The High Road of IT

[Phantom Warrior]

I know we have a lot of members here who work in the IT world and/or are IT savvy.  Can anyone recommend a good web forum for discussing IT topics?  I'm looking mostly for topics relevant to my personal and professional interests.  Home users and small/medium business users.  Not running a Google data center or coding the next Windows for Microsoft.  Stuff like setting up a smaller network, affordable shared storage (vs. a five to six figure specialized NAS), and basic Windows/Linux server admin.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Phantom Warrior]

*cough*RevDisk*cough*
*cough*Fitz*cough*
*cough*GigaBuist*cough*
*cough*You know who you are...

Does anyone have a lozenge?   

[Fitz]

As for the Nas, synology makes some great stuff that i'd really consider for small to medium business applications.


Just ask questions here. buncha geeks

[Calumus]

Technibble.com is pretty good. Great info there relating to the business side of things as well if you happen to be self employed.

[RevDisk]

For PC stuff

http://www.tomshardware.com/
http://www.anandtech.com/
http://www.petri.com

Weirdly enough, Spiceworks' forum has just about everything.


or here.

And I concur with Fitz. There is no NAS but Synology and WD Red is Synology's prophet.

[charby]

Best thing is go hit up a surplus sale somewhere buy cheap hardware and play with it until you get what you want or understand. Then go spend some money on quality equipment.

I'm not sure how much help I can be, everything I do is virtual machines in a cloud environment.

[KD5NRH]

Best thing is go hit up a surplus sale somewhere buy cheap hardware and play with it until you get what you want or understand.

The more inadequate the equipment you start with, the more you learn that can come in handy later.  An ancient laptop that can barely run Slax wouldn't be a bad starting point.

[Fitz]

For PC stuff

http://www.tomshardware.com/
http://www.anandtech.com/
http://www.petri.com

Weirdly enough, Spiceworks' forum has just about everything.


or here.

And I concur with Fitz. There is no NAS but Synology and WD Red is Synology's prophet.

I will, at some point in the future, be buying one of their bigger models and using it as a VM datastore and media repository. Especially with the new *expletive deleted*it in vsphere 5.5 and hyperv 2012

[T.O.M.]

Don't take our IT guys somewhere else!  I'm trying to learn from them!

[Phantom Warrior]

The more inadequate the equipment you start with, the more you learn that can come in handy later.  An ancient laptop that can barely run Slax wouldn't be a bad starting point.

I have one of those.  (Nine year old Windows XP laptop with a non-functioning battery.)  I might have to check out Slax Server and see what I can learn...

[RevDisk]

I have one of those.  (Nine year old Windows XP laptop with a non-functioning battery.)  I might have to check out Slax Server and see what I can learn...

Old servers are dirt cheap. I picked up what would have been top of the line around the time of Server 2008 being released for $200 off Amazon.
Same with old routers and switches.

Best way to learn is do.

[KD5NRH]

I have one of those.  (Nine year old Windows XP laptop with a non-functioning battery.)  I might have to check out Slax Server and see what I can learn...

Quite a lot, actually.  Had an old P233 with dual IDE controllers, a 4-disc CDROM changer, and SCSI in a case with a lot of drive bays for a long time that was the dialup gateway, file, web and print server for a 3 PC and 2 mobile device network.  Worked great, and I just stuffed in the HDDs I replaced in other machines so I wouldn't have to worry about making sure I got all the files I needed copied over.

[Waitone]

My go-to advice site is techsupportforum for all things geek.

[Phantom Warrior]

I think I'll confine my different questions to this thread since they will be pretty esoteric.  If users don't want to read Phantom's IT Question of the Week they just have one thread to ignore, instead of multiple new ones.

My first question is graphics card related.  I'm not a gamer, personally I use a laptop, professionally I've mostly worked with servers.  So I know almost nothing about their performance or how to choose one.

My friend has an eMachine ET1831-07 (Intel Core Duo E8400 3GHz, 4 GB RAM DDR3).  He has been unhappy with the way it is loading webpages.  Sometimes it is slow, glitchy, or freezes.  His machine only has a 250W power supply so he was looking at an ATI Radeon HD 5450 graphics card.

After someone Googling I've come across what I think are two potential problems with that course of action.

1)  Graphics cards only seem to be useful if you need high end graphics, to use GPUs for distributed processing (SETI, etc), or if you need specific outputs your built in graphic card doesn't provide (DVI, HDMI).  A new graphics card isn't necessary or helpful for glitchy web browsing.  It has always been my assumption that that results from a badly coded website rather than my system.  When I run into that problem it is usually followed by an error with a plugin crashing or something.

2)  It sounds like the build in HD 4000 GP in the Intel i3 processors is more powerful than the ATI Radeon HD 5450.  So even if improved graphics processing was the goal the ATI HD 5450 graphics card would actually be a step down from his current setup.


I'd appreciate any confirmations, corrections, or comments. 

[Phantom Warrior]

I got an old desktop that I'm planning to convert into a home server per KD5NRH's suggestion.  It has a Celeron processor, a couple gigs of RAM, and a 500 GB HD.  I'm planning to use it for file and web serving, and possibly DNS or some other applications.  I'd like to use Linux since it's free and I need more familiarity with Linux.  A friend who is heavy into Linux both at home and at work said Ubuntu is a good default choice because it is common and easy to use.  Since I don't have a particular reason to use another distro I'm thinking about just taking the plunge with that one.

Any thoughts on hardware, distros, and uses from those of you that have set up a server in home or small business?

[lee n. field]

I got an old desktop that I'm planning to convert into a home server per KD5NRH's suggestion.  It has a Celeron processor, a couple gigs of RAM, and a 500 GB HD.  I'm planning to use it for file and web serving, and possibly DNS or some other applications.  I'd like to use Linux since it's free and I need more familiarity with Linux.  A friend who is heavy into Linux both at home and at work said Ubuntu is a good default choice because it is common and easy to use.  Since I don't have a particular reason to use another distro I'm thinking about just taking the plunge with that one.

Any thoughts on hardware, distros, and uses from those of you that have set up a server in home or small business?

Bump the CPU up if you can.  Otherwise, have at it.  Ubuntu's fine.  Get server version.  Install webmin also (www.webmin.com).  Depending on how old, you may need the 32-bit version of Ubuntu.  Old enough and Ubuntu won't support your processor (non-PAE).

My friend has an eMachine ET1831-07 (Intel Core Duo E8400 3GHz, 4 GB RAM DDR3).  He has been unhappy with the way it is loading webpages.  Sometimes it is slow, glitchy, or freezes.  His machine only has a 250W power supply so he was looking at an ATI Radeon HD 5450 graphics card.

Why does he think either a power supply or graphics card is going to help?  Given specs, w/ slow, etc. web page loading, I would be looking elsewhere.  

[Phantom Warrior]

Thanks for the tips on Ubuntu. 

What would you look at for the web browsing experience?  Is there a perfect world where all web pages load quickly and without glitches?  If so, what would you change to improve?  Those seemed like reasonable stats for basic web browsing to me.  Or are occasionally glitchy web pages just part of life?

[bedlamite]

I'd consider Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Mint, or go with what they are all based on: Debian. Only because Ubuntu comes with Unity, and it sucketh mightily, the rest come with a conventional desktop.

As for the web browsing, I'd install a browser he doesn't already have and see if that makes a difference, he could be overloaded with crapware and addons that are eating up all bandwidth.

[lee n. field]

Thanks for the tips on Ubuntu. 

What would you look at for the web browsing experience?  Is there a perfect world where all web pages load quickly and without glitches?  If so, what would you change to improve?  Those seemed like reasonable stats for basic web browsing to me.  Or are occasionally glitchy web pages just part of life?

General health of the system, as in scour out junkware of all sorts and browser add ons.

How well the networking works.

[RevDisk]

I got an old desktop that I'm planning to convert into a home server per KD5NRH's suggestion.  It has a Celeron processor, a couple gigs of RAM, and a 500 GB HD.  I'm planning to use it for file and web serving, and possibly DNS or some other applications.  I'd like to use Linux since it's free and I need more familiarity with Linux.  A friend who is heavy into Linux both at home and at work said Ubuntu is a good default choice because it is common and easy to use.  Since I don't have a particular reason to use another distro I'm thinking about just taking the plunge with that one.

Any thoughts on hardware, distros, and uses from those of you that have set up a server in home or small business?

I use a Synology NAS for all those tasks at home, but obviously that's a bit TOO user friendly Linux if you want to learn more about technology.

Red Hat or a derivative (CentOS, Scientific Linux or Fedora) is a more server related OS. But anything you can do on a RHEL/CentOS/SL/Fedora box can also be done on Ubuntu, Slack or Debian. In general, Ubuntu related stuff is more desktop friendly and Red Hat related stuff is more server friendly. Running the same OS on all your machines is generally a good idea, however, and trumps any other consideration unless there's a very very good reason.

Honestly, don't worry too much about it. Install whatever sounds good, get cracking and switch to something else whenever you wish.

[lee n. field]

I'd consider Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Mint, or go with what they are all based on: Debian. Only because Ubuntu comes with Unity, and it sucketh mightily, the rest come with a conventional desktop.

Not an issue if he installs the server version of Ubuntu.

Debian, yeah, debian works well too.

As for the web browsing, I'd install a browser he doesn't already have and see if that makes a difference, he could be overloaded with crapware and addons that are eating up all bandwidth.

 Kind-a what I spotted.  If specs are decent (and his are), above a pretty low baseline onboard video and power supply will have nothing to do with poor browser performance.  It sounds like someone's getting advice from a gamer.

[KD5NRH]

In general, Ubuntu related stuff is more desktop friendly and Red Hat related stuff is more server friendly.

Does Slax still have a fairly barebones, server-oriented option?  I used that for a while to get some use out of a barely functional laptop as a caching DNS server.  Most common problem with my ISP at the time was their DNS server suddenly choking, and it was before OpenDNS or Google's DNS offering, so for the 90% or more of my web browsing that was the same every day, it worked great.

[RevDisk]

Does Slax still have a fairly barebones, server-oriented option?  I used that for a while to get some use out of a barely functional laptop as a caching DNS server.  Most common problem with my ISP at the time was their DNS server suddenly choking, and it was before OpenDNS or Google's DNS offering, so for the 90% or more of my web browsing that was the same every day, it worked great.

Uhm. It's linux. Which means, it's already fairly bare bones and server oriented option. 

So yes, slax, Damn Small Linux, Lubuntu, etc all can run... just about anything.  Seriously, any version of Linux can do virtually anything that any other version of Linux does. It's mostly just personality/interface differences. Hence why I tell folks to just jump in the pool and don't feel shy about checking out other versions.


Just to throw another grenade into the geek mix. There's always FreeNAS ( http://www.freenas.org ), which is based on FreeBSD. Linux is good for many things, but BSD is more secure and more stable.

[Phantom Warrior]

What's the benefit of FreeNAS over a Linux server?  It sounds like FreeNAS is optimized for file sharing and can handle some other stuff too.  I'd really like to get my feet wet with Linux though and do some other odd ball things like run an e-mail server, test forum software, run a DNS server, home automation, whatever.  In this case it seems like straight Linux would be a better option.

[RevDisk]

What's the benefit of FreeNAS over a Linux server?  It sounds like FreeNAS is optimized for file sharing and can handle some other stuff too.  I'd really like to get my feet wet with Linux though and do some other odd ball things like run an e-mail server, test forum software, run a DNS server, home automation, whatever.  In this case it seems like straight Linux would be a better option.

Download it, install it and find out. Not joking. You learn IT by doing. So do. It doesn't cost you anything. Heck, if you have a thumb drive, you don't even need to waste DVDs on live disks.

And http://www.openmediavault.org/ is more or less the Linux equivalent.

Srly. Go install and experiment. I recommend doing so from the command line as much as possible, and moving to graphical environments once you're comfy with doing everything from command line.