How I, pjcrux, found Amahi

[pjcrux]

It was January 2009, there was no longer denying it, I had a problem.

The world was at the pinnacle of the economic downturn and I, like 99% of the rest of our global community was feeling the pinch in my income. Thankfully I was still employed, yet much of the extra money that I had for the things I could invest in was gone and my problem was still apparent and had become a trifecta. I needed something to backup my data, learn a little bit of systems administration, and redo my home network without breaking the bank. My faithful router of 4 years was on it's last leg. It had to be restarted at least once a week. I had looked at several commercial NAS devices (to include the dreaded M$ cludge of a home server). Wasn't impressed. I didn't want to have to install software on all of my windows clients, was thinking of someday having a Mac, and wanted to tool around with Linux. Most of which is possible with M$ but not out of the box. My dilemma continued at this point and my frustration soared to new heights. I normally wear my emotions on my sleeve and it was readily apparent that I no longer had control of my network nor had the ability to change my network how I saw fit.

Then one day I fired up Firefox and typed in "Linux Home Server" and low and behold my journey with Amahi began. I started with PC parts I had lying around and some that friends were kind enough to give me. My lack of knowledge of systems administration with Linux was a culture shock. I was a Unix systems Architect and thought I knew *nix systems. After a few (ok fine... it was more than a few) noob mistakes I was up and running. But Amahi made it easy. I love the simplicity and accessibility of Amahi. I love how from any network attached client I can stream a movie via samba and watch from said client. I love that I can stream via DLNA to my WD Live TV box over the network and love how my MythTV can be controlled over the network so that I don't miss any of my shows (my wife Lisa loves this as well).

While this post may be about my initial experience with Amahi (as well as my continuing journey) we want to know how you, our community, came to Amahi. What was your stick that drove you to Amahi or what was the carrot that led to your embrace of Amahi?

Post your experiences here.