This is why I hate Mac users sometimes.
Ya get a little shell experience under your belt, and then the
Gentoo phenomenon (see --teach-me-unix) takes over. I can't believe I'm actually having to explain this, but apparently I must. So, here goes.
This was never about how much CPU power the Mac Mini has. For a server, the disk is almost always much more important than the CPU power, yet people look at 1.42GHz and think "oh yeah that's plenty of power".
1. Laptop drives run hot. They're miniaturized, which reduces the cooling capability that's inherent in that large metal enclosure that normal (3.5") drives enjoy. And, a server is going to see more drive access, by its very nature, than a desktop. See the above paragraph. Heat reduces the life of pretty much every electronic device, and hard drives are no exception. This wouldn't be so much of a factor except for the fact that there's very little active cooling in the Mini, and no room for more.
2. Laptop drives are slow. They're designed to be small and conserve power while maintaining a minimal level of functionality. They do this very well. What they do
not do well is speed. I know this for a fact. I run a large and popular server, and I know that many of the people who access it have laptops. None of them has ever gotten more than 16MB/sec off of it. Desktop users can regularly get 35MB/sec or more. This is the case when they are hooked into my switch, thus dodging the possible congestion at the main routers. (This is on a gigabit network, so network capacity is not the bottleneck.)
3. Mac OS X is not ready for server use. This doesn't mean that it won't work as a server. This means that other things that are available work better, and that you would be well-advised to use them instead. Yes, some large installations run OS X. That is because it's very easy to administer for certain tasks, and with a ton of systems at one's disposal, if one reboots it's not such a huge issue. When you have only one system, and it is controlling your music or your net connection, a reboot is a big pain.
So, taking the previous points into account, we have some choices.
- Use a desktop Mac with Mac OS X, accepting the possible stability and adminstration issues. Mac hardware can be expensive to purchase, and OS X is not an optimal server OS, but if you have an old Mac lying around, this could be a viable option. Buying new, inexpensive PC hardware is a better choice than buying an old Mac.
- Use a desktop Mac, but running YDL or NetBSD or another variant (Darwin is a joke; don't bother. You might as well run Contiki.). Again, this should only be considered if you have a source for very cheap/free Mac hardware, but NetBSD is a better option than OS X for servers.
- Use a desktop PC, with any one of tons of OS choices. I like FreeBSD for various reasons, but getting you guys to acknowledge a PC as a valid choice will be a big step, so let's just stick with *N*X as the OS. PC hardware is very cheap, and it sounds like you have a case already for your Slackware box, so you can just replace the guts for that. New memory, motherboard, cpu, and hard drive will probably cost you about $300, which is probably about what you would spend if you bought a used Mac.
So, to wrap up. The Mac Mini
will work as a server. I never said it wouldn't. But, $500 will buy you a plenty powerful PC, with no cooling issues, and the potential for upgradeability so that you won't tend to be stuck in the situation you're in
now, when that 80GB seems really small, just like that 6GB does now.
(the same thing happened in my last translation class: an argument over the use of tall vs high nearly came to blows !). Maybe it's my midas-like touch...
