Apple Gatekeeper- looks like OSX is moving towards a closed App store type system....

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Originally Posted by tombruton69

What are you hoping for it to do as a home server. Ive actually just done a little research to check things are still true. Its actually got worse. This is mainly due to the lack of samba support due to licensing problems. (the license is different to FreeBSD the OS that forms most the nitty gritty of OSX) Apple didn't want to pay so dropped support and now use its own version of SMB.

This means that it should work but in reality it really doesn't. The detection of windows and Linux PC's are great but some other devices can have issues, music players and media streamers. writing files or fetching files from windows is hit or miss.

Rubbish file format used for storage. ZTS is awesome, unfortunately never got released for mac. 3rd party devs have made support but its hit and miss. Why do you need to use ZTS, awesome seek times, awesome data recovery, awesome speeds on rebuilding drives, awesomely intelligent, it doesn't serve up corrupted files.

What else are you hoping to do with your home server. Im not saying OSX server is bad for home use(its laughable commercially) just that things are going to be easier on the alternative and cheaper.

So you need to get windows server 2008!!!!!!!

Sorry that was a mistype. Never ever ever get windows server, its even less secure than OSX its just as slow, just as unstable and not awesome.

Use Linux if your new to servers and linux. Get ubuntu server, there is amazing documentation, awsome community support, its more secure, faster, more reliable, better web gui thats easier to install.(who wants a tv hanging out there server. Oh yea its cheaper and ul probly have a better system.

are you ok with building pc's

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Thanks. I'm fine with building PC's - although I think I'll struggle to build one in a mac mini form factor.

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Originally Posted by ellgieff

Thanks. I'm fine with building PC's - although I think I'll struggle to build one in a mac mini form factor.

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Mini-itx is your friend. Same sort of form factor nicer cases. here are some sexy cases

http://www.fractal-design.com/?view=product&prod=42

bit bigger but can fit 7 hdd's so room to expand as you go along, also if u use ztf if you replace a drive you can replace it with a bigger one and it will rebuild no problems. It look gorgous aswell, about 140 but worth it.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Silver-Via...item1c20d5b7bd

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Black-Tend...item1c22e763fc

this one is good if you want to double it up as a home theatre pc, just run xbmc then ssh into it to add all the stuff you need.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fantastic-...item231d069f81

mac mini clone case, bu poves you could actually mac ur own

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Streacom-F...item1e6d1af6b4

mac mini like, tiny bit big nicer finish tho

hey if you want any advice on mini itx builds. pm me ive just built a home server and almost finished my htpc. did alot of research into the boards and all the other stuff

@tom, I've never been happy with samba. Mounting a remote volume that's shared through openSSH (with fuse and key pairs or something like it) has always worked well and given good file system access if you didn't want to just use scp/ssh…and I can see why some people don't like spending all their time in a console despite the fact that it makes everything easier. Since my go-to server switched from that to samba, it's been nothing but a nightmare…hence all my new images being posted from tinypic (home internet's upstream isn't fast enough to bother with an internet-visible server).

Console is fine for me, my home server is mainly used for storing streaming and backing up media (I have a stupid amount of meia) This is why no other file system is suitable apart from zts. I dont want a file system that is happy to server me corrupt data when there is a non corrupt version on the network.

With these things some times its just luck of the draw. Like vista for me was never a problem and a big improvement on XP. However for most vista was a disaster. I think this is mainly to do with people running in on one gig of ram when it uses about 700 meg at start up. Windows 7 was essentially a service pack and people loved it. Why its pretty much the same, was mainly to do with people being sold computers suitable to run it.

Just built a htpc and now im having problems loading roms into xbmc properly. I cant find any1 having the same problem as me. So thats leaving a sour taste(the rest runs great).

I think alot is first impression if you have a crap 1st experience you are reluctant to try it again. Once bitten twice shy.

the way I have my home server setup means others don't have to do command line stuff, im fine with doing it that way but others aint

I have to ask... ZTS? wtf is ZTS???

Do you mean ZFS?

btw I think OS X is way better than Linux. Then again, I think BSD, or Solaris is better than linux so go figure

Open Solaris is fun. Linux is…weird. I HATE gnome and kde and basically every desktop system. Gnome-do (and the backbone it entails) is essential, but I wasn't happy with it until I took the time to do a stage 2 gentoo install to CLI only and built up my GUI the way I wanted it.

It took like 2 weeks because I didn't really know what I was doing going in, but that install worked flawlessly for a few years before I went back to dual booting windows for SSL and Live and then bought a Mac a few months later.

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Originally Posted by mostapha

Open Solaris is fun. Linux is…weird. I HATE gnome and kde and basically every desktop system.

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i like xfce. it's simple and lightweight, does what i need and no more. also very easy to customise. i have it looking (on this laptop) mostly like an osx clone. also make for less mistakes going between this and my mbp :p wish i could map the windows button to act like a mac osx cmd one - but can't get that to work...

I'm not one to customise my environments, I like OS X mainly cause I grew up with finder back in the System 7.5.3 days and most of the fundamental feel of a mac is still there with OS X. In terms of work I do almost everything via command line or access it via some web console. So the only reason why I want a GUI is to sit back, relax and read djtechtools.
I think most users of a mac don't even take advantage of spaces, expose or all the other nifty quartz features. A shame really as they are really powerful.

I couldn't get along without Spaces (well, now mission control, which I kinda like better). Terminal (running zsh) and Alfred/Quicksilver (still vaguely undecided) are the only reasons I ever get anything done. I kind of hate menus and docks and loathe having anything on my desktop but a pretty picture.

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Originally Posted by zestoi

i like xfce. it's simple and lightweight, does what i need and no more. also very easy to customise. i have it looking (on this laptop) mostly like an osx clone. also make for less mistakes going between this and my mbp :p wish i could map the windows button to act like a mac osx cmd one - but can't get that to work...

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I can see that. XFCE was too heavy for me. But, I hate docks (as I said above). My dock on OS X is auto-hidden and as small as possible in case I bump the bottom of the screen with the mouse. I really wish I could turn it off (or set it to never being visible, at least) but it's too engrained into the OS.

I think I ended up using either fvwm or fluxbox (kinda liked both…don't remember which one I landed on) with a few virtual desktops and no eye candy. At the time, I was using a right-click menu on the desktop and gnome-do to launch apps. The only thing really different about OS X is that there's more eye candy that you can't turn off. Though sometimes being able to see an overview of all your virtual desktops is cool if you lose something.

It'll be nice when Apple fixes Mission Control so you can get an all windows view inside the mission control view…I kinda miss that from the old Spaces system.

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Originally Posted by mostapha

I can see that. XFCE was too heavy for me. But, I hate docks (as I said above). My dock on OS X is auto-hidden and as small as possible in case I bump the bottom of the screen with the mouse. I really wish I could turn it off (or set it to never being visible, at least) but it's too engrained into the OS.

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before getting the mac i was quite happy with even tvm or mwm really. all i ever use for work is a few xterms, ssh and 'screen' plus a web browser for website testing. i think i got a bit carried away with how much i liked the osx desktop tho and had to make my ubuntu studio laptop look similar :p

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I think I ended up using either fvwm or fluxbox (kinda liked both…don't remember which one I landed on) with a few virtual desktops and no eye candy. At the time, I was using a right-click menu on the desktop and gnome-do to launch apps. The only thing really different about OS X is that there's more eye candy that you can't turn off. Though sometimes being able to see an overview of all your virtual desktops is cool if you lose something.

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i remember using fvwm95 ages ago, more so an old laptop seemed more "windows friendly" for other people to use. gnome-do looks quite cunning - not used that before. i do actually quite like a doc at the bottom of the screen now - but again was only to make it seem more osx-ish and it set to auto-hide anyway. hated the fixed left hand doc when i tried ubuntu a few months ago.