Do I know about ssh and and cron? Yes of course i know about ssh and f**king cron.
The system does pretty much just run 98% of the time - but no, there arent many Linux geeks in my area who can jump in a troubleshoot this stuff, and yes, things do occasionally go wrong - whether its postgrey randomly crashing, or a printer not working, or a file permission problem etc. etc.
Getting OpenLDAP, PAM/NSS, SAMBA, gdm, Postfix, Courier, CUPS, pykota, Moodle, egroupware, koha and some other bits and pieces all to auth and store their account data in OpenLDAP is a nightmare, and the management tools for LDAP are terrible.
The big problem is that the school (it is a small school) can't afford a full-time admin, so when the guy who built this system left, he left the place with no documentation, and a system that was designed only to work with an administrator present.
I've been maintaining that system and slowly rebuilding things, but theres just no 'product' here - every app config is a one-off customisation, and theres no simple, standard way to do anything.
I wanted this job to be an 'install and run' but its a 'install, laboriously configure, then babysit' scenario.
And i'm not flying back into the arms of MS, I just don't want to deal with systems like this - I'd rather just decline to even attempt to build another system like this.
If you just can't see that Windows has a plain better solution for centrally managed desktops by unskilled staff with Active Directory and its integration into core platform components like Exchange, and its network filesystem integration, than the current crop of Linuxes and their 'just roll your own LDAP based auth solution for each app you plan to deploy, and spend days googling over the little pitfalls', well, i have to question your objectivity.
MS is expending energy keeping Linux out of schools because one day someone will come up with a working central management platform that suits schools requirements quite nicely. When that day comes, then MS has to worry about it's continued place in schools.
It will probably take a lot of painful and fragmented deployments like the one I work with before there is enough collective will by the education community to fund or otherwise support the development of a nicer platform.
Despite my frustration, I'm out there doing it, trying to help a school that had been left totally screwed by their previous admin.
I'm glad to know you have no trouble running your Linux systems - i guess everything is easy in your world.
Perhaps you should put me out of a job with a secure, rock stable, centrally managed Linux system for schools that requires no administrative effort, theres certainly a market for it, and clearly its no problem for someone like you.
I'm waiting.