[ubuntu-uk] Home/Small Business Server

Matthew Daubney matt at daubers.co.uk
Tue Sep 27 07:54:04 UTC 2011


On 27 September 2011 08:47, Dan Attwood <danattwood at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Well the main benefit of a web based UI is that you don't need all the
>> > desktop GUI libraries on the server,
>>
>> >Yes, because HDD space is expensive these days!
>
>  My understanding is is not about space. Extra libraries means extra attack
> vectors, extra things to update and to go wrong.
> Even Microsoft seems to have grasped this with Windows server 8 having the
> desktop as an optional extra.

Again, you seem to be thinking this would go into places where people
have a clue. The kind of target market for these kind of things is a
small office with maybe 4-10 people or a slightly technical person at
home with a couple of machines. They'd probably have someone else plug
it into their network behind their ADSL router, and have someone else
come and quickly explain how to connect machines to it and look after
it. It's already behind a firewall (at the router) and it's very
unlikely you'd have something like this directly connected to the net
doing router like tasks. It may be issuing DHCP/DNS whatever to the
network, but it would not route network traffic.

If you where putting something in place where people where worried
about that kind of thing you'd use the standard Ubuntu server, as
they'd probably have an IT staff who could be trained. Not just the
admin person who also gets the job of doing what the guy on the end of
the phone says.

Again, we're back to people thinking of a server as "a big thing that
runs lots and lots of services, has to be lightweight, fast and more
secure than anything else ever" when really, they're not!

-Matt Daubney



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