "power trip" that comes from "controlling" my employees computer habits, and out-thinking them. No "Run", No "Find", No "Control Panels", etc.

Can't help you with the Linux though... virgin territory for me. Perhaps another member is more savvy with this.

Good luck.

[h90]

I really don't have any problems if my staff is using the computer a little bit privat. but actually it has no end.

playing arround for many hours is not what I have th computer bought for....

thanks a lot

bino: I did not know the "policy editior". I still want to change to Linux, but now I have time  Will make the change to Linux, when I buy my next HD.

If I would have known that before............

Thank you very much!

Michael

PS.: No Sexy Lady on the Desktop anymore, lol!

You will find the policy editor to be a wonderful tool. With a bit of creative thinking in how to apply it, you can restrict almost anything you want to any user you want. I get a perverse thrill out of the "power trip" that comes from "controlling" my employees computer habits, and out-thinking them. No "Run", No "Find", No "Control Panels", etc.

Can't help you with the Linux though... virgin territory for me. Perhaps another member is more savvy with this.

Good luck.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[chanchao]

Seems to me you will still have management/staff issues no matter what you do, short of giving them typewriters.

Note that switching to Linux will not solve the staff issues overnight; in Linux you can play games, listen to music, download porn, videos, use online chat, etc., etc. It'll be slightly better in that you won't get the spyware/malware. But you STILL need to lock loads of features, web sites, etc.

So no matter what you do, there will be serious work configuring firewalls, access rights, etc.

As for USB, you can often disable it in the BIOS (and put a password on the BIOS, of course) But... lots of thing they can download and install..

Note that I think this situation with staff doing other things than work is going to get a lot worse... Soon everyone will have high speed wireless internet through their phones..

BTW, not related to anything but I'm finally writing this on Ubuntu Linux.. It really is very nice. (Ancient 400 MHz Celeron box, too

Cheers,

Chanchao

[h90]

Chanchao: for me it seems easier to restrict everything on Linux than on WinXP.

today I made a test run on ubuntu. I had some small problems:

Open Office can not display thai language in .xls files, what is bad, specialy if you are in Thailand. Is there a way arround??

Without processing Thai it does not make much sense.

i could not open larger .xls (minor problem)

I don't know how to tell ubuntu about my postscribt printer on a different computer running XP.

The network is working, I can get files from the other computer, but don't know how to find the printer.

thanks

h90

Seems to me you will still have management/staff issues no matter what you do, short of giving them typewriters.

Note that switching to Linux will not solve the staff issues overnight; in Linux you can play games, listen to music, download porn, videos, use online chat, etc., etc.  It'll be slightly better in that you won't get the spyware/malware.  But you STILL need to lock loads of features, web sites, etc.

So no matter what you do, there will be serious work configuring firewalls, access rights, etc.

As for USB, you can often disable it in the BIOS (and put a password on the BIOS, of course)  But... lots of thing they can download and install..

Note that I think this situation with staff doing other things than work is going to get a lot worse... Soon everyone will have high speed wireless internet through their phones..

BTW, not related to anything but I'm finally writing this on Ubuntu Linux.. It really is very nice. (Ancient 400 MHz Celeron box, too

Cheers,

Chanchao

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[yuyi]

I recommend SuSE Linux, but mainly because I do not use Ubuntu, and Ubuntu uses Gnome as desktop and I prefer KDE

SuSE has a very complete distribution, on their DVDs is all you need. They include OpenOffice, and even have a team working on OpenOffice, making sure it integrates nicely in the KDE desktop.

Using Linux with KDE, You can use the "kiosk" tool, which will restrict what the user can change. Definitely a plus, the user cannot mess up the system easily. Probably similar to what was mentioned here as "policy editor". That's what you put on the PC's of your staff.

In my Open Office installation I can use Thai fonts everywhere. I assume the problem mentioned here of not seeing Thai Fonts in imported .xls files is because Linux now uses the modern unicode character coding, and the .xls file made under windows of course uses old style windows character codings. See if you can specify the coding to use when importing the .xls file.

Switching to Linux will also help you to avoid that the PC is infected with adware, spyware and the daily virus

There are active mailinglists of the SuSE users, at http://lists.SuSE.com where you can get easily help if something does not work as it should.

[h90]

Thanks, will try to check with the coding. If I can not import/export I have a problem somehow.

I'll also look at knobbix (maybe spelled wrong) and suse :-)

Thanx

h90

I recommend SuSE Linux, but mainly because I do not use Ubuntu, and Ubuntu uses Gnome as desktop and I prefer KDE

SuSE has a very complete distribution, on their DVDs is all you need. They include OpenOffice, and even have a team working on OpenOffice, making sure it integrates nicely in the KDE desktop.

Using Linux with KDE, You can use the "kiosk" tool, which will restrict what the user can change. Definitely a plus, the user cannot mess up the system easily. Probably similar to what was mentioned here as "policy editor". That's what you put on the PC's of your staff.

In my Open Office installation I can use Thai fonts everywhere. I assume the problem mentioned here of not seeing Thai Fonts in imported .xls files is because Linux now uses the modern unicode character coding, and the .xls file made under windows of course uses old style windows character codings. See if you can specify the coding to use when importing the .xls file.

Switching to Linux will also help you to avoid that the PC is infected with adware, spyware and the daily virus

There are active mailinglists of the SuSE users, at http://lists.SuSE.com where you can get easily help if something does not work as it should.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[chanchao]

today I made a test run on ubuntu. I had some small problems:

Open Office can not display thai language in .xls files, what is bad, specialy if you are in Thailand. Is there a way arround??

Without processing Thai it does not make much sense.

Well first of all if that were the case then that'd be an OpenOffice issue, not so much Ubuntu. That said, I just tried it to make sure and I could use Thai in the spreadsheet no problem.. Even made a screenshot: http://www.netasia.org/album/displayimage.php?album=11&pos=5

By default though I don't think Ubuntu installs Thai fonts. Here's what you do:

Get some Thai fonts. I just got some from my Windows PC, namely Tahoma and Angsana; two very good fonts to have. (They're in \Windows\fonts). Where you copy them to on Ubuntu is up to you, for testing I guess I would make a ".fonts" folder in your home directory (don't forget the dot in .fonts) and put the font files in there. This way only that user can use the fonts. Read the manual on other options.

Then you need to activate the Thai keybaord layout, similar like you do on Windows. In Ubuntu: System->Preferences->Keyboard Then go to the Layouts tab and 'Add' a keyboard layout. Add 'Thai Kedmanee'.

That's pretty much it. You may have to restart Open Office.

On the printer I haven;'t done that yet, but mostly googling for 'Ubuntu printer howto' gives a lot of help.

By the way, OpenOffice version 2.0 will be with us soon, and it's AWESOME!!! A giant leap for mankind.

Cheers,

Chanchao

[chanchao]

By the way, yeah Ubuntu uses Gnome, but I have to say it's one of the leanest/cleanest default layouts of it I've seen so far. Not so much crap & clutter on the desktop. Some distros go way overboard, also on KDE I might add..

If you do prefer KDE, there's always... KUBUNTU!

Cheers,

Chanchao

[h90]

thanks, I'll try that, as well I'll give Suse a try.

Thanks

h90

today I made a test run on ubuntu. I had some small problems:

Open Office can not display thai language in .xls files, what is bad, specialy if you are in Thailand. Is there a way arround??

Without processing Thai it does not make much sense.

Well first of all if that were the case then that'd be an OpenOffice issue, not so much Ubuntu. That said, I just tried it to make sure and I could use Thai in the spreadsheet no problem.. Even made a screenshot: http://www.netasia.org/album/displayimage.php?album=11&pos=5

By default though I don't think Ubuntu installs Thai fonts. Here's what you do:

Get some Thai fonts. I just got some from my Windows PC, namely Tahoma and Angsana; two very good fonts to have. (They're in \Windows\fonts). Where you copy them to on Ubuntu is up to you, for testing I guess I would make a ".fonts" folder in your home directory (don't forget the dot in .fonts) and put the font files in there. This way only that user can use the fonts. Read the manual on other options.

Then you need to activate the Thai keybaord layout, similar like you do on Windows. In Ubuntu: System->Preferences->Keyboard Then go to the Layouts tab and 'Add' a keyboard layout. Add 'Thai Kedmanee'.

That's pretty much it. You may have to restart Open Office.

On the printer I haven;'t done that yet, but mostly googling for 'Ubuntu printer howto' gives a lot of help.

By the way, OpenOffice version 2.0 will be with us soon, and it's AWESOME!!! A giant leap for mankind.

Cheers,

Chanchao

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[francois]

hi'

I have read everything, I would go for suse as it is a rock-solid distro and everything is quite easily configurable, but why don't you want to use Linux as a server, that might be the best move you can make to secure the network.

use the older machine to install a distro like ipcop, configure the firewall, the network sharing permissions and the internet access, and then you can have what you want behind this, keep a windows machine(like the main one you have now) and another one on Suse Linux.

the windows machine can be secured quite well too, bino could help you for this.

pity that I can't be there ... sorry

francois

[yuyi]

By the way, yeah Ubuntu uses Gnome, but I have to say it's one of the leanest/cleanest default layouts of it I've seen so far. Not so much crap & clutter on the desktop.  Some distros go way overboard, also on KDE I might add..

If you do prefer KDE, there's always... KUBUNTU!  

Cheers,

Chanchao

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yeah, I know, kubuntu is nice. But I'm quite happy with SuSE, I use it for a long time now, and the support for laptops (powersave) and for the 64 bit Linux is unmatched. And i happen to have a 64 bit notebook it all works out of the box now with SuSE 9.3, even including the scroll area on the side of the touchpad. No other distro has that included.

And as much as I like the look of some Gnome icons, and the well organized GUi of some Gnome apps, I do not like the taking away of features. I want to keep all options, for me it is a question of organizing the configuration, and not of too many options.

Also I did look at some Gnome application code, and some KDE application code, and that was the main reason why I did switch to KDE. The C++ architecture of KDE is making life for a programmer much more easy than the somewhat unorganized C code of Gnome. This power is also visible when you look at koffice, the native office suite of kde. While it is not as powerful yet as Open Office, it is catching up nicely, and fast and lean. And there are just a few programmers behind it, but the (relative) easyness of programming for KDE makes them very productive.

And after trying it myself, I was surprised about the speed in which I could develop KDE applications. I do not think I will be that fast with coding Gnome apps, and time is money.

Anyway, the good news is that there is no loss of applications no matter which desktop you use, because you can run Gnome apps in KDE and KDE apps in Gnome. The beauty of Linux!!!

About Knoppix, well, it is great to test Linux and KDE, you can run it from a CD without installing it on your harddisk. This way you can play with Linux, without commitment, to see if you like it.

You can also install Knoppix on your harddisk. But I prefer for production use a big distribution, such as SuSE.

But I have to admit that I'm not a normal user, I have no problem to leave KDE and to work on the command line.

For a normal user, or a user new to Linux, without intention to go too deep, I would strongly recommend to have a look at Linspire (the former Lindows) The latest Linspire version 5.0 is great and Linspire shines with making it easy to install any application you like. This is what I would install for my grandparents, if I would not be around to help them myself, in case ...

Linspire 5.0 is especially easy for Windows users, it does make the switch easy.

Have fun!

[francois]

hi'

but don't know how to find the printer.

I guess that it's a network printer, ask cups to set it back.

printers/cups drivers/config ...etc

hope that it helps

francois