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I built the machine myself (very quickly because there is only the motherboard, ram and case) with parts from ultim8pc (in the UK).

I've been using LTSP, and did use nasd which spluttered alot if the application wasn't directly using it (notably my artsd isn't compiled with nasd output support - on Mandrake). The nasd doesn't start anymore since I set the terminal to use a Linux 2.6 kernel (an attempt to get a USB mouse to work - although I now think that problem is VIA's fault) and neither does the telnet server, so to get a command prompt I have to reboot with the terminal set to runlevel 3 (and even then if I manually start nasd it just silently fails).

I expect that next time I upgrade my server OS I might use Mandrake's support for thin clients which also has the advantage of making it easy to run any server app locally (e.g. mplayer).

- Brian

The so-called Mini-ITX servers, which have possibly already been mentioned on Slashdot, are one way to go if this is what you're looking for.

They're like a regular PC, but in a much smaller box (perhaps the size of two 5.25" CD-ROM drives stacked on top of each other), and are often fanless (no, that doesn't mean they overheat, it means they're designed not to need one...), resulting in much less noise and much less power consumption. Many are cheap, and they make ideal Linux/BSD boxes for all kinds of things - web/mail/dns/anything server, backing up your data (or each other), monitoring security cameras for movement, etc. Here's a few examples for more information:

Here, here, here, here, here.

Some of them do actually officially support Linux/BSD AFAIK, such as the OpenBrick and LinITX.com.

-Andrew

I value very quiet computers so I use a 533Mhz EPIA (passively cooled) as my main workstation.

The case is a Chyang Fun cube, with the power supply replaced with a 60W DC->DC one. Instead of a hard drive I use a compact flash to boot an OpenBSD diskless kernel and then onwards everything is over the network to my disk server in the other room. Since the compact flash is only read for the kernel and never written to it shoulnd't die too quickly.

Result? No moving parts and therefore dead silent. It's very nice. All works fine under OpenBSD although I'm using a Matrox G200 for the graphics rather than what's on-board so I can't comment on that.

In the UK you can get this stuff from Ultim8PC and LinITX.

Fuck that card, it won't fit in my Shuttle SK41G computer unless you ditch that ugly green toad fan. Picture of AGP/PCI

An example of the mini-ITX can be found here, and the same site also contains the Shuttle box I'm thinking about.

Not at all sure which, if any, I'll go for. Quite like the Shuttles as a more general purpose PC, but the mini-ITX is cheap, comes with its own adequate CPU and would fit in a component rack better. Other cases can be had to make it look even more like a hi-fi component.

Cheers,
Ian

An example of the mini-ITX can be found here, and the same site also contains the Shuttle box I'm thinking about.

Not at all sure which, if any, I'll go for. Quite like the Shuttles as a more general purpose PC, but the mini-ITX is cheap, comes with its own adequate CPU and would fit in a component rack better. Other cases can be had to make it look even more like a hi-fi component.

Cheers,
Ian