Cheap Yet Effective Home Server Software

Asked By ariel chu 20 points N/A Posted on - 04/17/2012

Hello,

I want to set up my own home server software to study about web hosting and even host my own website. I would like a cheap, yet easily configurable home server software. Is it possible to obtain an operating system for free and all the needed components will also be free? I'm still a student and buying a Microsoft Server license would be too expensive for me.

What home server software set-up would you suggest?

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• Question Category: Server Software

Answered By Sollis Parallag 45 points N/A #109769

Cheap Yet Effective Home Server Software

Hello Ariel Chu.

For your web hosting needs, I suggest a virtual machine and Linux.  You can actually install Linux on any old computer if you have one but in case you have a fairly powerful computer with at least 2 GB of RAM, then you can install a virtual machine and set up Linux there.  I recommend Virtualbox as a virtual machine because it is easy to use, supports many operating systems, and is freeware.  You can find excellent documentation and instructions from the Virtualbox web site (https://www.virtualbox.org/) to get you up and running in no time.

I suggest you use Fedora for the Linux OS because its DVD ISO already contains most of the files necessary to set up a web server using Apache, an SQL database (MySQL or PostgreSQL), and PHP.

Hope this helps!

 

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• Posted on - 04/30/2012
• Question Category: Server Software