5 lightweight operating systems you can use for your next home server

Server-rated rigs with dual processors, multiple ECC memory sticks, and several PCIe slots are ideal when you’re trying to build your dream home lab. Even leaving the extra cost of enterprise hardware aside, there are plenty of reasons to avoid going with cacophonic, thermally-challenged, and power-guzzling servers. While there are certain operating systems like Harvester that can’t run on your run-of-the-mill PC, you don’t need a killer workstation just to build an experimentation server.