Yeppers, I now have the 64-bit version of the latest Ubuntu Linux up and going. It's now serving data and print services to my Macbook via netatalk and ipp. Setting up print sharing was easy -- just use the standard printer configuration tool that is in the System menu. Setting up netatalk was a PITA because the standard netatalk configuration doesn't support SSL passwords and the latest MacOS Leopard will no longer do plaintext passwords. In addition, by default avahi isn't set up to advertise Apple shares via Bonjour, so the Linux server didn't appear in the left network servers area of the Mac Finder. So I followed the directions here to re-compile a netatalk with SSL support and enable Apple share advertising via avahi.
So why use a Linux box rather than hook a big external hard drive up to my Apple Airport Extreme? Basically, two reasons: Performance, and redundancy. My Linux box is a big dual-core 64-bit server-class box with a ton of memory and big server-class SATA drives RAID'ed together. So I get both high performance, and high data availability out of it -- if a drive dies, my data doesn't. That doesn't apply to a something hooked to the Airport Extreme. My Linux box also has big fans that whoosh lots of air through it, so it never overheats. That, alas, is not the case with the Apple Airport Extreme, which has no fan at all and thus overheats if you breathe hard on it.
The downside, of course, is that it's a big-ass box and uses a ton of power (mostly because I have a couple terabytes of hard drive space in the thing). I probably ought to shut it down when I'm not using it, and just power it up when I'm at home. But that would require that I keep a monitor and keyboard connected to it, which isn't usually the case -- usually it just sits under my desk quietly purring to itself handling file and print requests. With the last Linux install I had on it (Ubuntu 6.06), it just sat under there chuckling away for a full *year* without any reboots or any downtime at all. Can't beat that!
-- Badtux the Geeky Penguin
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