Open Source solutions
ITECO is committed to the use, development and promotion of Free/Livre and Open Source Software (FLOSS). In house we are currently using or evaluating a number of different systems and applications. We have developed and implemented our own web, mail, ftp and name servers using Linux.
Our servers are running either openSuSE Linux or Ubuntu Linux.
The ftp server uses Pure-ftp, a secure ftp server package. The email system in house is currently running on an openSuSE distribution and a customised combination of Postfix-MySQL-CyrusSASL-Cyrus IMAP to deliver mail to IMAP mailboxes on a central server for the staff. Custom forwarding arrangements ensure that staff traveling overseas have access to their company mails at all times. Spam is being attacked and kept under control using SpamAssassin in parallel with ClamAV and amavisd. One advantage of SpamAssassin is that it learns from mail received and continually refines its spam trapping ability. Our SuSE Linux webserver is running LAMP - Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. In the main office, the Firefox browser and Thunderbird mail client are in use. These offer significant advantages over other packages. They are both from the Mozilla organisation, are open source and cross platform. Combining speed, security, many features not found on other packages and ease of use they offer many advantages in an office running multiple operating systems. Thunderbird offers build in spam filtering using an intelligent filtering system. It is even possible to have access to email on a dual operating system desktop from both Windows and Linux. The office suite OpenOffice.org is open source and cross platform (Linux, MacOS as well as Microsoft Windows versions are available). It is currently at version 3, contains word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing and database packages and is being used by many organisations as a replacement for other expensive, closed source commercial office programs. One of ITECO's staff is active in the OpenOffice project, assisting with the preparation and publishing of documentation for the various components of the suite. ITECO also uses a number of specialised software packages: Grass as a Geographic Information System. Extensive use is made of in house developed Perl and Bash scripts to interact with this program. Graphics work is carried out using Gimp as the main tool. This program is comparable to Adobe Photoshop in its features and range of options. The virtual computer software VMWare and VirtualBox are used on Linux based systems to run various versions of Windows where legacy applications are required. An emulation package, Crossover Office, is used to allow the running of other Windows programs under Linux (most notably Microsoft Office). For almost every application available for Microsoft Windows there is a comparable open source program - often more than one! Contact us if you would like more information on the advantages of using FLOSS in your office.