I know the old 'which distro...' question has been asked (and answered) before, but I would like your latest thoughts on the matter.

We are putting together a test box to use as a 'sandbox'. We plan on installing VMWare and having a several virtual machines running on at any given time for testing and 'what if' scenarios.

The hardware is:
Asus K8N-DL mobo
dual AMD Opteron 265 (dual-core) cpu's
4 SATA 250GB harddrives (no need for raid)
12GB RAM

The easiest OS would be MS Server 2003 Standard Edition (we have a copy sitting here), but it only allows 4GB RAM and the Enterprise Edition is a little pricy! We need the extra ram to be used for the virtual machines.

Anyway, what's your thoughts for a server configured this way?

Welcome to LQ!

There is only one answer to an operating system question...

Slackware

I strongly suggest Gentoo. Baselayout will be of great use for you as you strive to do atypical things like this. Also, with that kinda hardware specs you're looking at less than 2 hours to compile the full KDE suite etc. and have things up and running.

Gentoo runs perfectly here

Iwill DK8EW
2 x 275 Opterons
8Gb Ram

Used VMware with 3 guest operating systems running

It does'nt even break out into a sweat

Pete

Pete and Swagger,

Thanks for your help. I was actually leaning towards Gentoo, but it's good to get someone else's opinion too.