Amahi Linux Home Server, version 8

Yes! We’ve started to work on the next version of the Amahi Linux Home Server, version 8, based on Fedora 8.
Fedora 8 Version
We’re looking for experienced Linux users to beta test and help with our efforts.

The codename for this release is “Bohemia”.

New things in the release include, of course all the new features from Fedora 8, plus a few of our own. We’re looking to build a wish list for it! Share your ideas!

The lowdown on Leopard

Here is some free publicity for Leopard (as if Apple needs it).

I still have not switched to Leopard. But I did a test install.

Here is my lowdown:

  • Installation is smoother than tiger, in my experience.
    but much slower. I cannot see support for WiFi, though I did not look too hard.
  • Some menus hang and get the app locked. Had to kill the app (firefox in this case).
  • New graphics drivers have glitches, at least for my graphics card. Used to work well, however, I get glitches around the cursor some time. Reminds me of the old hacked ATI drivers (I forget the name).
  • The very essential utility Little Snitch does not work on Leopard. Now that’s a show stopper if i ever heard one! 🙂
  • Leopard

  • Office 2004 works.
  • iLife works. That’s unexpected. NOT.
  • iWork … who cares about iWork?
  • Mounting network drives is hard. I have no idea how to do it in the finder. I set the preferences to show the network, but it only shows the machines it can see. I suspect it may have been operator error. I ended up using the command line.
  • Leaving my user without password apparently blocks sudo
    which is quite inconvenient (I have scripts with sudo). Well, some times. Other times it works. I had to reboot for this, but I don’t see that it works still.
  • Coverflow? not such a big deal. More so because you have to click on the scrollbar, not simply click anywhere in the picture. What an embarrasing UI gaffe on Apple’s part!
  • No more progress on Time Machine

Other people think there are issues as well. See for instance this EWEEK article titled Leopard Has More Holes and Spots, which focuses on the holes in the firewall.

Trying Leopard’s Time Machine with my Amahi Server

Wouldn’t you think that using an external, network-mounted drive, would be a perfect way for Leopard’s time machine to back up?
Leopard’s time machine

Not really, … as it turns out. Apple apparently decided to not allow SMB-mounted and other drives to take backups.

Now, I have not tried backing it up with my Amahi Home Server yet, but there the simple solution seems to be creating a file named “.com.apple.timemachine.supported”

Isn’t that interesting? … 🙂