My $0.02: I think it really depends on how much of a learning experience you want out of the installation and whether you want to use that machine to serve anything else.
Linux is great on many levels but does require a deeper understanding about whats going on inside your system. Once you've got it setup and running smoothly... its a dream. But the setup can be tricky. If you go this route, I highly recommend finding a Linux distro with a very good installer. Linux has a very low overhead so your system requirements will be lower than for Windows thus you could easily set the same machine up to be a web, email, and/or ftp server without worrying about performance (assuming the machine is reasonably powerful). Do your homework on wireless cards before you buy one since several brands don't work in Linux. Firewall and Antivirus software are free for linux and typically come bundled with any distro you're likely to download. Windows is a bloated, expensive, annoying operating system but it does do several things fairly well... plus XP seems fairly stable on most machines I've used it on. There is an initial cost but the learning curve will be shallow and support for wireless is obviously very good. Most wireless cards support older versions of windows also, so if you have an old copy of 2000 kicking around then this would probably serve your purposes. (Grisoft's AVG Free edition is a great free anti-virus program and ZoneAlarm's free Firewall is equally impressive). I guess my recommendation would be to go with Windows unless you have a need or a desire to learn Linux. ss. p.s. anti-virus probably isn't that important on the machine unless you are using it for something other than a server for music since it sounds like the machine doesn't even need to connect to the internet (just your LAN) (assuming you have decent virus protection on your other LAN PCs). -- street_samurai _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
