What should I do with my home server?

C

ConfusedYKA

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Jun 13, 2008
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I have an extra server lying around, and I'm not sure what to do with it.

Here's the deal: I don't really need NAS or back-ups. All the other PCs are running XP Home so I really have no need for a domain controller. My cheap little router is successfully handling DHCP.

Here's the next catch, I want to do everything for free. I have Windows Server 2000 on it right now, but I was tossing around the idea of running Ubuntu on instead. Have you had any experience with Ubuntu on a server?

I'd like to have it downloading videos and storing them for network playback perhaps. Best software?

Any other ideas of what I can use it for? Come on, I wanna get it up running but I need a reason!
 
I have an ancient IBM Aptiva downloading my favorite TV shows (and then seeding until the ratio is 3+). I use Windows XP + uTorrent (plus webui).
 
Well if all your "clients" are windows PCs then it would be easier to use windows file sharing instead of configuring samba on Ubuntu but this is just IMO of course.
 
criccio said:
[obligatory]WHS[/obligatory]
Click to expand...

Didn't read the first post? He said he wanted something free and didn't need NAS or backups.

Setting up Ubuntu Server on it should be pretty easy, lots of torrent apps out for linux.
 
Like I said, it was obligatory. ;)

I recommend against Ubuntu Server unless you are completely fine with the command line as there is no GUI. If you want to use Ubuntu, just stick to the regular version.
 
criccio said:
Like I said, it was obligatory. ;)

I recommend against Ubuntu Server unless you are completely fine with the command line as there is no GUI. If you want to use Ubuntu, just stick to the regular version.
Click to expand...

My thought was just to use Ubuntu. If I feel like getting rid of WS 2000. Seems like it does the job just fine and as mentioned above is easier to work with than Samba.

Still though, outside of just torrents I'm at a loss of what to do with this thing!
 
personally, i run all ubuntu on my stuff (wife has windows on her pc), and i have zero reason to go back to windows. I don't really play many games anymore and I download my TV shows because the network sites don't support streaming on linux (so F'em).

I had ubuntu running on my web server until the hardware went bad. Now i'm rebuilding another server to run VMWare Server on it for studying purposes and it will also have Ubuntu on it.

There's plenty of apps that you can download and install via apt-get or aptitude.
 
criccio said:
Like I said, it was obligatory. ;)

I recommend against Ubuntu Server unless you are completely fine with the command line as there is no GUI. If you want to use Ubuntu, just stick to the regular version.
Click to expand...

sudo apt-get install gnome?
 
kevinzak said:
sudo apt-get install gnome?
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+1

That's what I did for my Ubuntu Home Server, worked fine. You still need to use the terminal for some things, but once you've got Gnome, you can install GUI applications for most anything.
 
calvinj said:
apt-get install kde kdm xorg

Not that I don't mind gnome, but not my favorite.
Click to expand...

I prefer KDE as a desktop GUI (I dual boot Kubuntu), but Gnome has quite a few server-environment tools that have no (decent) KDE alternative, so you'd have to install Gnome anyway, regardless if you used it as your actual window manager. There's no point having two GUIs installed on a server OS. When you're putting a GUI on a server OS, there's no point in using the prettier, more user-friendly option - you go for functionality.
 
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