Maximum PC

I got a cheap machine off ebay (2.66GHz quad, 8GB RAM, 2x640GB drives that will probably be mirrored) and I'll be making a virtual server machine bases of of VMware ESXi. I have several things I want to do with it. Some off them such as a windows update server and such are I have no issues with. I would like to run a couple of other applications which I figure linux would be best suited for (and easier than stripping down windows server.

1) a LAMP server with ruby on rails. This will mostly be a development server so I can get back into web design. It needs to be as minimal as possible and I don't really need any extras.

2) something that will act as a download server for torrents, http, and ftp primarily. It would be helpful if it can pull torrents from RSS and and a easy way to starting http/ftp downloads.

3) internal dns server. the main thing I want it to do is be able to allow me for example to: type in server.domain and have it direct it to a particular server inside my network or do the same remotely/outside the network with my dyndns domain.

4) mumble voice server. + for having vent as well but the main one is mumble.

Other functions that would be nice would be a syslog server, email server or a media server with transcoding abilities. Wouldn't mind getting back into Folding@Home as well. I need these to play nice with a virtual environment. I'd like something that can keep under 512MB of RAM max. Command line is fine though I'd rally like a web interface, particularly for the download server. I've played with a few distros like centOS and ClearOS but they weren't quite what I wanted.

PS. Major + to ready to go VM's.

Fedora Server and Ubuntu Server work well as a baseline. They are both basic Linux server distros, good enough for big companies. I was able to get mine to work up to the point of getting the internet to work. My router is a bit weird.

may just be something I"m doing wrong but I can't seem to get ubuntu to work with less than 512MB min before it starts getting laggy. I'll have to try out fedora again though. They're both still more than what I need for some of these functions.

For something with such dedicated needs, I'd look into rolling your own kernel and distro using something like Gentoo. This will ensure that you're only loading and using services that you need and it will streamline your server.

A little too advanced. I'm "decent" with linux but definitely (note that it is spelled correctly) not that good. I think I may have found the solution with a manual install of ubuntu server. It's just a matter of figuring out how and which modules I can remove without causing problems. And chance of a package list of what's safe to remove.

I'm also looking into fedora core but I'm not having luck actually finding a working copy and it seems redhat only want to sell it's enterprise software since all the official links are dead. Are there any distributions like those you'd normally find make for specialized devices or for low memory devices like NAS or old pentium class pc's. I figure as long as I could virtualize it it would work.

Fair enough.

Gentoo is the distro that took me from 'novice' to 'expert' ... but I'll admit that it took some time and a lot of trial and error.

I just found out that the last Server edition of Fedora was version 10. This sucks.

Call me simplistic...but why are we looking at things branded as a "server" version and not things that deal with the vmware stuff easily...

Because the desktop versions are too heavy. KDE, Gnome, and even LXDE are too big for the VM he wants too use.

Yes. I want them as minimal as possible; just what I need for that particular vm and it's purpose and nothing more. Anything else is just an unneccessary waste of space and RAM.

So just remove X then...

This really doesn't need to be as complicated as you two are making it.

Have you actually tried removing X? It's harder than you think, especially when things start breaking. The Server versions don't have it to begin with, making things easier.

Try openSUSE Studio.
Also,
http://software.opensuse.org/114/en
The DVD installs a system with the option to not install the X windows system.

To take from another comment made to you....maybe for you it is...

True