[ale] linux infrastructure advice, opinions, suggestions

[Jay]

I work as a student worker for the systems admin of my school, and part 
of my job with him is to sort of research various ways we can use linux 
to leverage the schools' tech infrastructure and bolster the system.  
Currently the school is MSed to death, and I and my boss are two of 
maybe four or five real linux-nuts at the school.  He wants to get more 
linux use on campus, since a large percentage of the servers are windows 
and the rest are mostly HP Unix.  For my part, I am working on putting a 
linux lab on campus that all students are allowed access to, and where I 
can leave distros of linux on CD for people to borrow/take/copy.  I also 
would like to get us set up as an ftp mirror for linux.  My second day 
on the job I was able to set up an ftp server serving linux isos, but 
it's only a (very old) desktop PC with linux on it, and I'd really like 
to see something more useful that can handle downloads from a lot more 
people. 

For your own uses, feel free to download from it at 
ftp://metafero.elon.edu/  and if you have some further suggestions for 
distros you'd like me to add, contact me at jay at elon.edu and I'll see 
what I can do!

So far, we've set up spam filters using two linux servers, but we'd like 
to find some more ways to take advantage of linux.  The only exception 
is e-mail.  There is absolutely no chance we would ever move off of MS 
Exchange Server for e-mail.  We would like to get linux running to do 
things like automate mailing list creation, possibly run our Blackboard 
server, etc.  So, what I am looking for is some advice and suggestions 
you all have on cool things and useful things we can do with linux.  
Give me some application ideas, such as mailman for listserv, etc.  
Anything you want to throw at me, you've probably all got at least one 
suggestion that's worth hearing. 

While I'm on topic, does anyone know how well you can interface with a 
Net App storage device for use with apache (for student webspace, 
because I would love to get this school off of windows server for at 
least the student web server).  Additionally, does anyone know any 
caveats or helpful advice in implementing mailman with our Exchange server?

Thanks!

-Jay