Which device should I buy?

[Wesman26]

Hello there! I've been running linux for a few years and I've been in love with Arch ever since I switched from Ubuntu. I'm seriously considering buying a small ARM powered machine to use as a server. I apologize for this thread looking a lot like a similar, more recent thread, but it looks like my goals and desires are significantly different.

What I'd really like from my machine would be a simple general purpose home server that I can use mostly for media like storing some of my movies and acting as an mpd server I can connect to from my phone, or also just being used in general to play music. I'd also probably use it for general storage, or maybe use it to set up a printer on my home network.

I was also wondering (though I'd probably have a completely separate device for this), do you think it would be too tasking for something like this to operate as a minecraft server? Also would I have to go jumping through hoops to get something like that working on a different architecture like this?

My final question deals with something I saw as a comment on a raspberry pi post. One of the prospective buyers was concerned with the drivers not being open source, essentially claiming that it can lead to problems if the third party driver supplier doesn't keep up to date with the necessities of the users. Are there any other devices where this is an issue that I should steer clear of while I shop around?

Thanks in advance,
--Wes

[WarheadsSE]

MPD & General server: GoFlex Net

Minecraft.. might be too much for these devices, by sheer processing weight.

Depends, do you want this in a nice package.. or ? A lot of the development kits don't have cases.

[Wesman26]

Could the raspberry pi work just as well for the general use/mpd? It's much cheaper than any of the other options I've seen.

[kmihelich]

When it comes to using one of these devices for storage, there is really only one feature that turns these devices into something worth it's weight, and that's SATA. As far as this goes, the GoFlex Net is the shining star with two SATA ports and a Marvell controller behind it. The biggest advantage to having that controller: port multiplication (hint: eSATA to male SATA cable).

Of course, nothing is a substitute for doing your own research. You seem to want something for dealing primarily with serving up data, and that's what you should focus on -- not the temptation to grab something just because of price, you'll end up worse off more times than not in this realm.

[Philoo]

I second the motion on booting from SATA capable device it REALLY makes a difference on performance (and on wear of USB flash / CF )

Overall I am impressed on how much juice you can get out of relatively modest configs (compared to desktop PCs or even laptops) but still check your memory footprint. I confess I'm lazy so I hand out some of my network settings to wicd (esp wicd-curses) which runs of python so is quite big. Typical bare rootfs+wicd uses about 30-40MB of ram
finally if you plan on connecting devices other than usb mass storage you'd probably better stay away from the oxnas based pogoplugs: newer kernel and drivers are coming but not there yet. Kirkwood and Cortex based system are pretty much all open.

Raspberry Pi is not yet available but is announced to be quite promising and quite open (as long as you're happy with a closed source GPU blob, broadcom published the processor datasheet yesterday though). I've been grinding my teeth waiting for it for a few months now.

[WarheadsSE]

I really should just recompile that oxnas 2.6.31 kernel with every bell and whistle ... maybe that would stop the moaning for a while..

But then I'd have to tell people how to upgrade in nand.. which they would screw up..

[bodhi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kmihelich', 'W')hen it comes to using one of these devices for storage, there is really only one feature that turns these devices into something worth it's weight, and that's SATA. As far as this goes, the GoFlex Net is the shining star with two SATA ports and a Marvell controller behind it. The biggest advantage to having that controller: port multiplication (hint: eSATA to male SATA cable).

Of course, nothing is a substitute for doing your own research. You seem to want something for dealing primarily with serving up data, and that's what you should focus on -- not the temptation to grab something just because of price, you'll end up worse off more times than not in this realm.

[WarheadsSE]

Same SoC, slightly different form factor.