Our digital media collection was ready to exceed the disk space of the old home file server. For the past few years I used a small, quiet, low-power PC to function as the home file server, print server, and staging/Intranet web server. This machine was powered by a Via C3 Samuel 2 processor and just couldn't keep up anymore. Most of the current Linux distributions are not compatible with that processor. I also wanted to get a faster computer in the house to make video transcoding less painful. I decided to solve all of these issues by buying an all-new Shuttle Small Form Factor (SFF) computer to be the file server and also function as our media player / HTPC (Home Theater PC).

Our home network consists of Linux, Mac, and Windows client computers. I bought a Samsung ML-2571N network laser printer for 70 dollars from http://geeks.com to eliminate the need for a separate print server computer. This printer is SO FAST and works with all three platforms. My Linux desktop computer has a color printer/scanner attached to it so if we do need to scan or print in color we just power on the desktop computer. Eliminating the print server functionality allowed me to put the new server in the entertainment center.

Our digital movies and music are now right there with the sound system and HDTV. The new machine allows us to watch full-screen flash video (such as Hulu.com). Video transcoding is about four times faster on the new server than my desktop computer (which I described in My Home Desktop Computer Runs Linux ).

Here are the specs of the new Server / Home Theater PC (HTPC):

Another festival... another bottle of hot sauce. I bought this one at the 1st Annual Melrose Butterfly Festival. Kato's Island Sauce with Habanero & Mango is sweet, spicy, and delicious! It was great on chicken, steak, and black bean burgers.

Geeklog is the CMS / Blog engine written in PHP that powers this site (http://thatlinuxbox.com/blog/).

The Geeklog project has been accepted as a student mentoring organization for the Google Summer of Code(tm) 2010. This is Geeklog's fourth year in the program.


For more information, see:

http://www.geeklog.net/article.php/su...-code-2010

My daughter caught a ladybug (Lady Beetle) with split coloration, half red and half tan. I had never seen that before so I took a picture:

I have been spending time in the Gimp making graphics for my wife's web site, so I decided to make a logo for my blog. It is not fancy, just a retro tech font with a transparent background. Here's what it should look like in the header bar for thatlinuxbox.com: