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$1,395 does seem too high for this. Although it is the entire package you are purchasing, and not just the hardware. Uptime, good support, easy administration, and the simplicity of a turnkey solution all play into this.

I would look at NetMAX way before I would consider paying this much for a network appliance however. For $399 you can get similar (if not better) linux based software installed on a Toshiba Magnia SG20. These machines are very similar in their specifications (566 Celeron, 2 NICS, 8 port switch, 128MB memory, 20 GB drive, etc...). And from my experience with the NetMAX software, it would be hard to beat it in terms of ease of use and flexibility.

Of course you could do better than either of these solutions if you had the technical know how and time to build your own machine and knew your way around linux. But for many small businesses, this isn't possible, and that is where the strength of solutions such as these lie.

First rule of being a sysadmin: You NEVER put a compiler on a production server. Ever. All software (including updates) is compiled and tested on a dev machine (preferably on a disconnected network), then moved to the production machine once you're satisfied that it won't break anything. This pretty much precludes Gentoo.

True. True. False. It is relatively easy to build and package on your Gentoo dev machine and then merge to your production servers.

Stability is not measured in point releases. Stability is measured by testing. As in you testing, in your configuration.

So why not take it to the next step and apply your patches, enable your config flags, do your compiling, what you said.

Pat doesn't include anything he hasn't tested.

This seems to contradict your point #2, or is Pat considered your testing. All the Gentoo naysayers loath the clueless newbie Gentoo cheerleading, but then mindlessly parrot back those same statements as evidence of its weakness. Gentoo is a very powerful concept in *skilled* hands. You never hear the same b*tching about *BSD ports.

What distibution do you recommend for this

Since the asker of the question does not seem to be skilled in linux, I would recommend going with an *appliance* distribution, i.e. one where all the choices have been made for you and the configuration required is minimal. Netmax is an example of such an appliance distribution based on RedHat, but I am sure you could find others that are better, cheaper (free), or based on other distributions.

WHile you're post doesn't say what kind of distribution you are looking for, it may be easier to sell you boss on a commercial solution that sells specialized distributions. does just that, I have never used their products, there are some reviews out there, linux journal has a review of the web server, Linux Mag loved The Web Server, Thick Book has a review of The Firewall (run through google to avoid PDF), as does Linux World.

Hope this helps you sell a linux solution

WHile you're post doesn't say what kind of distribution you are looking for, it may be easier to sell you boss on a commercial solution that sells specialized distributions. does just that, I have never used their products, there are some reviews out there, linux journal has a review of the web server, Linux Mag loved The Web Server, Thick Book has a review of The Firewall (run through google to avoid PDF), as does Linux World.

Hope this helps you sell a linux solution

Coming from inside Cybernet, I have a bit more info on the product for those that are interested.

First, the product uses very little CPU (less than 5%) and given that it runs off of normal webcams (which typically have a framerate of less than 30fps) has little lag.

Second, the product is purely "optical" - you don't have to attach dots or sensors or anything to your head.

Third, the device isn't meant to replace the keyboard/mouse/joystick (I pounded mightily on the UseYourHead group in the beginning that gamers - specially FPS gamers - will never want to go away from their controller of choice) - but it basically gives you an unobtrusive tertiary device.

Fourth, it moves by tracking translational movement (left, right, up, down) not rotational movement of your head (twisting). It was obvious from the start that a device requiring you to take your eyes off the screen was a bad idea.

Finally, a bit more information about the tech. UseYourHead runs off of Cybernet's Gesture Technology which was developed on various Military R&D contracts and is capable of identifying complex gestures, where a "gesture" can be a series of positions by anything from your hand to your head or even your feet or something held in your hand. Think of slapping a camera on your TV and never having to search for your remote again because you can wave the channels up or down, or use simple signals to specify a channel.

UseYourHead is the first foray into commercial-land for this technology. We wanted something simple, something basic, something useful. Originally intended almost entirely for the first person shooter market, we recognized the basic motions most people make when playing those game is to weave, duck, and try to peer around corners, over ledges, ie. head tracking. Head tracking is *really* simple for the gesture tech, the hard part was getting it to work as fast as possible with the relatively slow web cams.

As a first pass, UseYourHead takes head movements and lets you map them to keystrokes. Its the simplest setup that allows UseYourHead to work well with almost all existing games. However, game developers can directly integrate support for UseYourHead (through a DirectInput wrapper) and have a more continous motion. Imagine your screen as a window into the virtual world, and as you try to peer around a corner, the game smoothly shifts to give you the correct perspective. Even more interesting, game developers can use our tech to access more complicated gestures. For instance, the game Black & White has a system for casting spells in it that requires you to make gestures with your mouse, imagine being able to use your hand directly to make those gestures (Somatic components from D&D :)

Oh, and while UseYourHead is meant for Windows, all the original tech runs on various versions of Unix (Cybernet puts out a Linux product called Netmax as well)

Feel free to email me if you have any questions, or visit Cybernet's web site for more company info)

Ron Hay
rhay@cybernet.com
Game Designer/Developer
Cybernet Systems Corp

• A thing from Linksys that is a combo firewall/router/4-port hub. Costs around $200 retail.
  
• A software solution based on Red Hat. It was going for $30 at CompUSA today, stick it on an old P100 with a few network cards and you're good to go.

Thanks,
Ken

kmunie@cybernet.com

Anonymous coward said:Could you give some precise references so we can add this to the demythification list, please?

To give just a few examples:

• Whistle Communications - Netgraph, IPFW (firewall) improvements, soft updates porting, numerous bugfixes, mpd.
• Plutotech - CAM, including the full SCSI subsystem of FreeBSD.
• NetMax - Volumization and extended RAID support
• Oracle's Network Computing - significant work on the VM system
• Pavilion Internet and Yes Interactive - Improvement of the ISDN system so it can integrate with the standard userland PPP in FreeBSD

This is just a short list off the top of my head. There are a lot of other cases.

Eivind.