Hope I can get some hints here! • I want an old PC as a webserver. • The OS should be resource friendly (due to old PC) • I don't need/want any GUI In the past I did setup webservers with Xubuntu and Lubuntu and they work great. But I feel that the fancy GUI, which I after install never use eats resources from the PC. Do I need a fancy GUI? And if not, how do I install a server totally without GUI? And with no GUI, does the choice (CentOS, Lubuntu etc.) actually matter?
ok, I saw that some distributions give you the 'no GUI' option. That answers that question. But with no GUI are there still performance differences between Ubuntu, Lubuntu, CENTos etc.? (I don't recall Lubuntu has a 'no GUI' option though). And for any new PC you need keyboard and screen at first, right?
Flameproof, The GUI interface is handy for maintenance (albeit I still like BASH command level as well). If I understand correctly, you want to use an old PC as a web-server. If you aren´t actually doing enything else at the time, what makes you suspect that the GUI interface will degrade performance? It´ll be dormant in the background. I run a machine here to relay radio signals. That same ¨old box¨ is running Apache comfortably without degradation of the voice service. Let me explain. The old clunker (boat anchor if you must) processes audio from captured on-air signals and sends then via VoIP to andother node (also generally running an old PC) somewhere on this great globe of ours. These PCs are processing real-time speach frequencies without degradation. In your case, you are not going to need that sort of processing for a web server - unless you are running something like a PC1 (original IBM 5Mhz processor), I doubt that it will be an issue. From my own experience, keep the GUI for maintenance. It is far more productive. If indeed the server will be dedicated to being a server (and you are not doing huge SQL queries fro yoru web pages, cut yourself some slack amd leave the GUI component in. Hope that settles any concerns and helps you in the decision making process. Regards, Nick
