Linux Vs. my Win 2008 RC2 server

[Litzner]

I am currently running a Windows 2008 RC2 server that is being used to -

-Stream videos over LAN to PS3, using Windows Media Player
-My download box for doing large downloads that will take some time.
-Encoding large HD video
-Hosting a Mumble server (murmur)
-Storage

Server Hardware

Athlon Phenom II X3 BE
4GBs of DDR2 1066
6TB RAID 1+0
500GB OS Drive


It seems to have a memory leak. Now that I have set it to reboot every morning, rather then 3 mornings a week, it doesn't seem to be much of a problem anymore. Now it sits at about 1gb of memory used at idle, where previously it would be at 2-3gb of memory used at idle. But because I was having issues I thought about maybe turning it into a linux box. Would linux use less resources?

Here are my requirements.

-Be able to easily remote in (with a full GUI), from my Windows 7 machines, from both home, and work, to manage NZB, and Torrent downloads. (needs to run some variation of quickpar)
-Stream HD videos easily to a PS3
-Needs to have software available to easily encode MKV to MP2 (or be able to directly stream MKVs and MP2 to my PS3)
-Host my mumble server
-Host a virtual drive for my Windows PCs
-Be able to read my 6TB NTFS data storage RAID 1+0
-I would like it to support multiple concurrent users logged in at once, with there own desktop.

What would you recommend for Linux software that will help me accomplish this?

Any recommendations where to start? I was thinking maybe running a distro within Windows just to see how it suits me. Any recommendation on what distro I should use?

[Mudgen]

You can certainly do most if not all of that with Linux. I don't have a PS3, so not familiar with requirements of streaming to one. You can re-encode darn near anything to darn near anything (ffmpeg, mencoder), present shares to Windows (samba), remote in (Xming on the PC for XWindows over ssh), NTFS (ntfs-3g). mumble is in the Fedora Update repo, don't see it in CentOS or RPMFusion, so Fedora may be best bet.

In my experience, Linux will run circles around Windows Server on the same hardware presenting equivalent services. YMMV. If your experience is mostly with Windows, there's a bit of a learning curve, but well worth it IMNSHO.

[elija]

There is a static Linux server for Mumble available from the homepage Mumble so you could take advantage of CentOS and use the static binary.

[jschutten]

Hello,

take a loke at the website off smeserver.

Jan

[Irithori]

The ntfs might be a problem,
and the raid is a potential blocker.

Linux can read/write ntfs, but it comes with a performance penalty.
If you put high IO pressure on a system with e.g. only an atom cpu, then one core is saturated with ntfs handling.
This is because ntfs is not a posix compliant filesystem.
That means a lot of conversion and special cases that need to be dealt with.

It also means, that the resulting user/permissions schema is quite crude. You can set a linux user and permission for the ntfs mount point to make it look like a regular posix fs to the other linux tools.
That´s about it.

One of the other linux tools you would need to use is samba.
Samba usually provides CIFShares.
But in your case, samba would probably serve the contents of that ntfs mount.
So it tries to map incoming requests to a posix fs, that in reality is a ntfs.

In short: The architecture seems wrong.


Raid:
If it is a windows software raid, then you cant use it in linux.
At least I am not aware of a way to assemble and use it with the regular md tools.

If it is a fakeraid (aka cheap controllers integrated in the motherboard, usually from intel or nvidia):
Yes, then it is possible.
They present one device to the OS, be it linux or windows. So you would be able to mount the ntfs partition.

Hardwareraid:
You probably know if you have one of those, because they cost money
Mounting the ntfs is possible here.



The rest of the requirements can be done.
In general: There is less clicking and much more reading and typing involved.
After that work you will have a system, that offers quite a lot of versatility.