Sean B&H has some smaller LCD monitors, but I don't know what your price range is.

Just installed Ubuntu server 7.10 on the machine I want to be my home server. Having the box sitting up here on my desk reminds me of how damned noisy the thing is, so I'm going to look into getting a much quieter fan for it as soon as possible. But it made me think--with the replacement desktop that I bought, which is a bit bigger and bulkier than I strictly wanted (I was just in a rush), is running whisper quiet. I mean, the hard drive is the only noise it makes.

Freaking creepy.

Now I want to get some implementation of VNC working. I have not, I think, in my entire Linux admin span (embarassingly long considering the deficit I'm about to confess to) never gotten VNC up and running properly. I always had awful problems with the X server stuff. Can someone point me to the most condescending baby steps ever on that topic?

I have no help on the VNC, but Ubuntu server 8.04 was released yesterday if you want the latest and greatest.

I ended up buying a new laptop. i got a Toshiba Satellite with Vista. didn't someone here mention that you could turn it off asking you for permission every time you want to do something. where do i do that?

You need to turn off User Account Control.

Try the instructions here: [link]

I have no help on the VNC, but Ubuntu server 8.04 was released yesterday if you want the latest and greatest.

No help on the VNC either -- but wanted to note that 8.04 is seeming less finished to me than 7.10 did. Nothing major, but little annoyances like having to tweak modules and fstab by hand to run things that were automagic on the same hardware on the last version.

(disclaimers: running Xubuntu Desktop, not the server, but the way *ubuntu is structured, I suspect the issues will be the same; also, I installed the last RC and not the final version, so it could be they've stomped a few more bugs since then.)

awesome! thanks, DX! that's really my only problem with Vista so far.

I've run VNC on quite a few platforms over the years and never had a big issue. I don't think I've set it up on Ubuntu though. One I get by Ubuntu machine moved I'll see if I can figure out some options on it.

Most of the last times I've tried I've ended up with a grey screen with a fat X in the middle of it. Something's just not right with the X-server.

I have Ubuntu up, and am playing with Samba. I want to set up computer shares as well as user shares, but I'm having some confusion.

To set up a samba machine, do I need a samba user of the same name? To set up a samba user, do I need a Linux user of the same name? Can I forgo passwords on many of these?

My experimentation seems to indicate that by default I can't set up a samba user without there being a Linux user account already existing. So say I set up a Linux account for Zoe, my computer name. Then I set up a samba account for Zoe without a password (-an) and all is good. But when I try -am to create a machine account, I get no joy. Also, if I try -am without -an beforehand I get "Failed to modify password entry for user zoe$". And -anm doesn't work either, giving the same error message.

And now a directory layout question--how do you guys organise your Linux file structure? I mean, if you have files that you want to share across machines (like .avis, or something), do you stay under the /home directory? I'm probably going to drop a /shared under the root and work from there, but I'm curious.

I'm running the latest version of Ubuntu (8.04) on my laptop. I had to fuck around for half an hour to get the internal wireless card working, which was very off putting. Also, the DVD decoding was corrupt by default - it plays DVDs, but most of the pictures are messed up. I had to fiddle with the DVD decoding by hand.

Although in fairness I resolved both issues with Google searches.