Introduction

This book isn't about holy wars. It's about harmony.

There are plenty of books you can get which describe how to walk away from your Windows investment and, blink! go 100% Linux. But there are two problems with the "walk away from Windows" idea:

• First, it's often not possible . That is, there is a good chance you will always have Windows applications which run your business. And they might never be able to run natively on Linux.

• Second, it's simply not realistic . Assuming every application could be re-coded for Linux, you've already got a lot invested in Windows desktops, applications, architecture, training, manpower and more.

And yet, Linux offers undeniable advantages of its own. Compelling open-source applications, like the Apache web server and the MySQL database engine, are available today and will continue to appear. And the option of running these applications on an open -source operating system presents undeniable cost advantages. Yes, Linux has its own costs, such as re-training users and administrators who are familiar with Windows. But the presence of Linux in your business can save money and solve problems today.

In short, neither Windows nor Linux are leaving this planet (or the datacenter) anytime soon. And for that reason, it's more important to be able to cooperatively utilize what "the other guy" has to offer. Instead of trying to punch his lights out.

The good news is that it isn't too difficult to get alongif you have a roadmap for how to safely travel into each other's foreign territory. If you're suddenly asked to make your Linux machines work in a Windows environment, or the other way around, this is the book for you.

I (Jeremy) am not an "insider" Linux geek. And Tom isn't an "insider" Windows geek. And yet, between us, there is proof that there can be harmony in the world.

In college, many years ago, Tom and I were dorm-mates at the University of Delawareliving under the same roof. Tom was a Unix guy, soon to become a Linux enthusiast. I was an Amiga and Windows guy. When we were in college, Tom and I were some of the first people on campus to get Ethernet in the rooms, and 24/7 Internet access to the world. And, even back then, we made it our solemn geeky duty to get our disparate machines to talk to each other and utilize each other's resources to the fullest. He had a printer, while I had a scanner and audio digitizer (ye olde name for "Sound Card")and we made it all work, between all of our systems.

Times are different now. Things are arguably more complex than ever. Tom has specialized as a Linux guy, with a mastery of C, Perl and system administration. I've got a Windows pedigree with large enterprise systems, with Active Directory and Group Policy as my forts. Nice skills to have, but no one is an island. If you can do more by working together, then you should.

Tom and I were able to peacefully co-exist under the same roof. And we made the most of what the other guy had to offer. It's interesting that that same model would be a metaphor for the same basic idea that drives this book, some eleven years later. That is, Windows and Linux can peacefully coexist under the same roof and take advantage of what "the other guy" has to offer.

Are we expecting you to be both a Windows and a Linux expert? No. If you're like most administrators, you are likely stronger in one technology than the other. The best part is that you won't need to know the ins and outs of the other guy's operating system for this book to be effective. This is because we'll show you, specifically , how to set up the features in direct step-by-step style so your time can be immediately practical.

The Practical Philosophy

Whenever possible, we will initially emphasize the functions and tools "in the box" for either Windows or Linux where applicable . However, a big part of system administration is simply getting the job done. To that end, we will additionally be highlighting some key open source and 3rd-party tools which might be necessary (or the most straightforward path ) to get the job done.

We know Linux administration can be very command-line intensive . So, whenever possible, we'll try to avoid the command-line and go GUI. But when that's impossible or impractical , we'll just dive in and perform the necessary command line functions. Even in the Windows world, there are times when we need to go to the command line. In other words, our #1 goal is to get the job done.

You're not going to know it all by the time you finish this book. For our purposes, we'll set up the most usual case of the sharing or resources. We'll refer you to Sybex, other publisher's texts , and web resources for more intense studying on any particular subject. A concept like Windows RAS or Linux SAMBA is simply too big to explore into every nook and cranny. We can only delve so far into each subtopic in a book of this size . However, by the end of this book you'll have a good foundation to understand how you can get disparate systems to talk together and the resources to discover the intimate details of tweaking as you need to.

If you're ready to bring piece and symbiosis to your environment, then this is the book for you.