> I decided to stick with the pre-installed Windows 10 Pro (yes, as a server OS!) simply because I was familiar with it. Hah! Me at 13 was precisely the same,

> I decided to stick with the pre-installed Windows 10 Pro (yes, as a server OS!) simply because I was familiar with it. Hah! Me at 13 was precisely the same, though with Windows XP Pro that I suspected wasn't entirely legitimate but the seller didn't say and I didn't ask. That old thing ran so well for its low specs, it was crazy, I was really surprised how little you needed to run nongraphical software such as a web server, ftp server, database, email, dns, torrents, vnc, samba, openarena game server... I'm probably forgetting things. The only thing it didn't run was Minecraft, it didn't launch even with everything else shut down. Oh yeah, and the game server didn't have the best ping, but that might have been the 10 megabit expansion card as network adapter. Can encourage anyone to buy a second-hand system if you find it fun to self host! Especially a laptop (with the battery removed for fire risk) uses very little energy compared to old desktops, or a raspberry pi (alternative) is also an option nowadays.