.
Things I liked:
Reasonably fast server brings in 937 Mb iso in 10-15 min.
Universal LiveUSB installer easily makes LiveUSB.
ALL my laptop hardware recognized and drivers provided
....except for internal closed-source wifi.
Easily sets up open-source external wifi.
Xfce desktop neat, intuitive & responsive.
Uses Ubuntu whisker menu and includes a LibreMenu menu editor.
Network mgr working well, given wifi drivers.
FF is 25; LO is 4.2; amd64 kernel is 3.13.
Boots to browser on-line in ~60 sec; shut-down < 5 sec.
GUI makes it easy to disable my touchpad which disrupts typing.
Things I didn't like:
Inefficient choices in initial 937 Mb base configuration.
937 Mb iso doesn't include closed-source ttf-mscorefonts, Broadcom drivers & flash;
....also doesn't include open-source LibreOffice, Geany & tzdata.
Configuring 2 Gb of persistence took a really long time.
LibreOffice took a long time to bring in as well.
*Apt-get needed to install tzdata; ntp updates desktop to local time on reboot.
Mousepad editor poorer than leafpad, much poorer than gedit IMO.
Bug 1: whisker menu editor doesn't save (or properly display) liveUSB favorites;
....Mint 16 doesn't have this problem with favorites panel display
Bug 2: does not recognize closed-source drivers brought in
....nor indicate correct status of devices using closed-source drivers.
LibreMenu requires a wholesale upgrade of gtk+ and python3 infrastructure.
Things I don't understand:
Why screensaver set only to blank screen.
Why Ubuntu Software Center rather than Synaptic.
*Maybe because I didn't understand Ubuntu Software Center usage as root.
Dell R730 w/ 2x E5-2650v3 10c, 192GB (12x16GB) RAM, H730 Mini, 2x 750W PSU
$499.99
Dell PowerEdge R340 w/ 1x Xeon E-2126G, 16GB (2x8) RAM, H730P
$500.00
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Supermicro 4U 36 Bay Storage Server 2.4Ghz 8-C 128GB 1x1280W Rails TrueNAS ZFS
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Dell PowerEdge R620 Server 2x E5-2660 v1 2.2GHz 16 Cores 256GB RAM 2x 300GB HDD
$89.99
Dell R630 Server 2x E5-2620 V4 2.1GHz =16 Cores 128GB DDR4 1x 960GB 2x 1G 2x 10G
$210.00
Dell PowerEdge R730XD 28 Core Server 2X Xeon E5-2680 V4 H730 128GB RAM No HDD
$389.99
DELL PowerEdge R730 Server 2x E5-2680v4 2.4GHz =28 Cores 32GB H730 4xRJ45
$284.00
HP ProLiant DL380 Gen9 8SFF Server - E5-2698 v3 - 32Cores - 128GB Ram - 1TB HDD
$299.00
HP ProLiant DL380 Gen9 16SFF 2x E5-2680v4 2.4GHz =28 Cores 64GB P840 4xRJ45
$353.00