09-12-2010, 08:05 PM
Doc wrote: If you're just going to use it as a server, you have no need for a dedicated keyboard and mouse.
Wrong. There is a bug in screen sharing that bites quite a few people. Essentially, screen sharing dies if you attempt to do certain things, say…fast user switching. Even worse, sometimes connecting an external display after the fact doesn't help, because screen sharing isn't actually dead, turns out the window server locked up. Bottom line, unless you are really comfortable piping commands through SSH, there are many reasons you need to keep a keyboard, mouse, and display handy. On the Mac anyway, I've never experience such flakiness on other platforms.
People do have to actually administer their home servers from time to time. System updates, applications updates, preference changes in various services. You need to be able to connect in some way and most people are most familiar with the GUI.
Nathan