maybe buying a server

[RabBell]

ok here's the plan, I may see my cousin tomorrow and I know he's not happy with his pc. I know he's planning to buy a new pc so I was thinking of taking the old one off his hands and turning it into a server, preferably linux.

Now first question, I have a PC and a laptop already, is buying a server worth it?

If I had a server I may move my site over to it and host it myself, again is this worth it?

I may just use it to help me learn PHP & Linux and maybe later .Net

Also what kind of hardware to I need to make a network between a linux server and two windows machines?

You can probably guess I know nothing about networks or hardware, is it worth someone who knows next to nothing doing this kind of thing or is this the best chance for me to learn?

I know I've asked a lot of questions there but any help would be great, thanks :thumb:

[λ]

ok here's the plan, I may see my cousin tomorrow and I know he's not happy with his pc. I know he's planning to buy a new pc so I was thinking of taking the old one off his hands and turning it into a server, preferably linux.

Now first question, I have a PC and a laptop already, is buying a server worth it?

If I had a server I may move my site over to it and host it myself, again is this worth it?

I may just use it to help me learn PHP & Linux and maybe later .Net

Also what kind of hardware to I need to make a network between a linux server and two windows machines?

You can probably guess I know nothing about networks or hardware, is it worth someone who knows next to nothing doing this kind of thing or is this the best chance for me to learn?

I know I've asked a lot of questions there but any help would be great, thanks :thumb:
You can host it yourself, but unless you have a fast upload connection (probably 2Mbit+) it won't be fast.

Any type of network hardware will work - I use two Cisco Aironet cards, and they work fine.

(Debian is a great Linux distro for servers - http://debian.org/)

[Krilnon]

njs is right, you'll have to have a fast upload speed to the outside world, or else your server will be slow as poo.

You'll probably also need a static IP address.

[SmoothDime]

You want to host a website from a computer in your house? It's probably not a good idea because your basic broadband connection won't be able to support the potential traffic.

But yeah, i'd be cool to tinker around with and learn PHP, Linux and .NET like you said. You could also set it up as a server for your own personal use - i.e store all your pics, songs and movies on it and then access those anywhere in the house.

have fun!:)