WildWestDesigns
Active Member
I was curious so I just googled it and It looks like Freenas doesn't work with my cardSo my options are limited. $50 for a 16 port SAS card, that has 3 Gb/s bandwidth per channel can't be beat though. Most 16 port cards I found online were in the upper hundreds.
FreeNAS was just an example, most distros have a server edition of the distro, although most don't have a GUI out of the box.
If you got it for $50 and it was original around $1k, then it probably has some age on it and that's why it isn't supported as well. An update on Win 10 could strip away all support eventually if that is the case.
Might have to use a distro with XFCE (which does well with using VMs as well, I use XFCE on 2 out of 3 desktops running VMs). Still have floppy drive support on those OSs, even just the ones released this year (I know, my son's computer has a floppy drive still).
I don't like 10 specifically, because it's always in a state of beta due to it's rolling release nature. And couple that with the fact of forced updates, Win 10 could actually strip away support for something that could be critical to your setup, forcing you to change other things that you may not want to or be able to at that time.
Also, as you have noted, one of the lasting reasons why Windows is able to have malware attached to it, not only is it the most commonly used OS, but it's also an OS that places convenience over security. And that's been an issue since the 9x days.
While I'm usually not a fan of change, when it actually comes to OSs, I do tend to get bored and look forward to a change.
Welcome to my world. Yes, 99% of the time, I'm in VB.
I, however, don't like having Windows seeing the outside world, especially if I ever had to use Win 10 (for many reasons), but also because I'm using some versions of Windows that are EOL (one has been EOL for 11 yrs). As such, don't have support for newer hardware. And going forward, the 2 versions of Windows that are still within support (although MS is trying to effectively kill them off) will also have that problem in a few years. If you don't like change, this would actually be a very good reason to go the VB route.
Even if everything is current, this allows you the footprint of one machine, but running different operating systems.
Running a server and running desktop software are 2 different animals, optimizing for both with just one OSs is going to have it's compromises.
I don't consider it fake Linux, maybe because I too use it (or at least a version of it, just not Ubuntu proper, I hated unity with a passion). I have used Fedora for production, but the 13 month EOL cycle is a killer, plus all RH based OSs (of which CentOS is one) making it a pain to add Nvidia drivers to the system and with a 3 monitor setup on my main rig, have to have that. Nouveau driver at best only handles 2 monitors.
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I forgot to mention, you know how I didn't like the EOL cycle of Fedora? Well Win 10 has a similar cycle. Each major release (anniversary, creative etc) has an EOL of 18 months after release.
Now, if you have a computer offline (which most people in a production environment, I would argue should), that's no problem. If you are blocking the updates by having the registry think that your internet connections are metered (which used to be an easy option for Wireless connections, but that was changed in an update, yet another reason why I don't like how MS handles updates), then it's effectively EOL 18 months after what ever major OS update you have.
We all know (and for a logical reason, if not annoying one), that Windows updates aren't stable for a lot of us. They sure weren't for my dad and he doesn't run the same niche software that a lot of us run. He is back to being a basic user. If you have equipment, software etc, that has to run a long time on what you have, those OS is not actually the best one for production anymore. Not for the type of production that we all do. It is in a perpetual state of Beta as far as I'm concerned.
Just my opinion, take it for what it's worth.
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If you aren't up for the change though, it's best to not do it. Any change along these lines that one isn't up for willingly (I wanted to be current, I just didn't want to be current with Win 10 and this setup allows me to be current without being on Win 10; at least with what saw an outside network) will only make the transition harder.
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