I want to build a low-power, always-on server just to run skype in my house. I know they sell the computer-free skype things, but I have a really nice dect phone system I'd like to still use and a bunch of old pc components lying around.
So here's what I'm thinking: an old motherboard with an 8 gig CF card as the hard drive, a PIII 500 processor, 256 mb of ram, a USB 2 controller and a skype to phone adapter. I'm probably going to run hardy heron as my OS.
My first question is whether these specs will be sufficient. I'm pretty sure the ram is enough to run xubuntu, but i'm wondering if the PIII 500 is enough.
My second question relates to power. since this is going to always be on, does anyone have any suggestions to limit power use? Is it worth upgrading to a better board and processor to be able to use wake on lan so that it isn't actually always running (and would this actually work for my purposes)?
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated (and i'll doubtlessly be back with more questions in the linux forum once i start configuring xubuntu).
So here's what I'm thinking: an old motherboard with an 8 gig CF card as the hard drive, a PIII 500 processor, 256 mb of ram, a USB 2 controller and a skype to phone adapter. I'm probably going to run hardy heron as my OS.
My first question is whether these specs will be sufficient. I'm pretty sure the ram is enough to run xubuntu, but i'm wondering if the PIII 500 is enough.
My second question relates to power. since this is going to always be on, does anyone have any suggestions to limit power use? Is it worth upgrading to a better board and processor to be able to use wake on lan so that it isn't actually always running (and would this actually work for my purposes)?
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated (and i'll doubtlessly be back with more questions in the linux forum once i start configuring xubuntu).
