A short time ago I had a home network, all built around Microsoft products. I had 2 laptops with Windows Vista, desktop with Windows 7 and Windows Home Server (WHS). Not only system but some software like MS Office Pro and Visual Studio. If you have used these software you know that it can cost a lot of money. And replacement of the computer system every 3 years.
My network setup was a simple one. I had setup a workgroup for shares, the WHS also had a backup system, witch did backup every night. But at times it was picky, and the backups end up failing.
OS: Windows Vista (32 bit) on laptops where a nightmare, always crashing, slow and it seem to run the hard drives hard. File transfers ... will lets say it was faster to download files of the internet then transfer files across the network. Now on the desktop (in 64 bit) it ran pretty good with the exception of the file transfer. I was so disappointed in with the laptop that I sore that I would never buy one again.
OS: Windows 7 (64 bit) on the desktop was far better improvement then the Windows Vista and I was quite happy with it. It did every thing that I need to do.
WHS witch was using slim down version of Windows Server 2003 (an older version that what was currently be used Server 2008). The idea of a home server was a good one, but it was old software. It was just a box so the only way to configure it was to use their connection software. It was very slow and you would have to try connecting 2-6 times before you log into it. You couldn't really configure it, and install servers like a database server was slow a painful. I had IIS and MS-SQL installed in. There was a good firewall for it and it was too hard to setup any other servers in it, DHCP or set it up as a router. I can go on about the hardware and how WHS software handle it.
One day I was checkout some new stuff that Microsoft coming up with, and I saw a preview of Windows 8. I did not like the interface, it was design for a touch screen computer, like a tablet (it look more like an over size iPad). I have a 32” monitor and I use a wireless keyboard and mouse. So this hole thing about use a touch screen doesn't work for me. Then as I was reading more about it, MS is planing on dropping the .Net framework, well that was one of the only good things about MS-Windows, it was pretty easy to develop new software for windows. I don't want to send more time learning something new all over again. Microsoft should fix something that isn't broken.
So I decided that I am going to drop all of Microsoft products. There are few devices that I know I could run into issues with. 1. My Hauppauge HD-PVR box 2. My Weather Station, IP Cameras.
Now this is my new set, I will explain how I set things up.
The Desktop is now a server, I installed Linux Mandriva 2010.2. I did try installing two other types, and they didn't same to want to install on my system: Ubuntu and Fedora. I got all 3 at a good price, it cost me only 3 DVDs and my time to download them.
You may ask why switch to Linux, “you have to be a programmer, you have to be a computer geek, there isn't much software for Linux”. You don't have to be any of those, how ever it's not for everyone, even that millions of people do use Linux devices, few examples are cell phone, like iPhone use iOS with is based from FreeBSD. Not only the iPhone, iPad, iPod and Mac OS X are also based on FreeBSD. Phone based on Android is a Linux and WebOS is another that is based on Linux. All home routers are based on Linux. So it look like Linux is here to say and Microsoft can't seem to kill it. As for software, there is a lot of different types to choose from, most are free and some you can buy. One issue that I had with Windows 7 is, I had a 64 bit OS, how every I couldn't take full advantage of it because the software where only 32 bit. We Linux all my software is 64 bit and it's very fast.
The installation of Linux went good, it found almost all of my hardware with the exception of my weather stations and hd-pvr. About 8 years ago I had installed Linux RedHat, it was much more harder because I had to download source code and had to learn how-to “Make – Install” and then configure the hardware. It was really nice that I didn't to install device drivers like I had to do with Windows 7. My network was up and running, I was browsing after installing Linux, how ever there was a lot of updates.
The same day that I installed my Linux I pickup MacBook Pro with Mac OS X (10.5.8) Leopard. Witch is 2 versions old now. If I want to upgrade I would need to buy 10.6 and they 10.7 witch will cost me $30 each, wait .. it cost me over $120 for each MS Windows, and as well hardware update as well (more memory). Mac OS X is a very nice OS, very user friendly and nice interface. I know that I have said that “I would never buy another laptop again”, but a good friend of mine bought a Macbook Air, and I was impress with it. It had the power do the work and it was fast. I will update this after I upgrade my Macbook Pro.
Now for my network setup:
For a file server I decided on using Samba
Web Server Apache 2
Database Server MySQL
Why Samba 3.5.3? It's mainly used for Windows File Sharing, I still have 1 laptop with Windows Vista on it and need to do back on MS-Access database file. In time that database will not be used, however all systems can access the Samba Server (other Linuxes and Mac OS X). For network security, I have a firewall using iptables and to add more I add a few more lines in my configuration file. To access all the share a user must log into the Samba Server. How I setup my samba please view How to Setup Samba Server->http://louiegeekcorner.blogspot.com/p/how-to-setup-samba-server.html
I will update this blog with how my server is being setup.
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