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sniffer · Jun 30, 2003, 03:52 PM

As you can see from my sig, my pc is running Linux. But I don't really feel that Linux is the thing for me since I think it's hard to configure.

So what should I do with my PC, and what OS to install?

My idea is to use it for file serving tasks on the network. Store my iTunes library on it and for backups, instead of filling up the much needed space on my iBook. I have just recently upgraded my network for wireless, and I expect my air port card to arrive any day now. The PC will of-course be connected directly to the lan. But I need a filesharing protocol on the pc that doesn't fck up my mac, and which work great with finder. My other needs would hopefully to use it for watching DivXs, access my neighbors' XP shares, and perhaps even set up a minor FTP share if needed. And it has to be stable and somewhat easy to use.

So what OSs could I check out to fulfill my needs?

Tnx!

BTW: I am curious on trying BeOS for this, but I don't know how good it'll work in an network environment like this, or how well it would go with the hardware. The PC is pretty much standard with sblaster16 and 32 mb g-force 1 AGP card etc.

philzilla · Jun 30, 2003, 04:28 PM

POWER!

sniffer · Jun 30, 2003, 04:32 PM

Originally posted by philzilla:
POWER!

Oh my! Not very helpful.

mark9939 · Jun 30, 2003, 04:36 PM

Originally posted by philzilla:
POWER!

Oh man I haven't seen 3.1 since 1995. Since your computer is a P2, I can tell you that it will not handle XP very well. You could always try running 98 SE or ME. (Relatively easy to use, as long as they don't crash every hour...

)

sniffer · Jun 30, 2003, 04:40 PM

Originally posted by mark9939:
Oh man I haven't seen 3.1 since 1995. Since your computer is a P2, I can tell you that it will not handle XP very well. You could always try running 98 SE or ME. (Relatively easy to use, as long as they don't crash every hour... )

U better be kidding.. Oh well.. my fault posting this in the lounge.

sniffer · 05:25 AM

Sorry about this moderators. Close it if you must. I try again at the "Peripherals" forum. I wasn't sure where this topic belonged.

Edit: Ehm.. Crap.. I'll just try in the software section instead.

Edit2: Thank you mod for moving this thread out of the lounge.

macvillage.net · Jun 30, 2003, 10:54 PM

My PC @ Work has Win 2K...

I use it for Email.

That's right... a whole computer for email.

And occasional testing in windows.

other than that, it's my Mac... all the way.

The Godfather · Jun 30, 2003, 11:41 PM

Originally posted by sniffer:
P2 333 Mhz with 192 Mb ram with Mandrake

My P2 333MHz with 192 MB RAM laptop handles XP well and Win2000 even better. If you have a friend who uses Linux, invite him over to set up a Linux server the way you want it.

DeathMan · Jul 1, 2003, 03:00 AM

I'd say stick with linux as well. Just learn the bare neccesseties for what you want to use it for. Have someone come help you if you need to.

Offer to take a geek friend to Tomb Raider or something if he'll set up your Linux box as a file server. If it were me, I'd probably just get rid of it...

sniffer · Jul 1, 2003, 05:41 AM

Originally posted by DeathMan:
Offer to take a geek friend to Tomb Raider or something if he'll set up your Linux box as a file server.

Hehe!

I am sure Linux easily could do all these tasks I am requesting. The most ensential thing is to get it comunicate nicely with my mac, and I am certain linux could handle it.

As for stability, my current default linux setup is very stable althought it came with a lot of unstable apps.
I would prefer to have a system that I can configure my self, although if I had a geeky neighbor around here I would definitive taken the Linux path as I am sure it would've been intresting to see how it works. And perhaps learned a few things my self.
What about windufs200o? Would that be an alternative? Would it be possible make it talk easily with macs. Does it have alternative protocols other than the none friendly smb protocols?
Tnx!

sniffer · Jul 1, 2003, 05:49 AM

I just heard (a few seconds ago) that 2000 server has built in support for Appletalk over TCP/IP. Anyone with experience from file sharing 2000 - macs (OS X)? Other OS options?

Tnx.

wallinbl · Jul 1, 2003, 09:07 AM

For sharing with Windows 2000, just use Samba. Create a share in windows, then go to connect to server on the mac.

I'd tell you to stick with Linux as a few others have said. Linux is very similar to the BSD underpinnings of OS X. Many of the command line commands are the same. Many programs will compile on both platforms from the same (or near similar) source code. I keep a Linux server at home that I run a few services on. You can use NFS or Samba on Linux.

BeOS works very well on a network. BeOS is a very cool operating system that is very easy to use. There are two main drawbacks: driver support and software support. If you have hardware that BeOS runs on, configuration is a breeze and everything works great. If you don't have that hardware, you won't be running BeOS well. Your SB16 and GF are supported well. The only other problem is software. There is not a great abundance of software for BeOS. However, you will often find that what is there is very good. People that write software for BeOS generally make a great user interface.

bradoesch · Jul 1, 2003, 09:28 AM

Originally posted by The Godfather:
My P2 333MHz with 192 MB RAM laptop handles XP well and Win2000 even better. If you have a friend who uses Linux, invite him over to set up a Linux server the way you want it.

My P2 233MHz with 512 MB RAM desktop handles XP well too. It's very snappy and works much, much better than a K6-2 450 MHz computer I tried it on.

sniffer · Jul 1, 2003, 09:44 AM

Originally posted by wallinbl:
For sharing with Windows 2000, just use Samba. Create a share in windows, then go to connect to server on the mac.

I'd tell you to stick with Linux as a few others have said. Linux is very similar to the BSD underpinnings of OS X. Many of the command line commands are the same. Many programs will compile on both platforms from the same (or near similar) source code. I keep a Linux server at home that I run a few services on. You can use NFS or Samba on Linux.

BeOS works very well on a network. BeOS is a very cool operating system that is very easy to use. There are two main drawbacks: driver support and software support. If you have hardware that BeOS runs on, configuration is a breeze and everything works great. If you don't have that hardware, you won't be running BeOS well. Your SB16 and GF are supported well. The only other problem is software. There is not a great abundance of software for BeOS. However, you will often find that what is there is very good. People that write software for BeOS generally make a great user interface.

Thanks for your replay. I'll buy a new hardrive to day (100gb+) and I just got a copy of 2000 so I can see if I want to use it or not. Great to hear that BeOS might do the trick as well. I am still uncertain what OS to choose. But it's good news to hear that the hardware on my comp might go very well with the drivers on BeOS. For Divx playback VLC for BeOS might do the trick i.e.

Linux.. Hmm.. I still feel uncertain to use it. I want to understand the system I'll be using, and Linux feel very strange to me as soon as I want to do something other the basic tasks. But you have a point it has similarities to the BSD underpinnings in OS X, so it would be useful to learn to manage it. With Windows on the other hand I am quite experienced. BeOS is bullet prof for the backup tasks and has user friendlynes. Hmm..

We'll see,,

sniffer · Jul 1, 2003, 09:53 AM

Originally posted by bradoesch:
My P2 233MHz with 512 MB RAM desktop handles XP well too. It's very snappy and works much, much better than a K6-2 450 MHz computer I tried it on.

I had XP on it earlier, and it did actually work very well. XP could ofcourse be an alternative. But for backup tasks/file serving tasks, I don't trust the system that much (my subjective view). I am not sure if supports Apple talk over tcp/ip either (Pro edition) but perhaps someone could verify?

Jul 1, 2003, 01:28 PM

Originally posted by sniffer:
As you can see from my sig, my pc is running Linux. But I don't really feel that Linux is the thing for me since I think it's hard to configure.

So what should I do with my PC, and what OS to install?

Seems to me that Linux really is the best OS you can put on it. Go get a book or find a friend to help you with it, but I wouldn't bother with anything else.

LeeG · Jul 1, 2003, 03:54 PM

I was actually thinking of getting a cheap pc to use apple remote desktop, to run win apps on my mac, and for backing up to also...not an unuseful thing to have around, but how I would use it, I view it as a peripheral/backup volume for my mac...

Lee

bradoesch · Jul 2, 2003, 01:58 PM

Originally posted by sniffer:
I had XP on it earlier, and it did actually work very well. XP could ofcourse be an alternative. But for backup tasks/file serving tasks, I don't trust the system that much (my subjective view). I am not sure if supports Apple talk over tcp/ip either (Pro edition) but perhaps someone could verify?

I don't see any option in XP (Pro edition) for AppleTalk. I remember it being in Windows 2000.

pimephalis · Jul 2, 2003, 04:00 PM

In my opinion, you should stick to Linux for a couple of reasons: security, remote X-windows, security, stability and security.

Here's what you do:

1. Find someone (anyone) to help you install Debian. Install Potato, the venerable, rock-solid version of the distribution.

2. Get the box running Appletalk and Samba.

3. Turn off just about every other networking protocol.

4. Create the shares you will be using from your mac.

5. Walk away and never worry again.

Ok, perhaps I'm exaggerating a little bit, but my laptop (an old Acer piece of crap) has been running Debian for upwards of nine months now without having had to reboot. I have an account on a remote Debian potato box which I use for backups and running remote X apps. Neither computer has ever given me any trouble. On the other hand, we have a windows 98 box at home which has to stay that way in order to let us run our HP all-in-one printer/scanner. It brings me to tears almost weekly (crashes, incessant printing problems, unbearable slowness of VNC, etc.).

Going the linux route takes more time and patience, but once things are configured correctly you can forget about it for ever.

sniffer · Jul 3, 2003, 02:35 PM

Originally posted by pimephalis:

Going the linux route takes more time and patience, but once things are configured correctly you can forget about it for ever.

Sounds great for static server tasks. I just simple get

when I want to do anything with it. That's my problem with Linux, but in the same time I have high thoughts about the OS.

I tested w2000 and it seemed to have all kind of fun settings. To bad it got some error messages shortly after I got it up and running. It had some detailed explanations about how to solve the issues, but I just leaved it like it was.

BeOS Vanilla light r5 version.. I am having troubles creating a boot able cd. I've wasted many cd's on this. And the burning speed on my 4x is nothing to brag about. Does anyone have a boot'able cd image? Tnx

msuper69 · Jul 4, 2003, 08:14 PM

Boat anchor.

Angus_D · Jul 5, 2003, 06:40 AM

Originally posted by pimephalis:
1. Find someone (anyone) to help you install Debian. Install Potato, the venerable, rock-solid version of the distribution.

Why Potato? Woody has been stable for about a year or so.

Moose · Jul 6, 2003, 09:19 AM

Originally posted by pimephalis:
In my opinion, you should stick to Linux for a couple of reasons: security, remote X-windows, security, stability and security.

Throwing X's baggage on a headless server box is probably one of the worst things you can do to it. Servers should be clean, svelte, and unassuming, and only contain what they need for the job. X violates this. Savagely.

1. Find someone (anyone) to help you install Debian. Install Potato, the venerable, rock-solid version of the distribution.

FreeBSD: Potato stability, but without the bitter taste of really old, obsolete packages. 4.x is rock-solid and current, and 5.x is firming up very nicely, and will probably become -STABLE when 5.2 is released in a few months.

Linux bad. FreeBSD good. For many, many reasons.