The "introduce yourself" thread

[stapler117]

Greetings from the USA!

Friend of mine emailed me a link to this website. I then read most the articles and tutorials that night. I've been using Linux for a bit over a year now. I stated off using the desktop version of Ubuntu, but now I just use the server version via ssh. I would absolutely love to change all my computers to Linux; however, there are so many programs that are windows only. *cough* games *cough*. I think I'll have to make a media server now. I never really considered this before, but maybe it will let me justify buying more hardware

I've known about virtualization for some time now, but never really understood it's applications. After reading your pages Ian, I see how incredibly useful it is. Last summer, me and two of my buddies decided we would tackle making our own Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud. Needless to say many hours were spent reinstalling Ubuntu. If we had used a host operating system and then had the UEC on a virtual machine, we could have restored from a fresh image within minutes instead of waiting for it to reinstall and update again.


Desktop:
Phenom 2 1090t @ stock 3.2 GHz
8 GB 1333
1TB Hard drive

Server: <-- work in progress...
P4 procssor 1.8 - 3.0 GHz
1 GB DDR
200 GB - 80 GB hard drive. probaly use the 80 for now. Got several of them
not the best hardware for this-but hey! It was free and I have about 8 of them :P

P.S. Ian, your icon make me smile every time i see it.

[Ian]

Hi there and welcome to the forums

Had to chuckle when you said you spent ages reading my website after being sent a link to it. Any normal person would think that's rather a sad thing to do but I think it's rather cool and probably would have done the same!

I'm with you on wanting to convert all my desktops to Linux. I've done some but have not yet done my main computer. I too have windows programs that I just can't live without. What I plan to do on it is install an Ubuntu 3D desktop and have Windows XP as one of the dimensions. Then I can scroll between the two OSes with my mouse at my leisure. I envisage my main desktop will be Ubuntu and I'll merely "nip across" to XP to run whatever program is I need to run.

I also plan on getting back into thin clients (I was never 100% happy with what I ended up with) so the above is subject to change!

Ian.

[Andy Horn]

Hello stapler117 good to hear you are enjoying the wonderful world of Linux.

Go on the Ian, wtf is Ubuntu 3D?

You could also go down the Wine route, no not the booze , but the Linux app that allows you to run a lot of Windoze stuff on a Linux box.

Has any one tried Lubuntu-Jeez it is so fast, I have installed on a USB Flash Drive and boot my Sammy NC10 from it when I need to recover data from Windoze disk's that are locked due to me not having sufficient permissions or nasty virus infections, nice LDXE or is it LXDE? desktop with enough apps to get started with.

Andy

[wyrmwood]

Hi to all

It took me ages to find answers to what I thought was basic linux questions, that I ended up writing down all the steps I took in case I needed to rebuild my server - and then I found this site! Look for my future posts in tips and tricks :-)

Anyway, Introducing myself as Wyrmwood, I was initially looking for a solution to backup my home computer, and have a better solution for storage of my media (digital movies, photos, music) in case of failure on a drive. Then one of my favourite PC mags, PC User (Australian) put together a customised version of Ubuntu which they called UserOS, which I thought would do the trick - although ignorant of Linux, I took it as an opportunity to delve into it and utilise its strengths of stability and value.

I'm running an HP ProLiant N36L MicroServer AMD 1.3GHz CPU, 1GB RAM (came with a 250GB HDD) from Megabuy - $290 delivered. Added 2x low power Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB HD in RAID 1 (software raid) - that took a while to work out how to do! Its running headless, wired to my wireless router, and plugged into a surge protector.

Operating System is (Australian) PC User UserOS Homeserver 12.03 (Ubuntu Linux 11.10) which has lots of useful server programs already installed (like backuppc and mediatomb), a desktop (xfce), and none of the bloat of a full Ubuntu installation.

I'm still a beginner, but hoping not to make too many big mistakes with security, etc.

On it, I run automatic backups of my home PC using backuppc, store meda (and share the drives on my network which my media player attached to my TV can access), run an irrigation system (EtherRain) which also monitors the weather report and halts irrigation if a high chance of rain is expected. I hope to next install a digital TV tuner and use Myth TV or similar to record freeview TV (and also maybe access my irrigation system via the internet if I can sort out port forwarding and bypassing the ports that my provider blocks).

I'm looking forward to reading and implementing ideas from Ian and others on this site (and contributing) - thanks Ian for providing a repository for learning home server building.

[Andy Horn]

Hi there and welcome to the forum.

Please tell us more about UserOS and a link to it, you can never have too many server OS's to choose from.

I am very interested in if you can connect to via a remote desktop connection

Andy

[Ian]

Go on the Ian, wtf is Ubuntu 3D?

Erm, it'll be this. Windows XP on the right and Ubuntu on the left

[kfenzel]

Hello my name is Kyle. I have been wanting to setup a media server/ filesharing server for a number of years. My last attempt I used an operating system known as freenas. I managed to get as far successfully creating a network share to my windows machine and was happy with the progress I was making. Then the OS crapped out and wouldn't let me access the built in web gui and I didn't feel like digging out the monitor and keyboard again. Now that I have more room I was ready to start again. I figured I go with Ubuntu, but I wasn't sure where to start anymore because it's been so long since I worked with linux or doing configurations. I found this site and I have to say it was an absolute pleasure setting things up with this guide.

I've used other guides for things like setting up a VPN that had me banging my head against a wall because they tend to miss some key information that a linux novice like myself would depend on in order to succeed. This guide didn't miss a thing. Every step of the way everything worked perfectly! Thank you so much for this excellent source of information. I am here because I have an issue that I'm going search the threads for. I could access my server by name, but now for some reason I can only access by pointing to the IP address. Not a big deal, but it was convenient to do hostname and it bothers me not knowing why it started doing this.\

(Edit)
Seems to be that my Vista machine wanted to repeatedly reset file sharing and network discovery. After I enabled these settings again my hostname issue was resolved.


Thanks,

Kyle

[Andy Horn]

Hello Kyle and welcome to forum

I ran FreeNAS myself for a while but I found it a little too clunky, my Linux box is much better but a lot more work has gone into setting it up, all thanks to Ian and his easy to understand guide.

Andy

[finzleft]

Ok, so HI..i'm new here and new to Ubuntu. I'm trying to set mine up as a media server/bittorrent server/data server. I'm not planning on using it as a DVR, yet.
Here my hardware list:

Lite-On iHBS11204 12x Internal Blu-Ray Burner
Galaxy GeForce GT 520 DDR3 1GB PCIe 2.0
ULTRA BLUETOOTH KEYBOARD & MOUSE
Thermaltake TR2 500W Power Supply
Seagate 1TB Serial ATA HD 7200/64MB/SATA-6G
ECS A55F-M2 (V1.0A) AMD HUDSON D3 SOCKET FM1 MOTHE
AMD DUAL-CORE A4-3300 2.5GHZ APU 65W SOCKET FM1
Patriot Gamer 2 4GB DDR3 PC10666 1333MH
Cooler Master Elite 430 Mid Tower ATX Case

[Ian]

Hi finzleft and welcome to the forums

From your kit list it looks like you are building a box with a lot of potential. 12.04LTS has just been released and I'm in the process of updating my guides to reflect this. There are a few "gotchas" I know about already but 10.04LTS will be supported for a while yet if you don't want to hang around.

Ian.