Using ubuntu 14.04 with Microsoft solutions.

This is s little summary for some solution searching in the web.



Since it is more familiar and convenience for me to use ubuntu in working, some survey should be done while facing fan of microsoft solution as my company's MIS.

1) Share resources.

Samba would does the job, while it is installed and merged with nautilus as default installation of ubuntu 14.04. For the location in Network Neighborhood/My Network Place:

\\Path\To\Resource

use File -> Connecting to server in Nautilus:

smb://Path/To/Resource

to fetch it.

2) Mail, calendar and shared foldder in Exchange server.

I have seen some advises to use thunderbird, but evolution is the only success way for me. First install the packages:

$sudo apt-get install evolution evolution-ews

Then the mail client could be configured by following the instructions in adding accounts. The further setting is to check something similar with "always auto-complete the email address" in the configuring window, it could query and complete automatically the account  to LDAP server when entering the relative fields.

For the public/shared calendar, folder, or calendar within the folder, try checking the Folder -> subscribe folders in the menu and find the proper locations to subscribe. The subscribed ones will be listed in proper tabs and appears in proper time.

3) Office communicating service in Lync server.

Additional and traditional messaging program pidgin and the relative plugin should be installed:

$ sudo apt-get install pidgin pidgin-sipe

And it is done after following the setting instructions.

4) Team Foundation Service.

Microsoft has provided a command-line tool which based on java to operate with TFS: Team Explorer Everywhere. It could be used to fetch the source controlling system. Reference tells further details. There is also eclipse plugin if it is more familiar than the command-line operations. As a note, it is not friendly in using since username:password is needed in each operation, that is, each command. Because it is only used as following the organization policy, but using git as the actually source control, it is quite enough for me.

5) SQL server.

Microsoft also provides odbc for linux, but I have not tried it.

Conclusion:

These solutions could not completely replace the windows version programs, but actually give a compact way to use ubuntu in a microsoft-solution-driving environment. The obvious drawback is each cases below are independent: the domain, username and password should be typed for times, though it is managed by the same active directory server. Of course the login could be set and storage in something like gnome keyring, but it would be nightmare when the periodically forcing password changing, and even worse if failed-three-times-then-lock was activated in server.