Well, it's been several months, but here's what I've done:
Server
It really surprised me, but I got the server box breathing with the Celery processor and 512 RAM. It's slower than 494 at 5:15, but it works. I've been too busy with everything to play with it lately, however. I'd like to find a way to VNC in, rather than some sort of command-line terminal. I don't have enough Linux command line experience for that kind of tomfoolery. I still need to set up FTP, SqueezeCenter, and a torrent client.
Media Machine
THIS has been a cause for frustration. I've ordered 2 AGP cards from NewEgg that are labelled AGP2.0 compatible. Guess what that last phrase means? Yep. Not compatible--neither of them. Return to factory. Goodbye $20 shipping. I think I need to find a Geforce 5xxx series, or maybe swap out the 6600 in another box. This leads to all kinds of other complications. Stupid old computer gear.
However, I've managed to rip a fair number of movies at full rez to the box. Heh, that was another thing - generic DVD/CD drives aren't reliable for booting an OS install disk. I had tried Myth before putting Windows MCE on there. It was an excercise in frustration.
More in 3 months! ;-)
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
Obligatory 1st Post
Hi.
Background
I'm going to list my experiences with Linux here. For starters, I'm using Ubuntu 8.04. There's all kinds of different distros to choose from, but Ubuntu is (in my opinion) the friendliest to configure and easiest to use.
I got started by downloading the disc image (.iso) from the site linked above, and burned it to a CD. I also cleared out an old computer. It's a 1g Celeron with ~512 meg of RAM, a 40-gig main drive and 200-gig storage drive. There are lots of guides online to installing Ubuntu--the only thing I'm going to point out is that when it asks what drive to install to, select the "Guided" option, and use the entirety of your primary drive.
Goals
I've actually got two machines I'm working on. The one described above will be an FTP server, music server for this and this, BitTorrent server with remote access, and perhaps a proxy server.
The other machine is a $200 refurb IBM I got at Microcenter. It's a P4 2.26 with 1 gig of RAM and 500 gigs of storage. I've ripped most of my DVDs to it, and plan on using it as a Tivo and DVD jukebox. I'm currently running WinXP Media Center Edition on it, but want to switch over to MythTV. MythTV is MUCH more powerful (and free), but more complicated to get going. More on that later.
Background
I'm going to list my experiences with Linux here. For starters, I'm using Ubuntu 8.04. There's all kinds of different distros to choose from, but Ubuntu is (in my opinion) the friendliest to configure and easiest to use.
I got started by downloading the disc image (.iso) from the site linked above, and burned it to a CD. I also cleared out an old computer. It's a 1g Celeron with ~512 meg of RAM, a 40-gig main drive and 200-gig storage drive. There are lots of guides online to installing Ubuntu--the only thing I'm going to point out is that when it asks what drive to install to, select the "Guided" option, and use the entirety of your primary drive.
Goals
I've actually got two machines I'm working on. The one described above will be an FTP server, music server for this and this, BitTorrent server with remote access, and perhaps a proxy server.
The other machine is a $200 refurb IBM I got at Microcenter. It's a P4 2.26 with 1 gig of RAM and 500 gigs of storage. I've ripped most of my DVDs to it, and plan on using it as a Tivo and DVD jukebox. I'm currently running WinXP Media Center Edition on it, but want to switch over to MythTV. MythTV is MUCH more powerful (and free), but more complicated to get going. More on that later.
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