Need a small Linux computer

[amagab]

I'm setting up a webserver at home running Red Hat Enterprise and need a computer for it. What would you guys recommend? I would like something like the Mac Mini but cheaper. It needs 1Gb of RAM.

 

Thanks!

[Dungeon-Dave]

You need to check the minimum specs for RHEL (RedHat Enterprise Linux) and also factor in additional services you may be running.

 

As you mention a webserver, I presume it'll be apache - but you may also want to consider mail services (sendmail/postfix) as well as databases (mysql/postgres); although these require additional resource, in general you don't need to heavily overspec the machine - you're not building another amazon.com! (.. are you?)

 

To be honest, any low-spec kit ought to do the job. I ran a webserver with 8 sites on a P450, 64MB RAM with RedHat8 a few years back. The server also hosted DNS, DHCP, gateway & proxy server, mail server, database server, fileserver and even Unreal Tournament on the same hardware and was still barely ticking over - it was only when I tried to run CallOfDuty server did it start to creak somewhat.

 

I've since migrated it all to a Athalon2400 with 256MB RAM running Fedora Core 4, and there was no discernable speed improvement (it wasn't struggling before). I've upped the memory to 1GB, but even hammering the processor with folding@home, "top" only shows the load average hovering around the "4" mark.

 

Although a lot of that may not help you, I'd advise firstly to get your hands on some older hardware and build a test rig, gaining some Linux experience and also assessing that hardware for performance capability. From there you may want to justify spending more on newer/better hardware - but most people seem surprised at just how resource-shallow some Linux setups can be, finding that today's-spec kit is very highly over-specced for what you want.

 

(why RHEL, as a matter of interest? Are you after paid support?)