Hi, I know this is a frequently asked question and there are tons of posts out there...mine is not too much different from theirs, and I want to ask some questions that I did not find answers to. Being a computer science student myself, I have had some experience playing with Ubuntu Desktop and Server, both were quite friendly. Basically I am building my home server. Aside from all those normal utilities you can think of, I also want to take it as a good chance to gain some experience with managing a server, so I want to play with something different this time. Some people nominated CentOS, openSUSE and ClearOS. I am familiar with none of those systems, could you give me a high-level description and differences among them? Would be very helpful to know if there is any noticeable difference with Ubuntu. Also there are two things I want to know in particular(might be a little bit off topic): 1. I am planning to install the OS on an SSD, however the capacity of the SSD will be an overkill to a Linux OS. How can I utilize the extra storage as cache and avoid caching the OS in it(because the OS is already in SSD anyway)? 2. How is software RAID control and disk encryption implemented in those OSes? Is there anything else other than LVM or ZFS? Which one should I probably use? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
I think if you are little bit familier with Ubuntu then you can go for Ubuntu desktop/Server. They are convenient and have ease of use. During installation of the OS you can use customized SSD space, I mean you either you can use full or less space as per your need. Even after installation if in future you wish to use the remaining space then you can use the space by creating a fresh mount point. http://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-se...-system-incl-grub2-configuration-ubuntu-10.04
