Certainly creating 1500 users on an SuSE Linux box is not easy but there might be a quick and easy way of doing this if you think about it. The one outstanding thing about Linux when you compare it with
It's actually a fairly trivial piece of programming (in C, Perl, whatever) to convert a CSV file into suitabe bits to add to /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, /etc/group... One you have got something which suits your school it will do 15, 1,500 or 15,000
NT4 is it's stability. Instead of spending Sunday afternoons at your school or IT centre you can sit at home and enjoy the Sunday roast - of course you might be a vegetarian ? In that case you might enjoy sorting out the garden :)
Another issue might be one of internal security. Apache can be used internally for controlled data access. Apache is difficult to learn at first but there are plenty of good Wrox and O'Reilly books out there that help you to do something quickly.
One problem with the "Windows approach" is that it ignores that you cannot simplify things which are fundermentaly complex. Access control, on anything other than the most trivial of networks, is non simple. "Wizards" might do "magic" but unless you are a "magician" yourself you are going to be left high and dry when they fail. -- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763