After the painful (and unstable) experience of using Windows 95 and Windows 98, Windows 2000 Professional came as a breath of fresh air. It was the first version of Windows I used, based on NT technology. While going through the process of running it on my NAS, I tried to recall what I felt the first time I installed it.
This was almost 25 years ago, and I was apprehensive about moving to a new platform. When I consulted my friend Vishal Chopra about it, his simple advice was “2000 is a higher number than 98, so it is better”.
Windows 2000 Professional: Setup
The first phase of the setup process resembled Linux more than it did other Windows versions.
Windows 2000 Setup: Setup is loading filesWelcome to SetupWindows 2000 Setup: To continue Setup, press C
Yeah sure, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
Widows 2000 Licensing Agreement
Oooh, a shiny, new, modern file system.
Windows 2000 Setup: Unpartitioned spaceExisting PartitionsWindows 2000 Setup: Format the partition using the NTFS file systemWindows 2000 Setup: Setup is formatting
The part of copying files was extremely fast.
Windows 2000 Setup: Setup is copying filesPlease wait while Setup initializes your Windows 2000 configurationWindows 2000 Setup: This portion of Setup has completed successfully
The first boot screen was less modern than Windows 98. The second boot screen was more modern than Windows 98, showing a progress bar for the first time.
Starting WindowsMicrosoft Windows 2000 Professional: Built on NT Technology
The second phased of setup felt as if it was running within Windows.
Windows 2000 Setup: Please wait…Windows 2000 Setup: Welcome to the Windows 2000 Setup WizardSetup: Installing DevicesWindows 2000 Setup: Regional SettingsSetup: Personalize Your SoftwareWindows 2000 Setup: Date and Time Settings
Networking was pretty robust in Windows 2000 Professional. I always felt (maybe placebo effect) that my dial-up internet worked faster and was more stable on it.
Windows 2000 Setup: Please wait while Windows installs networking components
Windows 2000 Setup: Installing DevicesSetup: Please wait while Setup: Installs Start menu itemsWindows 2000 Setup: Please wait while Setup: Registers componentsSetup: Please wait while Setup: Saves settingsWindows 2000 Setup: Please wait while Setup: Removes any temporary files usedSetup: Completing the Windows 2000 Setup Wizard
The first version of Windows I used that encouraged you to configure a login password.
Welcome to the Network Identification WizardNetwork Identification Wizard
Windows 2000 Professional: Out of Box Experience
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional: Loading your personal settingsMicrosoft Windows 2000 Professional: Applying your personal settings
The first order of business was disabling the terrible “getting started” screen forever.
Getting Started with Windows 2000
believe this bubble was redundant, as people were already familiar with the Start menu for many years by now.
Click on the Start Button
Second order of business was enabling web content for the desktop and exposing hidden files and folders.
Folder Options : Enable Web content on my desktopFolder Options : Show hidden files and folders
Thankfully, Windows 2000 did not put Task Scheduler in the system tray by default, disabling which was also an action item with Windows 98.
The shut down experience was also much better on Windows 2000.
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional: Saving your settingsWindows 2000 Professional: Windows is shutting down
Luckily, most of the games I played back then worked well on Windows 2000; although DirectX did not come out of the box.
I had been using my Synology NAS for a few months now. However, as I started to do more and more with it, its inherent lack of processing power started to irk me. The CPU was too slow, the RAM too limited. More than that, its ugliness on my living room shelf disgusted me. Eventually, I decided to replace it with a Mac Mini.
Synology DS224+ next to my Mac Mini
Since I was anyways using the NAS more as a computer than for storage (a measly few hundred GBs), the choice was not difficult. I got a good deal on a used Mac Mini M2 Pro and went about migrating my data and services from the Synology.
Remote Access
Since I planned to use the Mac Mini as a headless server, the first thing I needed to do during setup was enable remote access. I used my TV as the initial display. Luckily, macOS has built-in VNC & SSH servers and enabling them was as simple as checking a few boxes.
Remote Management and Remote Login, macOS
Remote Management, macOS
With an Apple only environment, you can have better security by
Selecting the “Remote Management”, not the “Screen Sharing” option
Not selecting the “VNC viewers may control screen with password”
Using VNC over SSH when connecting with clients over the internet
The above will break compatibility with most commercial VNC applications. I like Screens 5 & Termius for VNC and SSH respectively. Both apps are paid, but quite powerful.
After verifying that remote access was working, I disconnected the TV, keyboard and mouse for good & haven’t needed them since.
Docker & Threadfin
The service I was most worried about was Threadfin, because it is not natively supported on the Mac and I need to run it within docker.
Thankfully, docker desktop works quite seamlessly on the Mac and the settings & environment variables look similar to container manager on Synology. My only problem was, I couldn’t get the container to auto-start after reboots, using environment variables in the GUI. Eventually, I could get it to work via the terminal
docker update --restart always <container_id>
Once it worked, I could clearly see the performance difference. While on Synology, the container took approx 2-3 mins from start to being usable, on the Mac, it takes less than 10 seconds.
PS: You can’t fetch new images from docker’s repository till you click on the verification link sent via email, if you have created a new account.
CloudflareTunnel
Cloudflare tunnel is installed via homebrew. It is as simple as copy/pasting a few commands via Terminal. Since the configuration of the tunnel is handled from the Cloudflare dashboard, there are no further steps required on the Mac itself.
Bonus feature, Cloudflare also allows you to setup VNC & SSH connections to your device, exposing a web interface to any browser you want to use it with. Over the same tunnel.
Plex & Homebridge
Plex is supported natively on the Mac and installing it is as easy as mounting the disk image. It detected Threadfin as a DVR fairly easily.
At first, Plex refused to detect media content from my external SSD, which was an APFS encrypted volume. However, after erasing it and setting it up as un-encrypted, it was detected fairly quickly. Funnily, once I encrypted it again, it continued to work, so I am not sure what the original problem was.
Homebridge is also natively supported on the mac and is installable via homebrew. Thankfully it comes with backup/restore functionality out-of-the-box, which worked seamlessly. Just had to keep in mind 2 things:
The plugins are not backed up and restored, so these need to be installed on the new machine manually before restoring the backup
I had to delete the bridge from my home app and add it again for my device status to work properly.
Backblaze Backup
Unlike my NAS, there’s no disk redundancy on the mac, so I chose to subscribe for Backblaze’s backup service. It is quite cheap, allows unlimited storage and if you need, they can even send you a USB drive to restore your content from.
Backblaze backup on macOS
It took around 2 days for the client to upload all my data in auto-throttled mode.
qBittorrent
For macOS, most people recommend Transmission to download torrents and the app itself is rock-solid, however, it is lacking support for RSS feeds. One can use add-ons like flexget to enable this, but I couldn’t get it to work.
Eventually, I settled for qBittorrent, which, although dated, has all the necessary features and works quite well. Its web UI is near-unusable on mobile phones, though and I couldn’t find a client on the App Store which works well, yet.
qBittorrent v5.0.5 on macOS
Resource & Environmental monitoring
I use TG Pro to monitor environmental parameters like temperature, fan speeds. It is a paid app, but is quite cheap and requires a one-time-payment only.
I use stats to monitor the CPU, GPU, Memory and bandwidth utilisation on the Mac. It is open-source and installable via homebrew.
Stats & TG Pro on Mac Menu bar
Summary
Overall, what I miss most from my Synology is its easy-to-use web interface and cloud connectivity features, which worked seamlessly. Even after a lot of effort, I cannot achieve the same level of integration on the mac, as all the services are from separate providers & lack cohesion.
However, the sheer computing power and the lack of physical ugliness more than makes up for it.
I know, I know. I got the Synology DS223j just a month ago. However, I ran across a pretty un-surmountable roadblock with it. It can’t run Virtual machines, which I really want to do. So I returned it and got a Synology DS224+ instead, even though it meant having a device with an Intel Processor.
The first thing I noticed moving from the DS223j to the DS224+ is how much uglier it is.
Synology DS224+
While the DS223j was beautiful and elegant, the DS224+ is an ugly block which has no business being on a living room shelf.
Anyway, function over form. And functionally, the DS224+ is superior to the DS23j in almost every way.
Hard disks popping out of Synology DS224+
The first thing you will notice is that the DS224+ is entirely tool-less. No need to open the entire chassis to plug in the hard disks. The front cover pops out and you can just slot the hard drives in. Also, the drives are hot-swappable.
I think not opening the chassis is good in a way that you don’t accidentally nick critical components fiddling around its insides with a screw driver.
Front panel of Synology DS224+
The second big upgrade is that you can bump up the (2GB) RAM by an additional 4GB, bringing it up to 6GB. The additional RAM allows the Synology to run VMs, among other things.
D4NESO-2666-4G 4GB RAM upgrade for Synology DS224+RAM module installed in Synology DS224+
While the RAM utilisation on the DS223j was always hovering between the 60-80% marks, the DS224+ mostly stays below 20% with my standard applications (DSM, Plex, HomeBridge, Download Center etc) running.
Synology DS224+ CPU and RAM utilisation
The NAS also comes with an extra USB 3.0 port, an additional ethernet port (10/100/1000) and a one touch USB copy feature, none of which I care for.
My biggest surprise was that I found the DS224+ to run cooler than the DS223j (Based on the un-scientific measure of the warmth of air exiting its backside). Especially, because going from an ARM processor to an x86/64 processor, I expected exactly the opposite.
Clearly, the ARM CPU is manufactured using a newer process and has half the TDP of the Intel. This means that either the remaining power consumption is from the other NAS components or that the software is not as optimised for the ARMv8 architecture.
Or that the Realtek chip is actually quite inefficient and running closer to its TDP for the same loads.
Either ways, I tried a few days, but couldn’t get used to how ugly the DS224+ was, so I returned it and went back to DS223j.