Originally posted by: Seeruk
I believe this is only an issue for those....
WITH SOMETHING TO WORRY ABOUT
I'm intrigued to hear the 10 things though Nothinman
Now if you put a limit on it.. Like 10 things you can do in Linux that would cost more then 1000-5000 dollars in Windows. That's fairly simple. Thing is is that with open source software most of it works better in Linux, but since it's open source they port it to windows also (as well as many other operating systems).
But.. Host a OpenAFS server or Lustre server. Both are distributed file systems. OpenAFS has strong kerberos-based authentication system with lightweight encryption and advanced cache'ing and file locking capabilities. It's usefull for WAN-linked campus setup. Local cache is stored on harddrive and makes fast file access, even while temporarially disconnected, while it has mechanisms to check back on the server for any file changes so that it's usefull in a multiuser environment. It's a very old file system, but much more advanced then either CIFS or NFS. Open sourced by IBM a while ago and it has gained quite a bit in stability since then. Not realy suitable for fast local access of large files.
Lustre is a high performance clustering file system commonly used in large linux clusters. Capable of 10's of gigabytes per second file transfers. It's the type of thing that people use to break speed records. Aggregates the file I/O capabilities of multiple computers and/or SANs in a clustered environment.
There are other unique file systems (been studying linux network file systems a lot lately)
drbd - a nice failover file system. 2 nodes mirror a file system in a sort of raid-style setup. It's able to automaticly sense if one node goes down so that the other mounts it. Often used in conjunction with the Linux HA project (heart beat) so that you can take services and load balance services and/or configure them for high aviability. If a system goes down, another picks it up automaticly sort of thing. This is definate 'realm of mortals' type stuff, commonly used in situations that need to be highly aviable on a budget. (important ftp server for instance on two old desktop-turned-linux-server setup.)
OCFSv2 - Oracle clustering file system version 2. Developed for Oracle RAC setups, but is designed for general purpose items.
GFS - Redhat clustering file system. Made up of many different systems, and with some add-ons. Designed mostly for SANs. There is stuff like clvm, which is a logical volume manager for clusters.. Multiple machines can access the same file systems simulatiniously and everything is kept track of. That sort of thing. Usefull for 'extending' expensive SANs fabric across cheaper gigabit ethernet networks were servers running databases/network-based services or further distribute file access using normal network file systems such as CIFS via SAMBA. Also usefull for distributing file system absent of SANs via gnbd
PVFS2 - Parrallel virtual file system 2. A block-level distributed file system (block level distribution is better for things like databases then normal file-level items like CIFS or NFS). Used to combine multiple computer's I/O in a RAID-Like fasion.
FUSE - "Filesystem in UserSpacE" This is much more interesting for desktop-style items then the above stuff. This setups a generic framework that allows users to setup and manage file systems without having to have root access or kernel-level drivers. I personally use this with:
Sshfs - Filesystem over ssh. It's nice way to access your files on your file server without having to open up extra ports to your file server. Everything is encrypted and it uses just normal ssh stuff. So it works with password authentication, public/private keypair, Even though it uses encryption it is actually very very fast. It's slightly faster then NFS on a 100Mbit/s network and almost twice as fast as CIFS/SMB. (file transfers that would take 2 minutes or less using NFS or SSHFS would take 4 minutes over Samba, and samba is typically a bit faster then Windows, especially for Linux to Linux since it's able to skip some windows compatability stuff)
Encfs - Encrypted file system. You setup a empty directory (personally it's on my file server) and mount it using encfs. You choose what sort of encryption you want (AES or Blowfish with a veriaty of key sizes) or choose 'normal' or 'paranoid' defaults. Protected by a password... Copy anything you want into there, then umount it and it's safely encrypted. You can copy it around, move that directory from computer to computer and as long as you have that password you can decrypt it easily.
Then there are other systems. People write file systems in C, C++ or even Python or Perl. There are oddballs like Gmail FS (mount files based on google's gmail). Also stuff that may be usefull for web developers or bloggers. Stuff like Fusedev were you can mount a file system using the Webdev API locally. HTTP-Fuse, use http-based file system. BlogFS.. this allows you to mount blog entries and such from Wordpress-based blogs (and maybe a couple other types of blogging software). Things like that. Mount smb shares. Mount ntfs, that sort of thing.
Exciting, I know.
Otherwise you have niceties in Linux in ragards to Free software. It's it's principal advantage. (all mentioned above is Free software items also).
I can use apt-get to install a veriaty of programs. 3d game/motion picture development. Electrical engineering cad stuff. Childrens games. Video editors. Vector based drawing items. Math stuff. Scientific programming libraries. A veriaty of office suites. Audio production items. DJ stuff. Photo editing/painting stuff. Prorgramming tools. veriaty of IDEs. Server stuff (apache, samba, etc etc. No per seat licenses. No limits on performance, no limits on connections, no limits on users, no limits on anything, besides technical). Astronomy items. etc etc etc etc.
All of it is kept more or less up to date. Everything is updated in one go with 'wajig update && wajig upgrade' or whatever tool you like to use. Not just core items, like with MS, but everything you install via the package managers.
I can use Asterix-at-home to build a enterpise-level VoIP solution that has been scaled down for home use. It's actually used by some phone companies. Completely free software, lots of related not-very-free-at-all (but not that expensive either) hardware and such. Halafax does the same thing, more or less, with faxes. Email faxes to people, receive emails as PDFs, that sort of thing. For corporate, SOHO, of ultra-geek home.
Boot a entire operating system off of a USB drive.
Boot a entire operating system off of a cdrom.
Boot a entire operating system off of a newtork from a completely diskless system. (floppies are cheating)
etc etc.
Mount /usr/local or something else on a network share to distribute applications to a veriaty of end users. I use that for Doom3 and other games, for instance. Run them directly from my server so that I don't have to install them on 2 machines. About as fast as local access when run over NFS on gigabit switched network.
Mirror my home directory using Unison. All of my user's files, all my application preferences, email, browser history, bookmarks, game scores, all my files, etc etc is semi-automaticly kept in sync between my laptop and desktop. Even desktop themes and backgrounds.
I can give copies of 'linux' distros to my mom. To my friends, my brothers and sister. I can use them at work, at home, or whatever. Sell them on Ebay. Give them away. Post links to bittorrent downloads on web forums. No activation things, no cd keys. Install them on people's computers. I don't have to worry about being sued, or being called a pirate or whatever. There is no 'software assurance' hoop I have to jump through. Don't have to deal with ending up with a blacklisted key or whatnot. I can change out my motherboard fairly easily, don't even have to prepare ahead of time or re-activate anything. etc etc.
I can run it on a PowerPC computer, or a POWER computer. Probably will be able to do it on a PS3. Also can run it on a Xbox. It's portable. I have it running on a dual-proccessor ARM handheld computer. If I was a multinational corporation and wanted to use it on potentionally millions of 'feature' phones, I could do so and obtain complete access to source code and applications without having to pay license fees. Crazy stuff like that.
Probably got ten, I guess.
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