mac mini server?

The motherboard on my personal webserver died some time back. I've been thinking about replacing it and with the cost of electricity and the fact I don't use my webserver for much else besides distributing files to my friends I was thinking of building a low power server. I've seen a few posts that the mac mini is pretty energy efficient but the posts I've seen: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/apple-mac-mini,978-7.html feels a little biased to me. I'm also a little uncertain about buying a mac mini because I'd just put ubuntu server on it which I've heard can be difficult due to apple locking up their hardware and of course the fact that I'd need to pay the 'apple tax' as part of buying the hardware. Anyone out there able to give me a general idea as to how well a mac mini would work as a small linux server or other options for keeping energy requirements down?

Well, you will likely see a large change in power consumption using Linux vs OSX...

For compatibility and maybe better performance with Ubuntu, you should look into something like this: http://system76.com/product_info.php?cPath=27&products_id=83

donkyhotay said: The motherboard on my personal webserver died some time back. I've been thinking about replacing it and with the cost of electricity and the fact I don't use my webserver for much else besides distributing files to my friends I was thinking of building a low power server.

This is an idea : http://www.linutop.com/linutop2/index.en.html and then attach your files on a usb-stick or usb-disk.

Thanks, thats the kind of information I was looking for.

albinootje said: This is an idea : http://www.linutop.com/linutop2/index.en.html

and then attach your files on a usb-stick or usb-disk.

Ooh Cool!

cyberdork33 said: Well, you will likely see a large change in power consumption using Linux vs OSX...

For compatibility and maybe better performance with Ubuntu, you should look into something like this: http://system76.com/product_info.php?cPath=27&products_id=83

What's your evidence for this? Any competing interests to declare?

Nick

md2017 said: What's your evidence for this? Any competing interests to declare?

Nick search this forum for "power" or "battery life" or the like and you will see plenty of complaints about power usage of Linux on a Mac as compared to running OSX.

I have no competing interests, I have never purchased or even seen a System76 system, just knew that they had something similar to the Mac Mini that was going to be fully compatible with Ubuntu. In fact, I would still buy the Mac myself, but I would probably not run Linux on it, but rather, stick with OSX.

P.S. if you have a better solution, please share as I would be interested to know about it myself.