I'm a Windows guy. I spend most of my computer time on a WinXP box that I'll probably upgrade to Windows 7 later this year. The best tools for ripping (EAC & dBpoweramp) & music management (MediaMonkey), IMO, are available only for Windows.
But in the spirit of the best tool for the job, I also think that for many of us, Linux is the best OS, overall, for a music server. For the past 3 years, I've been running SC on an Ubuntu box, a Dell 4600 built at the beginning of 2004, that I inherited after the deaths of my parents. It came into my hands with WinXP installed on it. I didn't need another Windows PC at the time, so I stashed it in my basement. Then I saw an ad for Squeezebox & decided that this was what I needed for my music. At first, I thought I might buy a Mac mini & use that as my server. Then I remembered the Dell. Seeing that Slimserver (as it was called then) would run under Linux, I figured that I'd give that a shot. Through this forum, I heard about Ubuntu, which was up to 5.10 at that time, installed it on the Dell & somehow got Slimserver to run. After that, things went fairly smoothly. (When they didn't, I found helpful answers here.) Now I'm running Ubuntu 9.04 on the Dell, to which I've added more RAM. I also replaced the original 80 GB HD with a 500 gigger. What I really like about Ubuntu is not having to spend time or money on AV or security software. (I'm already paying subscription fees for 2 Windows machines.) I also appreciate the ease of maintenance. Although my Ubuntu installation isn't headless, I rarely use the GUI. Instead, I just log on from my Windows box via PuTTY a couple of times a week for a quick apt-get upgrade. That's it. As you say, even cheap PCs are more than powerful enough these days to run SC under Windows. But I find that it's easier & cheaper to serve up my music from a Linux box. Goodsounds;440566 Wrote: > > I'd venture to speculate two truths - > > 1. The VAST majority of SB owners run SC on windows machines without > ever having a performance or reliability issue or penalty for doing so > > 2. Linux users are very overrepresented in these forums, and their > voices could lead one to think that linux has other than a marginal and > numerically irrelevant home PC presence. But all the stats I've seen > indicate that linux use is not growing outside of server rooms, and that > trend has been constant over the years. -- jimbres ------------------------------------------------------------------------ jimbres's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=5122 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=65585 _______________________________________________ unix mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/unix
