Linux solution for NT

I work for a prepress company. By counting machines we are about a 80 to 85 percent Macintosh based. (Mac's are mostly workstations and the PC's are mostly servers running WinNT.) On the servers we use a combination of Services for Macintosh (SFM) and Cyan Mac IP.

Before I go any further I will say that getting rid of the Mac's is not an option. ( I know this is a LINUX forum so the commit will come up before long.) We are prepress shop, so we use a lot of specialized software that only runs on Mac's. (Imposition, workflow, and layout programs that do not have a counterpart for any other OS.)


My boss is moving on up in the world and I'm taking over all IT responsibilities for our location. I have in the pass only worked with NT and Mac's and know very little about how Linux could fill any roles in our workflow. I am learning and as a mater of fact I'm using StarOffice on RH to write this. What I need is an alternative to NT. (I'm also inheriting all of the licensing problems that go along with Microsoft).

With SFM we get really poor speed on the network. SFM uses AppleTalk and the best we can get a 3-4MB a sec read/write average. I have personally opened 1GB Photoshop files on a Mac and 3-4MB a sec just doesn't cut it. So for small files (Fonts and clipart) SFM is fine but for our main file server we use Cyan Mac IP. With this program we can achieve speeds in excess of 10MB a sec.

My question is....

Are there any alternatives with Linux? If there is I would very much like to peruse it. I would like to iterate... I'm not looking for free here I think my company would be very willing to pay for an alternative. Anything to get away from Microsoft. I wake up at night thinking what it will be like for us in 3 or 4 years if we are still on Microsoft's teet.

Thank You

Ryan McGee

Never start a fight, but finish the ones you are in.