Linux Home Server

[pumpman]

Whilst chatting one night to a friend online about Windows Home Server, he said "why not try Linux". I replied " I've tried it and whilst it installs fine, I don't know how it works or make it what I want it to do".

That coupled with the fact that I have too many other things requiring my attention, I could not be bothered. I'll admit it, I like Windows XP, I see a programme I want , I click an exe and work with it, I want to watch a film, I use VLC player, it just works.
It suits me because after years of using it , I'm familiar with it so the thought of spending time on Linux or Mac OS for that matter, was not top of the list.

Why did i want Windows Home Server ?. A place to store all my work files, family pictures, films and to store backups of the growing number of pc's and laptops in the house. Something that didn't take a lot of administration, to leave me free to do other things with my spare time.

So I did a search for "home server" and plenty of results came up for WHS and the occasional mention of Linux mint and basic servers. But now and again I'd pick up snippets on certain threads in forums about something called Amahi.

Mmm Linux home Server, easy to set up , it's got to be worth a look I thought.

So I read through the site and learned that it was based on Fedora 8 (New version due soon based on Fedora 9). I've played with PClinux OS , Mepis, etc, but this looks fine. So I gave it a go

The first thing is to sign up with your own account at http://www.amahi.org/.

Once done follow the prompts on your account page. You will need to have downloaded or have a copy of Fedora 8 ready to hand.



I let the Fedora installer do its bit, until I was required to input some info required for Amahi to work

I used a via mini itx 800mhz affair with 1gig of ram

Once the install had finished I was left to set up an account for me to have permission to access the folders job done.

I'm very impressed with it , I know you Linux Techies will say oh you can do xy or z but this helps people like me who despite having tried to give linux a go have found a use for it and like it.

I'm now going to try out the Fedora 9 install version .

This is the kind of setup that will be the tipping point in my opinion from weaning people off windows and trying Linux , its that good and the chaps on the irc channel speak to you and wont berate you like some highbrow Linux forums for asking noob questions


Be aware this is a Beta, your home is at risk if you do not keep up regular payments on your mortgage

[Kibi]

I use FreeNAS which is a FreeBSD based solution. It's designed to turn your PC into a NAS box. It has a web interface to administer it, it features software RAID, and FTP which is very handy when you need to access your files when you are not at home. It has a lot more features, but I find these the most useful for me.
I've installed it on an HP DL140 1U blade server, it runs perfectly. The OS is installed on a 128MB USB key that hangs ot of the back of the server, leaving the hard drives purely for data.

[sibeer]

Thanks for suggesting this "Amahi" project. I have been playing with a Windows Home Server trial and couldn't decide if it was worth the £100 when I could just file share from a Linux box. Looked at FreeNAS, but it doesn't offer enough additional functionality for my needs. I also played with a Linux box, but figuring out how to set up all the functionality seemed like hard work (definately £50 worth of my time, if not the whole £100 for WHA). Will try Amahi tonight and see if it is any better

[Robfrancis]

Linux servers win hands down in some situations but i really like my M$ 2003 home server, but with that said being a student i get a full server 2003 license for free. I think it would be a different story if i had to pay for it.

I work for a GSP and we have found that we get 300% performance boost with fedora 8 on our private game severs due to the fact that we can recompile the kernels to suit pretty much any task or game that we want.

I hope that more and more people realise that linux is no longer only for the geeky or the very very brave (although avoid gentoo !!) and show other OS producers that its time they started to use fair pricing.

We are waiting for linux support for certain desktop anti cheat programs to become available and i personally will be waving BB to M$ all together. For server use i would recommend fedora 8 or CentOS 5, both red hat based. Debain is really more of a desktop OS (ubuntu etc).