At Last - A Real Contender

While looking at Clark Connect info, I saw mention of SME server.

A quick pop over there and a perusal of the forums left me impressed.

Like Clark Connect, with a long history and busy forums.
Unlike Clark Connect, this seems to be a community project first and foremost.
For example, elections and discussions were right out front in the forums.

They keep up to date useage stats, showing a pretty reasonable number of units in service.

The feature list is quite complete including an LDAP server and mention of plug ins like Jinzora, Dan's Guardian and Asterisk.

It is based on CentOS 4, and specifically mentions they try upstream packages unpatched to allow them to quickly flow through.

OK, I think it's time to pay attention to Rule 4. Before I started, I was pretty sure I was going to end up using Ubuntu Server 8.04, and just had to decide if I wanted to try (tomorrow's entry) Ebox on top or not. SME Server is making me reconsider. It looks like it should do everything I want it to - except teach me more about Ubuntu.

So here's a thought - old PCs I have in abundance. Why not install 'em both and see how we make out? All it costs is my time :-)