Daehder

Having lightly used AutoCAD 2014 on a 2013 15" MacBook Pro Retina, it has worked fine. I can't speak to the other pieces of software

Developing an OS is a massive task. Given all the things you need to get working correctly before you can do something as "simple" as interface with a shell (I'll get to that in a paragraph or two later). Companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Canonical (the guys responsible for maintaining Ubuntu) dedicate massive teams and months or years to creating their operating systems, and they've already got a good base to start. Even in my operating systems class in College, we didn't attempt to make an operating system, we only simulated portions of it to get a feel for design decisions. (If you are looking for a book to get started, we used Operating Systems Concepts, by Abraham Silberschatz). A shell is the collection of programs that let a user interact with the kernel. If an OS was a car, the door, steering wheel, and pedals (gas and brake) would be the shell; they let the user access other functions in the "shell" and interact with the engine, wheels, and brakes, which in this case, represents the kernel. Honestly, the best place to start would be to familiarize yourself with a flavor of Linux, like Ubuntu, Mint, or Debian (I'd recommend running them as a virtual machine, like VirtualBox). Once you feel comfortable running those, you can try Arch Linux. You have to compile Arch Linux yourself, but you have massive amounts of control over how things work, and you can learn a lot about Linux and operating systems that way.

Man, LG delivers yet another awesome bleeding edge display. My roommates and I have been looking for a tv, but this would blow everything else out of the water

I meant more as a host case for a newer NAS, after ripping out the older, more power hungry components.

Is there any value for the case itself? I was looking, and cheap cases seem to be in the $40 - 60 range, and good ones like the Node 304 seem to run ~$100

So my university has a public surplus site where they auction off old, but potentially usable items. They're currently auctioning off an old Apple Xserve and 2 Dell PowerEdge 2600 Servers for $5 - $10 bucks each. I've been looking to build a NAS, and I was wondering if either of these would work, or at least be able to house more modern hardware if the current hardware turns out to be kaput. More specifically, the Xserves has these details: Apple Xserve Rackmount Information Server. Turns on; Operating condition unknown. Processor Type: 4GB Intel Xeon 5160 3 Harddisk capacity; currently all are 80GB Barracuda 7200.9 MPN: MA409Z/A and the Dells have these details: Lot of 2 Dell PowerEdge 2600 Servers.Model No.: SCLBoth power on. Working condition is unknown.May be missing internal parts/ components.Comes as is. Does not include and cables/cords. Are either of these worth picking up and throwing some WD reds in?

I've been pretty good about backing up my computer, but so far all my backups have been local. I'd like to have some sort of offsite back up too, to prevent against things like theft and natural disaster. I was thinking I could use my family to create a backup network, while extending the same protection to them. The plan is to pick up three two-bay NASes and pop a 2 TB and 4 TB drive in each. I could set the 2TB drives up as time machine backup drives (we all have macs). Ideally, this would also allow the laptops to backup over the network, similar to Apple's Time Capsule. Then, run CrashPlan or a similar service on the NAS to backup the two remote NASes onto the 4TB drive, while sending the local 2TB drive's contents to the 4TB drives of the two remote NASes. As for the hard ware, I'd probably pick up the QNAP TS-251 2-Bay, and use WD Reds Would this work? Are there any better ways to do this? Also, is there some what to limit the amount of data that Crashplan sends, so that the NAS at my parent's house doesn't smash through Comcast's monthly- 300 GB data cap and disable their internet? Thanks for any feedback