Well there was a little post on the chat sidebar that got me thinking. EG- "is it running some kind of linux"
So I thought I would chime in and shed some light on the dark arts of linux.
I run two linux machines here. One is in a state of constant change. The other is the home server/gateway. there is a screenie of the desktop att. It looks pretty slick, dont you think?
So why linux? Well check this http://saltyp.homelinux.org:8080
or thisftp://saltyp.homelinux.org
then theres remote admin https://saltyp.homelinux.org:10000
And there is the DODS game server. The ports are not forwarded yet, but its up and running on our LAN.
So it hosts an ftp, http, game server and print server. It aliases our optusnet mail and acts a s a mail server. So when you email saltyp@optusnet.com.au- it comes to this machine, not optus's mail server. which is sweet for me- no limits and a permanent archive for all our mail. Also DHCP and Firewall are handled. You can port scan a running linux machine and come up with nothing! Hence the saying "my other PC is your window box"
But it also browses the web, plays movies and streams them to our other PC's. K3b burns and rips DVD's and CD's like windows app's (NERO magic ISO) pretend they can. Amarok is a media player that dwarfs WMP (but thats not hard) And you still get the regular applications like Firefox, Thunderbird, VLC etc. To do this under Micro$oft you would need to buy Server 2k3 at a cost of $1100+. Have you ever tried to do any web browsing or play media on a 2k3 Sever. Regardless of the $5000+ hardware that runs it..it is a painfully slow and shithouse experience.
The cost of a full blown Linux distro that does everything and more- ZERO. I'm running Open SuSE 11.1 and a KDE desktop. It sound tricky, but really its fun free and easy. The support forums are brilliant. My EeepC with 1 GB Ram and a Celeron @ 900HHz runs linux MINT like a trooper! Wireless the lot.
In time my windows machines will be gone. But thats not a bad thing. If you have an old machine at home or want to try dual boot. Give Linux a go. You wont miss the viruses and crashes.