What's the best plug/mini computer to run Linux server?

Question

I'm a novice/intermediate level Linux user. I want to build a home server to experiment and learn mainly and possibly use as a backup or media server with a usb drive attached. I've been reading up on things like Rasberry Pi, Sheeva Plug, Guru Plug and Seagate Dockstore. I don't have any hardware to run the server and I'm intrigued by those options because they are obviously cheap and won't run up my electrical bill too much or make much noise.


Does anyone have suggestion of what would be a good platform to start on? I'm running Fedora at home and have some Red Hat and Ubuntu experience but I'm not really tied to a certain distro. Seems like Debian is most popular for these projects.

Answer 1

It really depends on your budget. You could try something like a Beagle board or an Arduino; both of these are more powerful than a Pi but correspondingly more expensive. I've personally tried none of these other than for an hour or so in fun.



If you're serious about a home server then I can completely recommend an HP ProLiant microserver. Here in the UK you can pick up one of these (new) for around £140 (about US$200). For a home server I'd suggest you increase the memory from its supplied 2GB up to the maximum 8GB (about another £60) and add a pair of 3TB disks (about £100 each) to supplement the supplied 250GB disk. If you're just trying things out you can avoid the additional expenditure initially. My server idles at around 7-10W and I've not been able to make mine exceed 35W under load. The newer ones are more power hungry so check the specifications before you buy.



Oh, I run Debian on mine, with three VMs for good measure (including a (legal) copy of Windows 7). Not the fastest, but "sufficiently" fast.

Answer 2

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RE:

What's the best plug/mini computer to run Linux server?

I'm a novice/intermediate level Linux user. I want to build a home server to experiment and learn mainly and possibly use as a backup or media server with a usb drive attached. I've been reading up on things like Rasberry Pi, Sheeva Plug, Guru Plug and Seagate Dockstore. I don't have...

Answer 3

I can't say much about anything other than Raspberry Pi because some huge fans bought one at work. All it did was serving a web page with some monitoring info... and it kept crashing time after time after time. I wouldn't waste my money on it. We tried several different images based on different distro's... every single one had its issues.

It has potential, but I'm sure you can find that in the other models as well.

Look for something with a little more memory / cpu power and something that can run any linux, not just a raspberry pi derivative of debian or some other distro.



(I'm sure i'm going to get screaming pi fans at my door, but that's just my experience!)

Answer 4

try debian or puppy linux if you want a light weight distro.