Ubuntu Coming to Amahi Home Server?
The Amahi Home Server, an open source system that handles a range of in-home applications, could soon run on the Ubuntu 9.04 desktop environment. Here’s the scoop and some thoughts about Ubuntu’s potential presence in the home server and media server markets.
According to the Amahi web site, the open source system is a “Home Digital Assistant” (HDA).
“We came up with the term HDA to describe what the Amahi Linux Home Server aims for. Something as simple to use as a PDA, for the home and home networking.”
The HDA can manage such tasks as:
- Network backups
- Shared network storage
- Secure VPN connectivity
- Shared applications like calendaring and a private wiki
Now for the Ubuntu twist. According to the Amahi wiki:
“We just started porting Amahi to Ubuntu. The support is highly experimental. There are a few important things to be fixed before you can run it with minimal tweaking. Please don’t try it on a production server yet. We are using Ubuntu 9.04 (jaunty) Desktop 32 bit for development. We strongly recommend you to use the same for experiments. You can download this version from here.”
More Than A Home Hobby?
This isn’t the first effort to position Ubuntu in the home server market. A few years ago, there seemed to be strong interest in an Ubuntu Home Server project. And plenty of people have blogged about how to build a home media server on top of Ubuntu.
I’m curious to see if Amahi’s efforts rekindle interest in an Ubuntu-based home server. Although not a household name, Amahi has captured the attention of major IT companies. Intel, for instance, in June welcome Amahi to demonstrate the Home Digital Assistant at Computex in Taiwan.
I’ve reached out to Amahi to see where their Ubuntu interests may lead.
Ultimately, I suspect Ubuntu’s best chance for success in the home server market would likely involve a specialized appliance — something that runs Ubuntu without consumers necessarily knowing it.
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So what’s the story here? Amahi has had multiple releases already based on Fedora. Are you suggesting this page is out of date? http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Ubuntu
“There are frequent requests to make an Ubuntu version available – but to date there are not enough “truly experienced” Ubuntu developers ready to commit to make this happen. As developers get involved they realize that the underlying distribution does not impact the end user experience.
Since Amahi is designed to run headless there is little tangible benefit to port to Ubuntu as a very high priority – the development time is better spent improving Amahi while we gather real Ubuntu contributions.”
It appears that a porting effort is just getting started. In fact the rotating banner on the home page says they are looking for a lead Ubuntu developer. That doesn’t imply to me that this is going to be finished..soon.
@Jef The story here is that Amahi has been asked time and again to support Ubuntu. Amahi has officially kicked off a project to support Ubuntu.
Of course, in reading the forums there have been many “truly experienced” developers who have offered to help without reply from Amahi. It appears that because Ubuntu makes it very simple to create a server with these apps at install time, there is not as much interest by Amahi to “reinvent the wheel”.
Amahi sees value in associating their successful project to another successful project, however because Fedora needs this more so than Ubuntu, I fully understand Fedora users/developers trying to use this to catch up to Ubuntu.
Why not just install linux and install all the server apps yourself. Sure it looks like they have some fluff in there, but you could do the same thing with software already available. Or why not just download it and install it in Ubuntu.
I don’t really care if they support ubuntu anyway, I’d rather be running fedora.
Jef, Mark: I realize Amahi already runs on Fedora. But WorksWithU tracks Ubuntu, so it’s natural for us to blog about the Amahi-Ubuntu connection.
I am currently trying to install Amahi with the Fedora 10 DVD and I keep getting errors (frustrating!). In the past, when trying to find the “perfect” Linux distro, I tried Fedora, but was always frustrated with how slow it was on low-memory, older machines. An Amahi that runs on Ubuntu 9.04 would be great since this distro comes close to perfect in my experience. If I get one more error with Fedora I’ll wait until the Ubuntu version.
@Mark
I’m just the opposite from you. I could give a crap about Fedora. I run Ubuntu on my notebook and Mint on my desktop with another system soon to be migrated from XP to Ubuntu. From my stand point, I would prefer to stick with a Debian based system for the simple reason of consistency across all systems. I do maintain my own local repos for Ubuntu. From the short description of Amahi from above; It would seem that it does basically everything I need for home use. If this simplifies the setup process of getting a system up and running, then I welcome it. And would love to give it a shot on my server to replace 2008 after I graduate. Of course that wont stop me from starting testing in a VM now! The more support we have or doing things the easy way, the better. I for one appreciate their consideration and effort.
Bring it on! Well said Joe.
And, just purchased Dell Latitude 2100 netbook with Ubuntu 9.04 pre-installed, perfect, a great performing machine, highly recommended. With Ubuntu on the desktop for three years, and now this netbook, the best hassle-free computing experience I have had. No exaggeration.
Is there a good way to stuff Amahi into a DNS-323?