Build a Server? Or Not!

Use Linux if you want a Client-Server environment. Since Windows 95, peer-to-peer file and print sharing has been supported. I'm having difficulty of late with Doze; no longer can the workgroup share; Win 7 wants you to create a homegroup, but only makes other Win 7 PC's able to connect easily.

If a server is needed, use Linux, or pay M$ big bucks for server software.

Linux is actually much easier to configure than M$ although there is a learning curve. But there would be one either way as you are new to Client-Server (and networking generally it seems).

You will get good support from the Linux community, not so with M$.

My experience is with Red Hat Linux and not the other esoteric versions that many espouse. I don't recall it being user friendly at the time. Thanks for you information.

A server is specialized to send files to many many users, web servers, like google uses for searches are the high end.

Another use is where a few people want to access then same core files to various machines, do work on them and then store them back on the server.

It is usually faster to store locally and if you need a server for nightly backup, just buy a box with 8 2 terabyte drives in it. You can use various redundancies, like Raid 1,2 3 etc. Google raid arrays lots of data.

If you have a home or office network and 100 base T or fiber T net working, you may just need a couple of 2 TB drives in each and use the server to backup files for restoration etc.

Although most of my work does not require networking multiple computers (each of my various computers has a different function, and I have very little need to share files between them), but I have recently done some virtualization with Windows and VirtualBox, where i have actually set up a "network" on a single machine, to trade files between "host" and "guest". Relatively straight-forward...Linux has gotten far easier to use in the past four or five years- actually EASIER than Windows, and you can actually get useful help...

Actually, with modern virtualization and dual boot techniques, it looks like the Operating System wars are over, and the winner is- no one. Today, you feel like working with Windows, tomorrow you decide you want to work in Linux. I prefer virtualization to dual booting personally, because I can live-switch between operating systems without having to reboot the machine. If you go with the server, each operator can have multiple virtual machines stored on the server and call up whatever is needed for today's task...

By the way, those that i have helped transition to Linux generally make a comment somewhere along the line to the effect, "Hey, it's easier to move to Linux than it is to move to the newest Windows release!"

OK, if I go back to my Linux days I will want support. Is there another enterprise solution other than Red Hat and is the support as good? If I recall correctly we had dumb terminals operating off the Linux servers. That sounds like a reasonable and cost effective solution to me. Are there still dumb terminals out there and is that a good idea? Maybe I should just connect a pc as a terminal and keep the other stuff on the pc.

I know Canonical (home of Ubuntu) provides commercial support for Ubuntu, similar to the Redhat model. I do not know how good the support is- I have never built a network big enough to require commercial support. I do believe the other forks of the basic Linux kernel also have commercial organizations marketing support for various Linux distros, and one probably has a pretty broad quality spectrum within the community, just as one does with other systems...