Spare computer, what OS to put on it?

KazeNoKoe23 · 14 Oct 2009

Hey folks. I have this spare machine laying around (AMD Athlon X2 5000+, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB HDD, GeForce 9500 GS) and I was wondering what OS I should put on it. It's not going to be an everyday usage computer but I don't know whether to make it a server or a media center. My primary machine has Win7 Pro x64 and my roommate's machine has Vista x64, and while 7 is obviously a fantastic OS, I wonder if something different might be better. Any advice? :)

DarkXeno · 14 Oct 2009

How about Windows Home Server?

If it does have a tuner card i would also vote for Media center and share what it tapes.

Jonathan_King · 14 Oct 2009

You can also try Linux.

echrada · 14 Oct 2009

Away with you and Linux, make it a Server. The handiest thing around.

Kari · 14 Oct 2009

DarkXeno said:

How about Windows Home Server?

If it does have a tuner card i would also vote for Media center and share what it tapes.

echrada said:

Away with you and Linux, make it a Server. The handiest thing around.

+1

It's a spare, you already have Win7. IMO Windows Home Server is an obvious choice.

Kari

bobtran · 14 Oct 2009

Definitely make it a Windows home server. You don't know what you are missing until you try it.

Only issue is AV. It is a server so you will want/need an AV for it. There are no free server AV's that I am aware of but Avast sells their Windows Home Server AV for a reasonable cost.

Unattended backup, bare metal restore (without having to reactivate), shared/streaming media folders, and multi-drive folder duplication are only a few of the benefits available.

With your WHS you recieve a website from Microsoft that you can use to access your pc(s) remotely provided you run Pro/Ultimate Win7, Business/Ultimate Vista or XP pro (because RDP server is required for this).

More info at: http://www.wegotserved.com/get-started/
and here: Top 10 reasons to use Windows Home Server
also here: Windows Home Server, Windows 7, Xbox 360 and Windows Me

Using WHS with my home network and love it. There is not enouph money to pry it from my fingers. I can also turn off restore points on all pc's connected and backed up by this server gaining more disk space on the pc to use as I want it instead of in case of virus restore if it is not corrupted by said virus.

pparks1 · 14 Oct 2009

#1). Do you have legal licenses to use to install licensed software onto this computer? This may impact greatly what you want to run on it.

#2). As far as Windows Home Server goes, it's a good product...but I think it's much better when you have something like the HP Media Smart Servers which have removable/swappable hard drives. You can sometimes pick these things up for less than $400 with 750GB+ drive space in them and 3 available slots.

If you want to install Windows Home Server, the license cost is only like $100 from NewEgg to put on your own machine. Pretty reasonable.

echrada said:

Away with you and Linux, make it a Server. The handiest thing around.

Of course, 1 of the things that Linux does best is make a server. So, your statement didn't make much sense to me.

theog · 14 Oct 2009

Go for Windows Home Server.

jimbo45 · 14 Oct 2009

Hi there
why not try one of these "Hypervisors" like vmware ESXi. You get a real lean OS to try running Virtual Machines on. As it's a spare machine this would make a good test platform --you could also use the local HDD's as a data store for the Virtual Machines.

Note if you go for this type of OS You'll have to have a separate machine (which you have) to define and control the VM's. ESXi is also a bit fussy on the NIC (network) card so it might not work -- the Microsoft Hypervisor is not so fussy but I haven't played around with it so I'm not sure how easy it is to configure.

Both these products are FREE BTW.

Linux / vmware server (both free) is also a good combination to use on a spare machine.

That's my main setup at home -- with the vmware server running around 5 different VM's.

If you use Linux and vmware server there are some issues with release 2.0 / 2.01 and the current kernel. Install vmware server release 1 if you want to use linux and vmware server and don't want to "manually compile" and patch the setup script to get version 2.0/ 2.01 to work.

Cheers
jimbo.