What are my options?
Posted on December 20, 2006
12 Comments
I want a simple OS or application that I can install on an old PC (former server) and run it as file and print server. Nothing fancy, nothing great: Just share files and a printer.
Currently I have a home network and a Windows 2003 Active Directory server. It was a great learning experience, but it is overkill and the server is old enough now that the installation is rather flaky. I’m tired of farting with it, I just want to go with something simple and relatively single-purpose.
I’ve recently reconfigured other aspects of my home labs and network. I no longer need the WINS and DNS services that this box was providing either. Things are, in general, much simpler here now.
I’m also ready to step back from domain level security. Windows workgroup will be fine I think. Or share level passwords.
A full linux distro is not simple and relatively single-purpose, but I bet there are some tailored distros that aim for this? For instance, FreeNAS would be just about perfect if it did the print sharing aspect. Ubuntu would not be ideal. Simple. Light-weight. Focused on sharing. Samba / CIFS / whatever it takes to do file and print sharing with windows clients (and one lonely Linux box!).
Heck, NT4 would be just about perfect too. Pity that didn’t get open sourced when it was killed off! Ran great with 8MB of RAM too.
Long story short, I’m looking ideas and/or products to evaluate and try. Got one? Leave a comment here or drop me a note via the contact form. You’ll get credit for any future articles and you’ll be helping me out. 
Tags: linux, nas, NT4, open-source, samba, server, Ubuntu, Windows
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12 Responses to “What are my options?”
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Microsoft Bob!
You are a bad bad man, Rich.
I wrote about MS Bob once, but must’ve been on the other blog (long gone in the ashes). Wow, what a steaming pile of dung that was.
And yet I’ve installed it on my laptop.
It did one thing really nicely.
It made the computer fun. I know it was stupid, and cartoony and childish.
BUT. It could be configured to look like something other than winXP’s boring start menu.
Our computers are faster now than ever before in history and the interface is basically unchanged since the release of win95. That’s over 10 years ago.
The interface of windows is boring. Want skins like window blinds? OK. Same interface, just different pictures. Boring.
MSBob moved the interface off the start menu, moved it into another idea, another context.
Imagine a 3d space realized onto a 2d screen. Imagine it’s a house or a space ship, and the mouse wheel zooms you in and out and you can interact with the ship/house, whatever to trigger programs. Go to a game room to play games. Granted, it’s just for launching the game. But the OS has quit being just about being a shell to run programs. MS hasn’t followed the rule of OS = interface between progs and hardware in ages. I might have just made it up, but there’s no reason not to harness the power of our computers to actually DO something.
We’ve been using computers for too long the same way. Bob is stupid, yes. But at least he’s different.
Actually, ubuntu would work well for what you want, if you do a server install instead of the desktop/normal install. You’d have to configure everything by hand, of course, without a GUI, but it’d be as minimal as you may want it to be and it’d be as specialized as you want to make it.
Vox,
I assume you’re talking to Handy and not me. I have looked. There are no fun interfaces out there. Even in the linux world. *sigh*
OS’s keep getting bigger and bloateder (sic).
They used to fit on floppies and now they’re on DVDs and yet.
They’re getting less interesting, and more boring all the time. Win98 you could use desktop themes and there were THOUSANDS of them.
XP they buggered up so there are like 12 or something of them. They made it too hard.
Obviously people want to customize their desktop and trick it out.
And the tools out there for doing it are all just new wallpaper and different colors and ppl are going ga-ga over it just because there’s nothing really different, and that stinks.
Join the fight for a kewler interface!
If they’re gonna bloat it at least make it bloat we can customize and turn on and off.
I don’t need a MS media player, honestly I don’t windows xp media edition is horrible. It’s slow and clunky and adds no value, just eats cycles. It could at least let me have an interface that’s fun while it slogs around.
Fortunately, for this particular post, Interface isn’t the concern. I just want a simple server type thing. Nobody will look at it directly.
At the moment, I’m leaning towards FreeNAS for file sharing and just sharing the printer from one of the workstations. But I’m still open to server/appliance ideas.
Rich, yes, I was answering to Handy, about his server woes. But…linux is also the answer for you. Have you ever been to http://themes.freshmeat.net/ ? There’s thousands of themes there, from the sublime to the hideous, and everything in between…and none of the main linux GUIs (KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment) are colors+wallpaper themes. There’s also XFCE, but I’ve never actually used it, so I don’t know how themeing is implemented in it.
Nothing in the world is as customizable as linux is…and if you want *really* serious eyecandy and functionality changes, you can go the 3d desktop route…that stuff is crazy
And if you want to see it the easy way, install mandriva 2007…if your vidcard can do it, mdv07 will set it up.
Besides doing a server install, you could also opt for a light weight window manager. They run the whole gamut so you could probably find one that’s appropriate for your hardware. As for selecting a distro you can check out http://distrowatch.com/
The live version of Mandriva is pretty much like winxp with the exception of my being unable to see my mouse at all, or the cursor. I give it 10 more seconds… long enough to hit submit and reboot.
Vox and BillyG — I definitely hear where you guys are coming from, but geeze… I’m kinda hoping for something a LOT more lightweight.
Thanks for reminding me about distrowatch, I’ll be digging around there this weekend.
I’m still hoping to find something small and lightweight and tightly focused, but that dream is (admittedly) beginning to fade a bit…
Rich, linux hates you. It always has. :p