The Best Linux Distribution 2013: Netbooks and Old Hardware

Welcome to 2013!
It's a new year and this means that your netbooks and old towers are another year older. The eternal struggle to maintain you hardware's relevance has crept on into another long year of recession. Someday you will have bags of money to buy something new, but for now you need to find a way to get that slow old laptop to feel a bit more springy.

Not all Linux distributions are created equal. There are so many options to choose from and so many acronyms that it can be hard to get a straight answer on what the hell you should download!

The first big thing you need to ask yourself:
"Does the computer I want to use have modern 3d graphics hardware?" 
(aka a nice graphics/video card)

If you do not have a graphics card in your computer, as is the case with many low end and older netbooks, then you need to stay away from distributions which use Gnome 3 or Unity. Unity 2d was an option in previous releases of Ubunut, but has been dropped from current releases. You have heard that there are other lightweight distributions, but don't know much about them or you haven't found any that are actually lightweight enough.

Well this year looks a lot like last year's lineup with one exception! A new minimal debian based distribution has stolen my heart and is being recommended as the first choice for linux fans who do not want to build and compile their own Arch distribution.

Read on to see the new year's recommendations!

The most detailed guide to building a simple NAS with nas4free!

My 14TB (and growing) NAS

Good morning campers!

I have good news, the super detailed guide to building a NAS using nas4free 9.1 is now complete! The article is written in two parts. Part one helps you to decide just what type of NAS you really ought to be building while part two is the detailed account of installing and configuring nas4free. This portion also covers the somewhat confusing task of creating users, installing disks, building mount points, building share points, and generally making things work.

There are a few caveats that I should mention now.
These are really provisos to avoid any would be trolling:

• This guide is the result of trial and error with this software. 
• I have spent two years playing freeNAS 7.2 and now nas4free 9.1
• In that time I have never found a post on how this stuff is supposed to be setup.
• I do not claim to have any sort of professional (or amateur) knowledge concerning freeBSD.
• This guide is not here to help you create a quadruple redundant dual gigabit software raid ZFS monster with complicated user and group file permissions that would baffle Steven Hawking.
• When starting my build I had no desire to build a RAID box.
• There is exactly one user using this NAS, me. I do not now, nor will I ever need fancy security.
• Hackers are not out to get me or my files.
• The purpose of this machine is to store and serve out media.
• I have no idea what you are using your NAS for, but mine was built to hold and serve TV & Movies to my HTPC's.
• It works well for this.

With those warnings out of the way please browse around and comment as you have questions!

DIY NAS: with freeNAS [Step 1]
DIY NAS: with nas4free [step 2]

What to do after jailbreaking your atv2

To install new applications on your jailbroken atv2 you will need to use the command line. If you immediately ran away from your computer screaming, please settle down... that sort of behavior is undignified!

To communicate with the atv2 you will need to SSH into the device. This is far easier than it seems. Whenever you read that you need to ssh into a device it just means that we need to use the ssh protocol to talk to the device. This allows us to remotely access the command line which is native to the apple tv.

We will use a few simple commands to automatically install the programs you so keenly desire.

Jailbreak the Apple TV 2 with seas0npass

Many of you are probably familiar with the concept of jailbreaking a smartphone. Using third party software to open up the phone's root file system and allowing the user to install custom themes and applications.

Apple TV 2nd Generation

Many people, it seems, are unaware that they can also jailbreak the Apple TV to get some great new features!

There is no reason not to try it out. Even if the jailbreak is a failure you can always restore the device in iTunes and have a factory fresh feel in no time. There is no risk!