(Virus-) Free gaming under Wine in Linux

In Windows world, you can play any game for free, but it usually comes with some payload from virus writers. Having realized that, I made it a rule to only play games that I purchased legally. Then, yesterday, I found some of those old Windows games archives. Don’t know why I have not deleted those virus-ridden wares long time ago.

I have already seen that many games work in Linux under Wine, and then I thought, why not try these ones, because they can not infect my Ubuntu anyway. And, voila! Both franchises of Bejeweled (2 and Twist) work in HD/3D accelerated, and they are “free”. True, they try to propagate on the game exit, and (moment of glory) simply error out in wine. Seems, that I will never ever have to pay for Windows games that do not use intensive 3D graphics or online authorization.

In search of the holy grail of home servers

ATM my home server runs Windows 7 Ultimate (trial mode till end of December) and I am researching free alternatives like freenas, openfiler, ubuntuserver, freebsd. Need this machine to support administration via web gui and provide following services for me

1. file sharing via SMB/Samba
2. torrenting with webgui
3. http web server
4. webdav
5. vpn
6. upnp/dlna media serving to multiple upnp/dlna players simultaneously
7. continuous data backup (windows live sync style, propagating changes between machines immediately, rather than overnight)
8. advanced disk/RAID management, described below.
9. seems that vitrtualisation is high on my list too.

Found this thread discussing freenas and drobo functionality, and thought that this post decsribes my needs too.

I'm also looking for the holy grail of RAID solutions and really hope someone can come up with or find something. I want the following features: REQUIRED: - Redundancy, allowing for at least 1 drive failure - Mix and match drive sizes WITHOUT being limited by the smallest drive (and thus wasting space) - Ability to add drives to increase capacity - Ability to replace drives and increase capacity - NAS functionality, accessible via a Windows share - Ability to create multiple partitions, with respective shares (or one large partition with multiple shares mapped to folders on the NAS? Who really cares about the "internal" file structure..) PREFERRED: - Performance that isn't terrible - In my case, fast enough to steam 1080P over ethernet - Minimal data capacity loss due to parity (< 50% - Else I'd just mirror.) - "NTFS" Volumes larger than 2TB (Not sure if this is possible via a share.. perhaps "Emulate" NTFS and actually store on a file system with larger volume capacities to achieve this? I could care less if Windows reports my remaining space correctly, as long as the NAS would.) - Software-based, so I can also use the box for other purposes.

I already run freenas in virtualbox on my server with bridged network interface on my server, and it appears as separate machine with web gui on my network. I already see some of the drawbacks of freenas, like no webdav, vpn, virtualisation (the kind that allows me to test freenas in VM like I do it now).

Downloading freebsd, openfiler and ubuntu server to install as VMs too and give ‘em a try this month.

SSL, certificates, VPN and WebDAV under Windows 7

Under Windows 7 (and Vista too, I think) WebDAV and VPN fail if you use a self-signed (and therefore, untrusted) server certificate. Too bad that error messages are cryptic, and talk about failure to establish connection, or something like it, but never complains about SSL cert. Hmm. If you try to access such server with IE then (unlike Firefox) there is no way to turn off warnings. Also, if you try to play media from such website, IE and Firefox  will launch associated media player (WMP in my case), which will also fail to connect to net resource to play it. Long story, short, kids – use trusted certificate if you need to use SSL in Windows.

And the good news is that now there is a provider of free SSL certificates (really free, not a 30-day trial as some advertise), who is also included into default Windows Certificate storage as a Certified Root Authority. This is Free SSL service from Startcom. With their cert for my server, WebDAV and VPN began to work.

 

The only fly in the ointment – Windows 7 implementation of WebDAV is buggy and slow and compared to Ubuntu.