It’s a keeper!by Jim
30 Sep 2008
6:09 pm2
The long search is over. I’ve finally decided on my official Linux server distro: ArchLinux. I’ve spent the last few weeks (and many, many hours) trying out a few different distros and have found the one I want to stick with. Recently, I installed a trial copy of Windows Home Server after hearing a few recommendations. This meant that my Linux server (where this blog is hosted, among other sites) would have to make room for another OS. I don’t think I could survive without a Linux server, though, so I chose to take the virtualization route. I tried out a few different virtual server programs and found Microsoft’s Virtual Server the most useful. I wanted to use Sun’s VirtualBox, but Microsoft’s product has a web interface for configuring and controlling your servers: very cool. Besides, it also automatically starts up as a service, just like it should.
Anyway, I would have used the same distro I had on the machine before installing Windows Home Server, but my version of Ubuntu didn’t seem to like being virtualized and it would freeze nearly every morning. I got tired of reseting it, so I started looking for more distros. I tried Fedora: too bloated — especially for a virtual server. I tried Debian, but it didn’t like living in a virtual environment either; it couldn’t get anything from the repositories. Then I found Arch (thanks to Antony). It was just what I wanted: robust, but simple. Simple meaning complexity, not ease of use. Arch is not for the faint-hearted. I consider myself a fairly experienced Linux user, so I gave it a whirl. As you can see, Arch doesn’t have the freezing problems Ubuntu had. I’m glad I finally found something that works well. Arch is here to stay.
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5:34 AM on October 1st, 2008
Jim:
I’ve been following a couple blogs of people in high school since I had my ten year HS reunion; came across yours and have enjoyed Angie’s posts (she tells great stories).
Anyway, this is the geekest post of anyone I’ve seen in highschool. Congrats.
Windows Hyper-V is pretty cool stuff. I don’t manage my own server (goDaddy and AmazonWS), but I’ve been running virtual machines on my desktop for a number of years to test projects and get around language issues (I localize a lot of my material).
Feel free to post more about tech stuff. Love this post. I’m going to go check out ArchLinux right now.
11:09 AM on October 1st, 2008
Thanks for your comment. What can I say? I work for a national laboratory working on the world’s biggest laser? I’ve added a new tag “geeky” in light of your comment. Now you can browse my geek-posts even easier.
I haven’t tried Hyper-V yet, but I’m a big fan of virtualization. Have you tried VirtualBox yet? It has some neat features. The coolest has to be the “seamless-mode”. They’ve got libraries to install in a Linux guest that allows you to display windows right on your host’s desktop. That’s cool.