“Apple’s Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server is aimed squarely at small businesses that, for any number of reasons, need or prefer to host their core Internet services in-house without breaking the bank. Ars kicks the tires on the new combo to see if Apple has another hit on its hands.”
OS X server would be overkill, but the configuration of the mini server with normal OS X would make a nice htpc/media center. Rather overpriced for it, but it’d work real nice in that role anyway.
“The cost will still wind up being far less than using any of the alternatives for what you get in one hardware and software package.”
If you buy a Ubuntu Server from some of the vendors that sell their hardware with Ubuntu you get a better price.
You obviously need to use the command line in both.(RTFA)
Actually, you need to use the CLI far less on OS X server than in Ubuntu, which has very few GUI server configuration and admin tools. That being said, I’m of the mind that CLI is better for server admin anyway, though Ubuntu would not be an os I’d use for a server. Unless Linux is specifically required, my server os of choice is OpenBSD for most things or Solaris for fileservers and, if I did have to go Linux, Ubuntu would be the last version I’d trust with a server. Straight Debian or maybe CentOS is where I go, something that actually has some effort put into testing before release and where bugs don’t simply get marked as “won’t fix.”
I agree. I recently configured a 10.6 Xserver for a small company, and admitted – when only using the configuration options offered by the GUI, it’s very easy to admin. But! those options are very limited, and anything more fancy requires the CLI. And then, you are f*cked. CLI admin in Snow Leopard is hard, because Apple has modified many configuration files, and some changes that you make will be automatically reverted or be incompatible with the GUI admin tools. Pure CLI admin (as I experienced with Slackware and Ubuntu) is just much easier.
GUI administration with Microsoft products is not that bad – the GUI tools offer a wide array of options and switches. It’s just annoying that the GUI changes so often. CLI tools tend to be more stable over time.
I think the article was very clear
Unix and Linux distributions may be free or have relatively inexpensive purchase and service contracts, but you pay for that in requiring more expertise in house or on demand.
Remember, not all offices/small biz have an IT person available to them. Each change costs money in such cases, often to an outside contractor/support team.
TCO is not the same as purchase price.
Honestly, no matter which way you go for a server setup, you really need some sort of knowledgeable person employed that knows what they’re doing. Someone who doesn’t know anything about servers could screw up an OS X server installation just as much as a Linux installation. Perhaps actually they could screw up a bit more, since more settings are easily accessible. GUI or not, OS X/Linux/Windows Server/whatever, you still need to know what you’re doing in order to set it up properly.