What better way to spend a long weekend that experimenting with a new Linux-based file-sharing and networking platform? 😉 Amahi Linux Home Server aka the Home Digital Assistant is a set of pre-configured tools and services that are added on to the Fedora Core base. I just learned about it and thought I’d give it a try.
It’s currently in beta but is already looking like an interesting and “more easy” way of getting a home network up and running. Pretty much straight out of the box, you can map to a central set of Samba shares and access a web-based interface to various admin functions. Using ssh or samba, you can copy your docs, music and pictures over to it and use various built-in apps to access them. You can serve up your mp3 folder into a stream using the FireFly Media Server service, view your photos in a nice viewer and set up and monitor backup processes. I am especially interested in trying out the pre-configured VPN service!
For me, its primary purpose will be so I can have access to my docs and data while on the go, but my other interest is using this kind of system as a base for some geospatial tools. Similar to the FGS suite, or the OSGeo for Windows installed, I’d love to have my geospatial apps pre-configured and ready to use for interesting things like cataloguing data, browsing files and sharing maps.
There is still some progress to be made, especially to get it ready for Fedora 9, but take a tour – I’ll be interested to know what you think.
