Toshibas and Thinkpads seem to be the most full-featured laptops. IBM gets points for having lots of bonus options, like firewire, builtin ethernet and modem, etc. And Thinkpads are pretty sturdy. Toshiba is preferred if you want a stable, moderately full-featured machine for reasonable cost. If you can afford it, the Thinkpads are nicer. Both will be pretty good as Linux laptops (exception for the winmodem bits, as previously noted).
I'm much more wary of Dell, after seeing all of my friends' Dell laptops be extremely unreliable. I distrust ATI graphics drivers, and the only audio option is the ASS Master sound card (ESS Maestro). But at least the cases are solid.
We have a few Vaio XG-28's in my office. I think the cases for these are horrible. They're too flimsy, and the ventilation flap on the back breaks easily. Be wary of the newest models. You will have difficulty getting drivers for platforms other than the preinstalled OS. The models have different serial numbers for preinstalled 98 vs. 2000, so drivers for the other line will not install. We had to use a bunch of early-release Japanese-only drivers before Sony allowed us to install 2000 on our win98 vaios.
This is exactly the problem I'm trying to find a good solution for right now..
Sun's NIS/NIS+ is, essentially, a database being queried for user and network information, queried instead of/etc/passwd,/etc/hosts..blah. NIS+ stores all of its data inside database tables within a hierarchy. Entries can contain information of just about any kind, but there are standard tables people create for passwords, services, etc. NIS+ is good because it's 1. secure 2. got fine-grain access control on db objects 3. doesn't conflict with dns (as I have heard nis does unless you configure it properly) 4. allows sharing of basic network/user information for a large number of hosts. 5. The client is easy to set up on solaris. It's bad because: 1. The admintools and db schema can be very difficult to learn. 2. The server is a pain to set up. 3. The server only runs on solaris. 4. The clients can be a bit difficult to set up on linux, because you usually have to rebuild glibc and reconfigure PAM.
I am looking for a better solution to use on my network right now. I'm managing a departmental network of 8 sun/solaris boxen and 6 intel/linux boxen, using a sun as the nis+ domain controller. We are slowly migrating to using only linux machines as the suns get old, and I'd like to find a server that runs under linux. Standard NIS is an option, but this involves taking a big step backwards in security. I've read that you should only use NIS on private LANs or networks behind a firewall, because anybody can request NIS maps from the network. I've also read that standard NIS can conflict with dns resolution unless you configure it carefully. Doesn't really sound like a viable option for me.
I was reading the documentation at www.padl.com and it looks like you don't get much of a security advantage by using their gateway. If it's simply replacing the dbm backend of nis with an ldap backend, you're still inheriting all the problems with nis. I guess the advantage is the scalability and portability of running off of an ldap server. It's a bit excessive for my needs, but probably perfect for an ISP.
Slashdot Mirror
Toshibas and Thinkpads seem to be the most full-featured laptops. IBM gets points for having lots of bonus options, like firewire, builtin ethernet and modem, etc. And Thinkpads are pretty sturdy. Toshiba is preferred if you want a stable, moderately full-featured machine for reasonable cost. If you can afford it, the Thinkpads are nicer. Both will be pretty good as Linux laptops (exception for the winmodem bits, as previously noted).
I'm much more wary of Dell, after seeing all of my friends' Dell laptops be extremely unreliable. I distrust ATI graphics drivers, and the only audio option is the ASS Master sound card (ESS Maestro). But at least the cases are solid.
We have a few Vaio XG-28's in my office. I think the cases for these are horrible. They're too flimsy, and the ventilation flap on the back breaks easily. Be wary of the newest models. You will have difficulty getting drivers for platforms other than the preinstalled OS. The models have different serial numbers for preinstalled 98 vs. 2000, so drivers for the other line will not install. We had to use a bunch of early-release Japanese-only drivers before Sony allowed us to install 2000 on our win98 vaios.
This is exactly the problem I'm trying to find a good solution for right now..
/etc/passwd, /etc/hosts..blah. NIS+ stores all of its data inside database tables within a hierarchy. Entries can contain information of just about any kind, but there are standard tables people create for passwords, services, etc. NIS+ is good because it's
Sun's NIS/NIS+ is, essentially, a database being queried for user and network information, queried instead of
1. secure
2. got fine-grain access control on db objects
3. doesn't conflict with dns (as I have heard nis does unless you configure it properly)
4. allows sharing of basic network/user information for a large number of hosts.
5. The client is easy to set up on solaris.
It's bad because:
1. The admintools and db schema can be very difficult to learn.
2. The server is a pain to set up.
3. The server only runs on solaris.
4. The clients can be a bit difficult to set up on linux, because you usually have to rebuild glibc and reconfigure PAM.
I am looking for a better solution to use on my network right now. I'm managing a departmental network of 8 sun/solaris boxen and 6 intel/linux boxen, using a sun as the nis+ domain controller. We are slowly migrating to using only linux machines as the suns get old, and I'd like to find a server that runs under linux. Standard NIS is an option, but this involves taking a big step backwards in security. I've read that you should only use NIS on private LANs or networks behind a firewall, because anybody can request NIS maps from the network. I've also read that standard NIS can conflict with dns resolution unless you configure it carefully. Doesn't really sound like a viable option for me.
I was reading the documentation at www.padl.com and it looks like you don't get much of a security advantage by using their gateway. If it's simply replacing the dbm backend of nis with an ldap backend, you're still inheriting all the problems with nis. I guess the advantage is the scalability and portability of running off of an ldap server. It's a bit excessive for my needs, but probably perfect for an ISP.