Open Source Alternative's

[asmith1972]

Hi I've been trying to get a list together of a number of open source products that we could use as alternatives to the normal Microsoft solutions. I was wondering if some of you guys could help with recommendations for the following software types: Keep in mind that the solution should be open source but doesn't have to run on Linux ie it could be installed on Windows OS.

Open source alternative to:

Microsoft SMS
Microsoft MOM/NetIQ
Helpdesk software
Document Management
Anti-Virus
Security monitor
Backup / Restore

Thanks

 

[Chacalinc]

Keep in mind that the solution should be open source but doesn't have to run on Linux ie it could be installed on Windows OS.

Open source in windows? he he he..

Actually, there are some apps (based on linux) that can be installed in windows, but your list... hmmm.. quite difficult.

E.g. all antivirus for windows are licensed (paid I mean). Antivirus for linux are for free (well, to be fair, you must pay for virus list in some cases), Help Desk software could be found written in PHP or Perl (web based).

 

[Castor66]

Hmm - difficult list. A lot of the Microsoft apps include a lot of stuff in one area. The open-source alternatives tend to be split into individual apps which you need to tie together. You should really split the requirements out with as much granularity as possible.

Microsoft SMS - Too many packages built-in here
Microsoft MOM/NetIQ - Nagios?
Helpdesk software - eGroupware?
Document Management - To what level do you require?
Anti-Virus - Clam-AV
Security monitor - What sort of monitoring?
Backup / Restore - Haven't come across one for Windows but it's built in by default into Linux. Have a look here:

http://linuxmafia.com/pub/linux/backup/

 

[LawnBoy]

You're not going to find an open source alternative to SMS. A proprietary alternative would be Novell's ZenWorks. MS does have the shaved down SUS server for free, but it's not open source (and, having used it, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone).

As far as a security monitor, you've hit the jackpot.

http://www.snort.org

Best intrusion detection there is.

 

[asmith1972]

For SMS, I would be looking for basicaly the auditing features. So hardware and software tracking. I guess everyone would agree that for remote control you would use VNC?

 

[AnimusTek]

SMS -> OCSInventory (

http://ocsinventory.sourceforge.net/en/index.php)

Microsoft MOM/NetIQ -> BigBrother (

http://www.bb4.org/)

Helpdesk software -> IRM (

http://www.stackworks.net/view.php/irm/index.html)

Document Management -> Plone
Anti-Virus -> Clam AV
Security monitor -> SNORT, Nessus, Rancid
Backup / Restore -> Amanda, Backula

Some of these can be (or can only be) installed on Windows, while others can only be installed on *nix. There are quite a few options out there if you are open to running a mixed environment.

I have used OCSInventory, and it has great potential as a replacement if you are mainly interested in auditing and reporting. It will collect the data for you and you can extend the defaults by making your own queries/reports from the database.

IRM is interesting and overlaps OCS in the inventory area. I think they could be integrated/linked and it would make a great tracking system.

Not too sure about the document management....

VNC is pretty good, but if you are dealing with XP boxes, the RemoteAssist/Desktop is faster. If you are working in a mixed environment, rdesk is the linux remote desktop client, and you can set up VNC to connect to the linux boxes.

 

[LloydSev]

well there is a humungous difference between open source, and freeware.

Which is it you are really looking for? Freeware? Then here is a great list of 46 utilities for windows.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best_46_free_utilities.htm

Computer/Network Technician
CCNA

 

[johnlopez2000]

We created a "standard" for the Y2K port of all of our legacy Unix apps to Win2k we called "NuTnix" (ie: NT/unix) using the GNU utilities and some (at that time) 3rd party suppliers of Unix "daemons" such as rshd/sshd/ftpd/etc.

The Cygwin implementation of the GNU binary build works great under windows (see:

http://www.gnu.org

&

http://www.cygwin.com)

I had a massive CAD file conversion effort at one point (calc'd at about 3.5 months CPU time on our Unix refrigerator) that I did in a distributed computing model from an NT master controller using RSH to fire remote command execution iteratively ping'ing all addresses in my /etc/hosts file. This cut it down to a couple of days during off hours.

We are thinking about doing SMS like tasks (since we have some big issues in engineering with SMS) in a similar fashion using openSSH and the GNU tk to do admin/install tasks on our engineering workstations (WinXP/x86). You COULD do similar???

PS: GNU/Cygwin/openSSH/openSSL are all "open source" with binaries available in the WinX environment and licenced via the GPL (see GNU.org for GPL details).

Good Luck!

John Lopez
Enterprise PDM Architect
john.l.lopez@goodrich.com

 

[jstreich]

Document Management -> CVS, RCS
Security monitor -> Isn't Tripwire FOSS?
Backup / Restore -> Bacula

http://bacula.org

[plug=shameless]

http://game-master.us/phpx-3.4.0/

[/plug]

 

[asmith1972]

thanks for all the responses, it gives me a great starting platform