Which distro would you recommend to maximize battery life on a laptop and use it as a server? No GUI

Which distro would you recommend to maximize battery life on a laptop and use it as a server? No GUI.

I want to set up a Linux smb share to run on a laptop so I can play ps2 games over smb. I can already play games fine over the network using Windows on a regular desktop PC, but I have this laptop laying around and I want to try to use it as a server so I don't have to turn on the desktop when I just want to play PS2 games. My goal is to maximize battery life on the laptop so I don't have to charge it for longs periods of time. I want the smallest, most feature-deprived distro you guys can think of, since I only want to share files using a network cable. No internet required either so I can do without wifi.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeNAS
freenas.org/
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

>>>Holla Forums is that way buddy

>>>Holla Forums

I'd say >>>Holla Forums but Holla Forums is shit.
Debian works just fine. Also plug in the laptop if you want more battery life. If you want a more permanent server get a SBC not the raspi and set that up with Armbian.

install gentoo

Install gentoo.
Not even memeing, it's the answer to your question.

None. I would install FreeBSD.

Put it there as well but I figured Holla Forums was an ok place to ask since it's more vidya related.


The point is that I don't want to plug in the laptop for a while. I want to extend the battery for as long as humanly possible before needing to plug it in. It's more of a project for fun and learning really. I guess an SBC is a good option too but I'm already going to buy an IDE hard drive for the console, If I can find one for 10$ or less that is.

Maybe. I guess I could do that along a cup of coffee. Yes, I know the maymay hee ho


Ok. Why? Does it make the battery last longer? Is it quicker to configure?

UNIX and UNIX-like is better than GNU/Linux. Also remember FreeBSD is the base for OSX, which is actually a certified UNIX. So it's pretty much as close to UNIX as you can get unless you want to run OSX with all the GUI bloat. It will do everything better than GNU/Linux, and may or may not be quicker to configure (this really depends on which packages/dependencies you actually need).

Does your laptop have an Intel processor? Look for a tool called Powertop if it does. Powertop lets you stop certain processes that drain battery, and should give you some more battery life.
If it's a Thinkpad, there's a tool called TLP that helps battery life. TLP might work on other laptops, so check to see if yours is compatible anyway.
Making the OS smaller has diminishing returns. The difference between a full blown KDE desktop and Fluxbox is more than the difference between Fluxbox and CLI only. There's only so much you can do in software. Turn the brightness down as much as you can, use fewer USB devices and switch to an SSD if you can afford it. Those should help a lot.

As for SBCs, if you ever decide to get one try the Odroid C1+ with a USB hard drive. They're cheap and work just fine.

Also in FreeBSD you can use KLD to run GNU/Linux binaries. There is really no reason to run GNU/Linux unless you're a Communist.

You are completely fucking retarded.

...

I'll check it out. I do have an Intel processor.

Then literally any one, as long as you have proper CPU scaling and power management, and you turn off your file indexing.

Pretty much any one on a minimal install. I'd probably recommend CentOS, as it's pretty much exactly Red Hat (RHEL), and that's what has the most guides available for it (guides are usually pretty universal, but you'll have a better time being able to go step-by-step the same, as some things change distro to distro, even with systemd everywhere). I'm a professional Unix and Linux sysadmin, and I can say that all the major binary distros are largely the same. They use the same kernel, the same userland, and usually now the same init system. The big differences are the default package repositories, the package manager, and some default management things (and if you're using a GUI, the default DE and how displays are managed).

I hope you've used Linux before. Getting by on the command line alone can be really rough if you're not acclimated with your POSIX CLI use. You'll be going by the command line, you'll have to get accustomed to the proper use of ssh (and therefore some decent user management), and you'll have to set up samba, so be prepared to do command-line text editing to whip your config files into shape. If you want the share to work at the Windows Domain level, you'll have some extra work to do getting KRB5 working and maybe setting up LDAP (varying, depending on whether you want the Linux box to work as a Domain Controller).

Alternately, there are some free NAS solutions out there, like FreeNAS, which will make your life much easier at the possible cost of some flexibility and maybe stability:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeNAS
freenas.org/
I've never touched that though, so your mileage may vary.

What the fuck, why was my thread asking about gaming monitors deleted? This thread is about as vidya related as mine was and yet it's still up.

Why is freeBSD safer than a standard loonix server?

because nobody important uses it

Are you brain damaged OP? Battery saving on a fucking server? If it's a server plug it to the wall and maximize performance, fuck battery.

This is the kind of answer I was hoping for. I've used several Linux distros before. I'm used to the CLI and I know how to use SSH properly. The issue for me isn't setting it up, but make it work as small and light as possible. I've used CentOS before but I'm going to read on FreeNAS.

Historically, FreeBSD is safer because it used to be used by almost every major ISP for all their important processes (largely because of kqueue). Other than that, they're very good for working an shared services systems, as BSD Jails are a much better tool than Linux and Unix chroot.
Primarily, it's safer because it's designed very strictly in a very idealist fashion. FreeBSD doesn't want to compromise on any ideals for any kind of special functionality. Linux is a lot more of an open design process and moves a lot faster, and adds a lot more features, even at the kernel level, so it develops faster and introduces more bugs more quickly, which are sometimes security-related.
Essentially, it's safer because its primary goal is safety and security. Linux's primary goal is pure performance and functionality. Security is a goal of Linux, but it's not as heavily emphasized as it is in FreeBSD (or, especially, OpenBSD, which takes security to an autistic extreme).

OP here shouldn't have to worry about security, as he's going to be using this only inside of a private network and it should be generally isolated from the internet.

Then if I were you I'd probably just do FreeNAS as a first attempt, because best case scenario, it just works and does everything you want out of the box (and you could set up extra services on there if you want and if they're compatible with FreeBSD), and worst case scenario, you're back to doing it yourself on some plain Linux distro.
The powertop suggestion is relatively decent (powertop is a good tool for power profiling), but you should more probably just look at your system's service list, do some research, and only have on what is necessary. At that rate, powertop will just tell you which of your services is using the most power, but they'll all be necessary anyway. I'd mirror the other suggestion that you treat it as a real server and leave it plugged in and running 24/7 unless you have a real reason to be running on battery.