Linux What dist. for NAS/File Server?

Well, what distribution would you gurus out there recommend for a NAS/File Server unit? WOuld RedHat 9 or Lindows be ok? What about Mandrake or Suse? Are there any extra applications I need, or does it have everything in the package?

 

anybody?

 

I'm using Slackware on mine tbh

 

It depends. If you want a machine to just be a server, then I'd say slackware would be perfect. Red Hat or Mandrake would probably be okay if it was a decent machine that you are running it on and/or if you wanted to play around with a windows-esque desktop, and you didn't care about installing a bloated OS. I'm running Debian stable on mine (PII 233 with 128MB RAM), mainly because I couldn't ever get slackware to install correctly, and it is pretty quick. I have KDE installed so I can play around in a Linux desktop environment. But most of the time I just stay in command line, which is really all you need for a file server anyway.

 

You're missing out Where did it fall down? It took me three weeks to get slack to install (don't ask - kept making one crucial error, but never had a problem since!)

---

back on topic: go slackware!

 

[threadHijack] It was really weird. Whenever it started installing packages, it kept saying something to the effect of them not being valid or complete or something. It was kind of acting like it was a bad image or something. Some packages installed fine...others wouldn't. But I downloaded the images from 2 or 3 different sources and the checksums always looked good and they always seemed to burn okay.

Everytime it would say the package was bad, it would continue on. Then at the end of all of that the installation was corrupt or something. Wouldn't ever boot up correctly. Was a little bit ago, so I'm a little fuzzy on the details. But Debian installed first try....so I've just stuck with it. [/threadHijack]

I was certainly committed to trying slack...so that's why I say use it for your file server.

 

Even for someone who doesn't really know linux? Much less cli version (slack is cli isn't it?) The machine will probrably be a amd k62 233 for now, until something better comes along. I have Lindows, Mandrake, Debian, College linux, and Ark linux. I am also downloading Red Hat 9 iso's right now. Would one of those be better, even if just for now, than Slackware?

 

I tried Red Hat 9 on my machine. It was very very slow. But it was very easy to install and it supported all of my hardware. Slackware is great because it is low fat (unlike Red Hat or Mandrake) and it is not resource intensive. So it runs very well on low end systems. If you just want to get a distro installed to try it out, you can try any of the ones listed. But I think you should probably at least try slackware at some point.

Linux in general, even slackware, is not super difficult. It's just different from what you are used to. Don't let the idea of a particular distro being mainly command line oriented or something like that scare you off. There is plenty of info on the net for how to do anything you want. Even to the point of giving you step by step what to type in at each point to get it to run. And besides...even if you use Red Hat or Mandrake and run a KDE or GNOME desktop environment, most of the tweaking and setting up you are going to do is going to be done in a console...which basically means it will be command line input.

So I said all of that just to say....it's up to you. If you want to install a distro just to get it up and play with it some Red Hat or Mandrake seem to be pretty good for windows users. Just don't expect stellar performance.

 

You see, this worries me. I'll try and download the slackware iso's today, and start installing tonight. I'll give it a shot, and see what's up. One other thing though. I don't know if it is going to make a difference, but this machine, and my house, have no net connection. Can I do the whole install without downloading packages?

 

You should be able to do the entire install from the ISOs that you download. Shouldn't need to access the net during the install. Now with Debian, when I add packages (after the initial install) and such I use apt-get which does access the net.

As for the problem I had installing slack....your experience may vary. I'm not sure that it had anything to do with my machine's specs, because on the slackware site they say that it should be able to run on a 486 up to today's fastest machines. I think it may have been a problem with the images I downloaded or more likely user error. I have another hard drive that I think I may try to use to install slackware again (so it won't mess up my current stable setup) with some new images.

 

Cool cool. Thanks alot for the info and help deviate. I really appreciate it.

 

just started downloading the iso's for slack 9

 

Good luck and don't hesitate to ask if you get stuck on anything