[Denim]

I felt it was time I had a dedicated box for my music. My MP3's and flac files have gotten out of control over the last year and felt that this was the right solution. I took an older PC I had laying around, added a 300 Gig drive for the music directory and proceeded to load it up. It's running Windows 2000 now, but I wonder if another operating system will give me any benefits? The operating system and other programs are on another drive, so making changes in the future should not be a problem.

Any advice to pay the bucks for XP or something else for the OS?

 

[plus_c]

I don't see a reason to. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

[brian183]

win2000 will work just fine for you. I think XP may be worse for you if this PC is old.

 

[Mr.Shadow]

Go with Ubuntu and never look back

They have a special build for weak and old computers which have low amount of RAM (lower than 192).

The OS looks great, has all the features you can think of, costs 0$, you you can even order up to 40 discs to your door step free of charge !!!

It's a no brainer, unless you are afraid of Linux, you can always use dual boot so you will have both.

Good luck.

 

[Chef Medeski]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr.Shadow /img/forum/go_quote.gif Go with Ubuntu and never look back They have a special build for weak and old computers which have low amount of RAM (lower than 192). The OS looks great, has all the features you can think of, costs 0$, you you can even order up to 40 discs to your door step free of charge !!! It's a no brainer, unless you are afraid of Linux, you can always use dual boot so you will have both. Good luck.

I dont know if that is the best. I had prolems gettin Ubuntu to work with a lot of codecs. Im not sure if you are talking about a wireless streaming server or merely a backup/copy from server. Either way if 2000 is workin for u I wouldnt think u should move to Ubuntu.

 

[Denim]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr.Shadow /img/forum/go_quote.gif Go with Ubuntu and never look back They have a special build for weak and old computers which have low amount of RAM (lower than 192). The OS looks great, has all the features you can think of, costs 0$, you you can even order up to 40 discs to your door step free of charge !!! It's a no brainer, unless you are afraid of Linux, you can always use dual boot so you will have both. Good luck.

I use Ubuntu for a daily PC to surf the Net and check email. Most of my music was on the Ubuntu box.

I may use Ubuntu for my next Music Server, but not yet. I have much to learn yet

Another reason for Windows was for EAC / Lame. I tried some of the Linux software, but didn't like it as much as EAC.

 

[Denim]

This server will initially be for loading up songs on MP3 players. (And ripping CD's.) I hope the day comes when it's part of my home theater. It's on a wireless network now (G), and haven't really looked at the devices to bridge the gap between the PC and home theater amp.

 

[pheonix991]

Gentoo. I'm going to setup a music server, SATA RAID 1 on an old p2 using Gentoo. But, I really need to know if it will have enough power to stream to my other computers. But, if your computer isn't having any problems, I'd say don't go linux and stick with win2k. Esp. if you have everything configured, and how you want it.

But, if you ever want to have a media pc, you may want to look into linux and myth tv(pretty sure that is the name).

 

[sschell]

I use a pII 500mhz running debian (netinst). MPD is the actual music database, which is compatiable with MP3s and FLAC. I use VNC and Samba to administrate and transfer files. Very stable.

But if what you have isn't giving you grief, I'd leave it alone. Music organization is a pain when you have a lot of files to deal with.

 

[bungle]

These may not be what you want right now, but keep them in mind, especially for a home theater PC.

GB-PVR (http://www.gbpvr.com)
MythTV (http://www.mythtv.org) or KnoppMyth
GeeXboX (http://geexbox.org/en/index.html)

If you just needed more space for the music then look at getting a USB drive, or get an identical 300G drive and a cheap NAS enclosure and make a nice RAID 1 (redundant) storage server on your network. (These might force a format, though.)

 

[pheonix991]

@bungle- the NAS and raid would, but, getting a hdd and putting it in an enclosure wouldn't.

 

[elec999]

You can try itunes server, and do make a raid 5 or raid 1 array.
Thanks

 

[Denim]

Thanks for the replies!

I'm sticking with Windows 2000 for now. I just wanted to be sure that I didn't overlook something that would haunt me later. I guess I gave the impression that this PC may be too weak for some OS's. I think it's a P2 (or similar) with 512 Meg of RAM and a 128 Meg video card (an old MX4000, or something like that).

You have no idea how nice it is to get my music organized on one PC. I had half of it on an NTFS drive in my Ubuntu box (that was read only). Others were on other smaller partitions when I was trying various rippers in Ubuntu. Finally fell back to EAC and Lame on my laptop (XP) and storing them where ever I could find space.

My 2 older kids got MP3 players for Christmas and it's a breeze to load up their players. I still need to find a cheap front mount USB panel. MicroData had one on sale last week ($9), but it was sold out.

It doesn't have a dedicated sound card, just onboard the motherboard. So that may be another addition soon.

Can't wait until I have the bucks to look into the home theater options. (New baby gets her diapers first

)