Greetings,

I'm currently debating on transforming my desktop workstation into a server. I will primarily be doing virtualization on it, as well as a plex media server and a generic file server. The vast majority of what I am doing will be virtualization as I'm currently studying for my LPIC exams before moving on to the Red Hat exams.

The machine currently runs Xubuntu 16.04 with QEMU/KVM as the hypervisor. (It's been used in a workstation role more than a server role...) and I was trying to figure out if I should just leave the OS alone and repurpose the box or do a clean install of something else that is designed for that role (I'm thinking CentOS 7.3 (Maybe we're up to 7.4) with the virtualization server packages installed).

Part of me thinks just repurpose it and leave it alone is the best course of action here. Can anyone offer any insight?

I wouldn't use any *buntu while you are studying for any Linux certification exam (Linux+, LPIC, or obviously, the RedHat exams). Ubuntuisms are not covered in those exams and the exams assume usage of either RedHat or Debian. Since you plan on taking the RedHat exams after LPIC, I would recommend running CentOS on the host system and run Debian on a few of the virtualized guests. It is better to immerse yourself in what you are learning, and Ubuntu will not be apart of the curriculum. Some parts will be the same on Ubuntu as they are in Debian or RedHat, but you will find differences that can be misleading.

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There isn't a great deal of difference between major distro's workstations and servers. Most folks think of a server being some text only install but to each their own.

I too would think that using a distro that you could use later in some business may be better. The host being Centos, Scientific, Oracle linux, Fedora, Opensuse/suse could be considered for host. You could then play with any number of clients on almost any number of VM choices.

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I've yet to run into anything that's not the same but it wouldn't surprise me... One of my concerns is that I don't really know that much about the RPM based distros. Guess there's no better time than the present to start learning. I'll work on the laptop first and then move to the workstation/server machine...

I will admit that when I think of a server I tend to think of a text only install, but I guess one could install a gui and vnc into the server if it were headless... (I'm planning to install a gui on my machine, but its also not going to see a lot of load usually...)

I kind of decided the other day that I think I want to really hone in on virtualization, as it is something that intruges me, and it's not like I don't have the drive space for it... Now for the fun parts...

Thank you guys!

There are many differences between Ubuntu and CentOS. The main being that CentOS is extremely stable and the software is really old, but well tested. Yum (the package manager) is quite different in how it carries out package management transactions if you compare it to apt, apt-get, or aptitude. Yum even has a way to roll back whats called a yum transaction, so you can undo package installations and keep a general log of what you have installed/upgraded/removed. If you want a more bleeding edge environment (like Ubuntu) then you should use Fedora.

I have played with Fedora 27 (the XFCE Spin) but I seem to remember that no matter what I did, various parts of the DE would crash. (Network Manager seems to be the one that I recall having crashed the most often...) I've tried the Gnome version of Fedorea, but I can't stand Gnome...