My old system has been sitting unused on my desk for the last couple of months. Part of the reason that I wasn’t using it was that I had installed Windows Server 2003 on it with the intention of using it as a web and backup server for my home LAN. The problem was that I had never used Windows 2003 before, so I was spending more time reading about configuration options, rather than actually configuring it.
Previously I had tried installing Linux on it but found that trying to get Samba, Apache, PHP and all the other pieces I needed to work was also too much hassle. Eventually I gave it up as not so much a bad idea, but just an idea that I didn’t have time to fully research and implement. I’d love to have the time to delve further into the Linux idea, but for the time being it’s not to be.