In the office I work for, the situation is as follows:
- There are ~20 PCs running Windows 7 (mostly) and Windows XP. No domain.
- There are four network-capable Ricoh printers, currently shared over a Windows 2000 Server machine. It will be retired.
- There is Lotus Domino running on a virtualized Windows Server 2003.
Now, it's time to move Lotus Domino to a real server, which is why we will buy a new machine. The main problem is deciding which software to buy.
Given that there is no real need for a domain, and we only share printers and host Lotus Domino, is there really any reason for buying Windows Server? We obviously don't need Client Access Licenses, since the PCs operate without server interaction, and we don't need any Exchange or Domain functionality.
Are there any possible disadvantages from not using Windows Server in such a scenario? What kind of services/applications would we not be able to run? Would a normal Windows installation suffice? Would some Linux server installation also do the job here?
I am more experienced in managing Linux than Windows, so therefore, using Linux wouldn't be the issue.