Mac OS X Server w/o Xserve?

[myjay610]

if you don't really have an overwhelming reason to get Mac Server, my advice is don't, go with Linux instead. While I love the mac workstation, I can say that my experience with Mac servers has been somewhat frustrating, and judging by some of the horror stories I have heard about Leopard, my frustration is only the tip of the iceberg.

Unfortunately I think one of the reasons that the Server has so many issues is that Steve Jobs just doesn't care about it. If you look at it, there are a ton of really good IDEAS in Mac OS X server, but unfortunately many of them are pulled off in less than stellar fashion. Almost, but not quite. I think if Mr. Jobs just put a little bit more resources into making Mac OS X server more bug-free, than it would be a wonderful product. But as it stands, Linux can do almost anything Mac can do, and often does it better.

What Linux software makes it as easy to set up as OS X server? If you read through the Apple documentation it isn't that bad. Sure, you could build a Linux server and separately install all the services you might need. Puppet for OD/LDAP, Apache, FTP, NFS, NTP, etc. But for someone to be able to sit down and read a single source of documentation that tells them how to set that all up isn't going to be easy to find. I could be wrong, but my experience with setting up Linux services is that if you aren't comfortable with the CLI and tweaking applications then you'll have a hard time. Nothing is that easy to do in Linux, and I'm sure developers are going to keep it that way.