Can Linux do this?

Matblack

Matblack

Matblack

Soldato
Joined
23 Jan 2004
Posts
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On my Boat, Drinking
I am new to any OS apart from XP and I'm not amazingly prolific with that so bear with me


I currently have a old 3Ghz 1Gb P4 Northy which is old annd noisy and lives in a big box, it currently runs XP and has 2 250Gb drives


I am about to aquire a new HTPC for my home cinema set up and I plan to move the existing OS and 1 x 250Gb HDD on the Northy over to this. This means I will need a new OS on the Northwood


I would like to keep this and use it for folding and as a server for backups of all my pics and MP3s from both the HTPC and my laptop which my wife uses; and leave it on all the time on my wireless network. It would also have my printer and scanner attached which don't get enough use to warrant being left in the nice tidy cellar with the pretty equipment


So I have a choice; either get a copy of XP Media Centre and bung that on the HTPC; however this unit does not and will not have a tuner (we rarely watch TV) but Media Centre might be useful for keeping track of all my MP3s(I can't think of any other advantages apart from streaming video to my 360).

Alternatively I could just get normal XP for this machine which I am used to.

The other option is to use my XP licence on the HTPC and then install some variety of Linux on the older 'server' PC.


Can Linux do all the things I need?

Are there drivers for my Canon printer and scanner (can you even scan remotely :/?)

Can I fold on Linux

Can I get drivers for a wireless network card to work with Linux?

I presume that a lot of people use Linux as a server OS so it should be able to take mirror my MP3 directories on the HTPC on a regular basis?


Would it be a whole lot easier to just by a copy of XP or XP Media Centre? :D


Cheers


MB

 
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im sure you can do that stuff but it depends what distro you are going for and also whether you can be bothered. I'd go for a copy of media centre due to my previous experiences with linux, but if you have the time to figure it out then go for it.

daven
 
What printer/scanner do you have? I've found getting all in ones fully working (ie, more than just printing) a bit hit or miss under Linux but I did finally beat my HP OfficeJet into submission.

Yes, you can fold on Linux. That reminds me, I must set that up on my boxes...

What wireless card do you have? You'll find a lot of drivers bundled in so they'll get installed when you install the OS. Sometimes you may have to arse about with driver loader of ndiswrapper but that does depend on what card you have.

Yep, mirrioring the MP3's won't be an issue. The 'rsync' command is very useful here.
 
If you can spare your machine for about 15 minutes, I'd reccomend nabbing something like the Ubuntu LiveCD, and booting your box up on that. You should soon (hopefully) see if your devices are working in Linux, ableit at a default configuration state.
 
I know for one that Canon's driver support in Linux is awful.

edit - Although lots of people try their best to provide in the community ;)
 
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Linux can do everything except possibly the scanner. As others have said, they tend to bit a bit hit-and-miss. Wireless can be that way too sometimes, but it's a lot better than it used to be.

XP tends to be more friendly to 'exotic' hardware (mainly because the manufacturers often write drivers for the Windows majority and ignore the Linux minority :().
 
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