Edubuntu Server

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Wed, 26 Dec 2007, Uwe Geercken wrote:

> I know that the main components like lan, harddisk, ram and prozessor
> are important for the speed of the overall system. but I wonder if a
> quad-core system will give me superior performance. is edubuntu using
> the full power of such a prozessor and is this an optimal choice for
> serving aroung 10 pc's? or would it be better to use a dual core at a
> higher speed?

The faster processor would have the ability to finish single tasks quicker
(eg encoding a video sequence).  Multiple cores will usually give you more
cpu power overall but that power must be split up over different processes
or threads.  As you will have multiple desktop users running lots of
processes, multiple cores will probably be more useful.  Linux (including
edubuntu) has pretty good support for multiple cpus/cores.

> I planned for following system:
> Intel Core 2 Quad 2,44 GHz
> 4 GB RAM
> Gigabit LAN
> Nvidia 8500 GT Grafic Card
> 500 GB Samsung Disc
> Gigabyte Mainboard

If you're going to leave the server aside and have people log in to thin
clients exclusively (this is not a bad idea in general), that video card
will be a waste of money as it will not be used -- you might as well just
get a €30 one or use the on-board.  You will probably need to use a
proprietary driver (generally not recommended) to get anything more than
basic performance from it¹.  Unless you have a good reason to want it, I
would not recommend buying that card for a linux system.  

My other suggestion would be to consider buying two disks and using RAID1.
This should mean that in the event of a disk failure, your system will
continue to work while you source a replacement disk.  Otherwise, the
entire system goes down until you replace the disk, reinstall and recover
from backups (several hours work at minimum).  You could either get a SATA
RAID controller for this, or just use linux's in-built software RAID.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID_1#RAID_1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

Gavin

¹ This is true of the high end cards from both ATI and NVidia.  The
situation is improving with ATI now as they have published specs to help
write free drivers.  These drivers are in development though so aren't in
Ubuntu just yet.  If you really need a flashy video card, I'd prefer ATI
over NVidia.