Posted by jamba on June 30, 2010
I’ve been running ArchLinux on my desktop for a couple of years now, but these days I am getting on that computer less and less. Little enough that I worry that my infrequency of system updates may cause some breakage. To-date, I have not had any problems, but it could happen.
This desktop hosts pictures, and runs ssh, samba, and cups primarily. So, I was considering hopping to another distro that would possibly be more stable and run for longer periods without a need for manual updates. After some discussion on identi.ca, I think I will be fine staying with Arch, though–I believe I can still manage to update once a month or so. 
I figure I will go ahead and re-detail my top 5 favorite Linux distros while I’m thinking about it, though. These are in order of my personal preference of use from past distro-hopping adventures:
- Arch …naturally!
- CrunchBang – I liked this one a lot the last time I tried it, and apparently now it is based off Debian instead of Ubuntu.
- Sabayon – although a bit bloated on the default ISO, this distro and I really got along, and the community was top-notch.
- Fedora – I don’t think I really gave fedora the close look it deserved, but I liked what I saw for the brief time that I used it.
- Pardus – this is definitely another good one. I just didn’t “click” with it, but it was quality.
A few more that deserve mention as runners up are: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Random, linux | Tagged: distro, distrohop, foss, linux, server, top 5 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jamba on March 3, 2010
Over the weekend I had some time and then decided to do something I had always wanted to do: create an http server. I was using my desktop, which runs Arch of course, and went through several of these links and set my desktop up with Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Also, I installed vsftp as an FTP server.
I even signed up with DynDNS so that my dynamic IP can be updated to a (sub)domain and etc etc.
Once I had everything set up and working–which turned out to be amazingly simple by the way–…I asked myself “to what end?”
You know what, I don’t know. I guess just to do it. I won’t USE the webserver, being I use wordpress here (with a top-level domain for $9 a YEAR! for a TLD at dynDNS it would be $30), and as long as it is flexible enough for me, I’ll keep it.
Also, I have my account at X10hosting where my code site (jrob.co.cc) is hosted and I could use it instead of my own desktop–I’m sure it would be faster, more reliable, and have about the same flexibility.
All-in-all, I think I could possibly use the FTP server, for backing up files and accessing them remotely. But that is about it.
I also thought about setting up an email server, but while possible, I don’t think I would get much benefit out of it. gmail does a pretty good job, with no maintenance from me (as much as I hate to admit, since google is taking over the world).
It was a good experience, and I am glad that I did it–I may set up something similar (but dedicated) at work sometime in the future. It’s good knowing how to do something like that, whether or not there is a feasible application for it.
Posted in linux | Tagged: apache, ftp, http, linux, mysql, php, server, www | 1 Comment »
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