Linux + Netbook = Server

[Fragbait]

Fragabit, did you notice any performance hits due to running it under CrossOver?

A little bit of a performance hit, but it really wasn't that bad. I think I lost around 5 - 10 fps. I'd imagine with some more tweaking of the graphics I could've got those few fps back.

 

[Existence.]

Back when Ubuntu was my main OS, I played TF2 and CSS a lot. I used vanilla wine, no crossover/Cedega. It was actually fairly easy to install. Literally only one wine-related command in the terminal to install Steam, then everything went normally.

 

[Tanooki]

I've been running my own Linux servers for about 10 years now, for a variety of purposes. I'm not a huge fan of GUI-based Linux tools, so I'm almost always 100% command-line oriented. That tends to scare people off, but once you've learned it, a million possibilities are at your disposal. I highly suggest to anyone considering a career in science, engineering, or IT to consider learning at least a few core commands. Once you go text mode, you'll never want to go back!

I generally just throw together whatever spare hardware I have around to make my Linux machines. Except for wireless cards (which support is getting better but still a bit spotty), pretty much any hardware setup you can put together will run most services.

However, this time, I was aiming for a different goal. Most of my linux machines are optimized towards cost - ie, what have I got lying around I can use for free? This time, however, I wanted to try and drive down the power usage. My linux machine runs constantly, but it generally isn't demanding in terms of resources. I have a couple of old laptops, but they're really underpowered and they're also power hogs.

After considering a bunch of different options, I decided to get a netbook. I did a bunch of shopping around and picked a refurb Asus Eee 900a, and spent the money I saved by going refurb to upgrade it to 2GB of ram and a 16gb SSD.

Now... what can you do with a 24/7 connected linux machine?

Some of the things I've done or have done include:

• Firewall/router - before they became cheap/common, an inexpensive linux machine worked well for this task. In fact, many popular routers are just stripped down linux boxes.
• Web server - For hosting private content, or when you don't want to pay for hosting. Or, install PHP or whatever language you want to learn/work with and start hacking.
• SQL - MySQL is the perfect compliment to a web server.
• File sharing - Samba allows you to share files with almost any type of client OS.
• SSH - SSH gives you remote command line access to a server, which is handy, but...
• SSH Port Forwarding - allows you to break out of most any restrictive firewall, and even access content on your home LAN from outside your network. On top of that, running connections over a SSH tunnel makes your connection secure, regardless of the protocol.
• DVR/TV recording - Certainly an advanced topic - not at all easy to set up or maintain, but it is possible and I've done it in the past. The pain of setting it up and maintaining it led me to just buy a Tivo this year
• Private IM - set up an IM server just for you and your friends
• IRC BNC - keeps you connected to IRC 24/7 - even if you shut down your client computer or client software...
• Bittorrent - Start or manage downloads remotely. Legal stuff only, right kids?
• Mail server - I've done this in multiple configurations - a 'mail aggregation server' that grabs my mail from a number of sources and puts it all in one place, even rolled my own webmail for accounts that had bad webmail services.
• Web proxy - speed up your web surfing, especially if you have multiple web users in the house. Locally cached copies of major sites are much faster to load.

All this for $200 in hardware, and just 10W of power! The specs on the Eee 900A may seem modest, but they're more than enough to handle all this and stay almost constantly idle. Having a built in monitor and keyboard is a bonus for setup and maintenance. The 900a's keyboard is a bit tiny compared to the HP Mini 1000 that I got for my wife a few months back, but I can do most of the administration via the network.

The major benefit of using Linux is that it's free, packages are generally easy to install and are readily available, and everything is configurable and versatile. I have a great appreciation for all OSes (I use OS X and Windows constantly as well) but very little matches the power of Linux for a home server. If you're interested in computers either as a hobby or a career, consider setting up a linux box - and if you haven't already, learn how to ditch the GUI!

I actually have an eee 900. I'm curious, what flavor of linux are you using for the server?

 

[agent86]

I've got FC9 on there right now. I tend to prefer CentOS (centos.org) which is a community rebuild of RHEL. You get the stability and security of an enterprise grade linux distro without the price. They've got like a 5-year maintenance plan for every revision, which is nice - no upgrades if you don't want/need them.

For this machine though, I went with FC9 just because there's a somewhat wider array of packages. There are some good third-party repos for RHEL/COS though, so I don't know exactly how much I gained by going the FC route.

I'm kind of partial to RedHat distros, just because I know where everything is and I've been using them a long time. Nothing against the other ones out there, though. Always been tempted by the BSDs, although I have this impression of them being rather spartan when it comes to third party packages being readily available.

 

[Passerby]

have you tried openSUSE or SLED suse was originally based on red hat

both have an excellent range of repos and packages.

 

[agent86]

have you tried openSUSE or SLED suse was originally based on red hat

both have an excellent range of repos and packages.

Nope, never used any of the SUSE distros. I wouldn't go so far to say its redhat based, (I think the first versions of SUSE as a distro predate RedHat altogether) although they both do use RPM. I don't think they're package compatible, and they've got some differences in system structure, etc. I can't speak to how much is out there for SUSE, you seem to know a bit better and have had a good experience, so great!

 

[Passerby]

suse as far as packages has a lot more than debian or ubuntu but it's divided between a lot of differnt repositories as far as the underlying system opensuse tend to be a bit farther ahead then fedora and SLED is pretty on par with RHEL.