i wanna boot the profile of my main computers operating system up on my old computer so logging onto my old computer is like logging onto my main computer. so then i an have desktop the same on my old computer as my main computer and use everyhitng on my old computer off my main computer. is this somthign to do with roaming profiles?
Yeah, get a Unix system and export your /home/$USER/ with NFS. But you can do partial floating profiles with Windows if you had a domain controller. The cheapest way to do that without paying a thousand bucks for some Windows server OS is to build yourself a Samba PDC... but that might be a little complicated just to get floating profiles. Then again, if you know what you're doing it doesn't take long, and I also don't know how important this feature might be to you.
...Also, have you considered Mandriva Move? It runs from CD in a live-distro fashion so there's no need to install, and your files are kept on a USB thumb drive. You just plug in your thumb drive, boot to CD, and there you have it. Roaming profile in its purest form!
errm how would i do it with windows server, becouse i have an evaluation copy of windows server 2003 enterprise edition. al;so, whats a unix system?
A brief history of UNIX UNIX is a modular, flexible multiuser networking operating system which was fundamentally designed by a body of scientists rather than any single company. It has been implemented commercially since the 70's. Examples of commercial UNIX implementations include AT&T Unix (defunct), AIX, HP-UX, and Sun Microsystems' Solaris. Examples of free UNIX implementations include Linux and the BSDs (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD). UNIX has always had a place in situations where computers are critical such as universities, high-level research firms, and NASA. Google.com runs completely on the free & open-source UNIX implementation, Linux. In fact, since MacOS X is now based on FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows is the only mainstream operating system I can think of which is not based on the UNIX framework. Even Microsoft is coming around to the idea (though they wouldn't admit it), and they are implementing more and more UNIX features into their OSes with each release (although in a very proprietary, non-standard manner). As computer scientist Henry Spencer once said, "Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." There, that's my little synopsis on UNIX. If you want a lot more detail, I'm willing to bet Wikipedia has a pretty exhausting amount of information on the subject.
hmm, alot of information there, i know what unix is now so what about this windows server thing, i have 2 computers, i want to do what i said in my first post, but i cant use windows server to do that if i want to be on windows xp on both computers at the same time can i? would i need about 3 computers to do this properly, i might be able to get one for free from college as there scrapping loads, but i would prefer to just have 2 and get it to work.
Not with Windows, no. You'd need 3 computers, and use one as a domain server. Even then it'd be 'fake' floating profiles, where you only get a small subset of data shared between systems -- My Documents, Bookmarks, maybe Desktop. Basically everything in your C:\Documents and Settings\$USER\ directory. You would not have the same software, individual system settings, etc. As far as I know, true floating profiles are only available through UNIX-like systems such as Linux and when using thin clients (which are usually some form of UNIX anyway). Along the line of thin clients, I guess you could use the more powerful of the two systems as the "master" system and run VNC on it. Then you could log into it remotely from the other machine and manipulate your master system's desktop. It would be slow, ugly, and limited (you wouldn't be able to do anything even remotely multimedia-like such as flash, videos, games, music, etc.) but would allow you to have basically only 1 system to work with and you could access it from any system/OS. I guess it all really just depends on what you want that functionality for in the first place.
i might be able to get a 3rd computer out of all my parts after a cpu/mobo upgrade on my main computer. would i need monitors for all 3 computers or could 1 of the computers not have a monitor?
With Windows, yeah, you'd either need monitors for all three or else a KVM switch. Sorry, Windows is teh sux0rz for networking and remote administration. Believe me, I was a Windows admin for a long time. Don't miss those days even a little.
umm, would the computer been sued for the domain server need to be really power full, as i was thinking of using a computer iwth a -1ghz processor in it and about 256mb of ram.
It would need at least 512mb RAM. Of course, you could do the same thing in 128mb with Linux, but I digress.
hmm looks like i will go with linux, but i if all goes to plan, shoud be 1gb ram, 512mb ram, and domain server computer 384mb sd ram, 1.2ghz processor. yesh, i think i will use unix, seems alot better.
Linux performs 2.5x faster for Windows filesharing than an actual Windows server on the same hardware, so it'd be faster anyway (not to mention more stable). I have scripts to easily create a Windows domain on a Linux server, if you should need them. But no matter what OS the Windows domain is hosted on, the limitations of Windows will still prevent you from having a real floating profile. With a Linux server hosting a Windows domain, you'd basically just have a better version of the same thing. Only if your client systems ran some form of UNIX as well could you take full advantage of its networking flexibility. Just to make sure you understand.
Yes, provided you know a little bit about Linux (or some other *nix system). Otherwise you'd be learning about a new OS and at the same time learning how to implement a Samba server. Definately doable and worth the effort to learn such things. But if you just want to plug it in and go you will be dissapointed.
