Windows Home Server is a great way to manage your home’s computer systems from one place. You can access it from an Ubuntu computer on your network, and it’s easy to set up.
Note: In this example we’re using Windows Home Server with PowerPack 3, and Ubuntu 10.04 running on a home network.
Access WHS from Ubuntu
To access files on your home server from Ubuntu, click on Places then select Network.
You should now see your home server listed in the Network folder as well as other Windows machines…double-click the server to access it.
If you don’t see your server listed, you might need to go into Windows Network \ Workgroup and find it there.
You’ll be prompted to enter in the correct credentials for WHS just as you would when accessing it from a Windows machine. It’s your choice if you want to have the password remembered or not…make your selection and click Connect.
Now you will see the available folders on your home server. In this example we signed in with Administrator credentials, so we have access to everything.
Double-click on the folder share you want to access content from…here we see MS Office documents on the server.
Or, here we take a look at a music folder with various MP3 files which you can make Ubuntu play.
You can access the files directly from the server, provided there is a Linux app that can handle the file type. In this example we opened a Word document in OpenOffice.
Here we’re playing an MKV movie file from the server in Totem Movie Player.
You can easily search for files on the server as well…
If you want to store your Ubuntu files on WHS it’s just a matter of dragging them to the correct WHS folder you want them in.
If you’re using an Ubuntu computer on your home network and need to access files from Windows Home Server, luckily it’s a straight-forward process. You’ll often have to find the correct software to use Windows files, but even that’s getting much easier with version 10.04.
