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Join the Team!Quick Take: Amahi Linux Home Server Project F8 Beta
All I can say is… it’s a commendable start for an open-source software distribution. The newly found Amahi project (built on top of Fedora Core 8) offers hard drive disk space monitoring, a private wiki, network PC drive backups and file sharing, Vista calendar / iCal / Outlook integration, a custom web browser search extension for IE and Firefox (very cool), plugin extension support (currently available: browser-based photo slideshow, food recipe recorder, BitTorrent downloader), print server, dynamic DNS configuration for remote access, and simple network setup to name a few.
I’m sure those features may sound appealing to some, but overall the UI seems a bit lack luster and the offering neglects to provide a UPnP media server so users can stream stored audio, video, and photo content to their set-top media adapters. (Guys, come on.)
I’ve been hoping someone would put the pieces together of what makes up a killer home server into a cohesive unit that would be on par or superior to Windows Home Server. The open-source community has the tools already available, but no one has taken the time to figure out a way to bring those underlying technologies into a package that functions in a seamless manner instead of a patchworked bundle of applications.
Maybe I’m just biased since I think a home server should be media-centric first and foremost. Personally, I’d like to see the next release get UPnP support, the ability to rip movies/music by simply inserting a disc into a drive, and a browser based media manager/player (MythTV & home automation integration would also be nice).
How would you improve Amahi?
Popularity: 6% [?]
Filed under: Digital Media Servers, Software
March 27th, 2008 at 9:51 am
I can understand your wishes, although mine differ slightly. Since I use XBox Media Center for my viewing/listening pleasures, I’m more interested in a free (Linux?) alternative to Home Server that can rival it in one way; storage management.
Basic RAID setups can’t be expanded the way the storage pool in Home Server can. With Home Server, I can plug in any type of drive (internal or external) and add the space to the storage pool and I’m off and running in no time. Try doing that to a RAID setup. Also, with WHS I can select which sets of data I want stored redundantly. Again, try doing that with RAID.
To me personally, the backups don’t offer much, as I’d prefer to manage those myself anyway (some off-site, some local, etc.), and I may have a mixture of OS types running my network. What I need is something I can adjust the storage amount on at any time, without having to move the data somewhere so I can rebuild a RAID array.