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Quick Take: Amahi Linux Home Server Project F8 Beta

By Alexander Grundner | March 26th, 2008 Interest Level: SMOKING HOT


Amahi LogoAll 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?

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Short URL: http://bit.ly/cWO048 [+]  Filed in: Digital Media Servers, Software  
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Alexander Grundner is the Editor & Publisher of eHomeUpgrade. He has been following "Digital Home" developments since 2003. He's also a fan of cross-platform, open development software and industry standards related to media, networking, and the web. You can catch his daily tech musings on Twitter: @agrundner.
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  • Dillon
    Regarding your data storage comments have you looked at FreeNAS? I think it may be a great option for what you are looking for with regards to expandable storage and the ability to scale your storage very quickly. I run it at home and love it. Extremely low hardware requirements and once you set it up you never have to touch it. other than if you want to make storage or ect.. changes. very stable and very small footprint.. Anyway, just a thought for ya. As for Amahi, I am going to give it a try and see how it fits into my network at home..

    Stay tuned for the results...
  • 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.
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