[techtalk] New Linux machine

[griffon]

I'm going to setup my first home Linux machine.  I buy stuff for the company all the time, but their budget is a bit different than mine, so I thought I'd ask for advice, especially since I' m still new to Linux.  I've installed Linux a couple of times for work for very specific purposes (router and NISTnet).  So my questions follow two lines -- what are considered good prices on hardware these days?  And what kind of configurations should I be looking for?   Here are the services I'd like to setup on the computer: Firewall, VPN or something equiv (I don't know much about SSH ...), X, SMTP, Mailing list, IMAP, Web, Database, and Backup.   The main users for IMAP would be me and a few friends, but I plan to host several mailing lists on here -- I figure 100 messages a day for 300 or so recipients -- that'd be about 30,000 messages/day. I figure this will be the most intensive operation on the computer. I'd also like to put up a Web site with PostgreSQL or something on the back end so that people can do simple queries.  The Web site is more for my learning right now than it is for lots of people to use, so I don't expect it to take up too much processing, but there should be ample memory to support it.   So, what do you think I should get?  And how much should something like this cost?  I'm especially clueless about backup options.  I don't think I'll be buying DLT for home use ... Do they make DVD RAMs that support Linux? Also, IDE or SCSI?  I've only used SCSI on servers, but I'd guess it'd be a bit expensive for personal use, unless there's a compelling reason I don't know about ...   I don't know how good an idea this is, but since I have a studio apartment, I was thinking that maybe getting a rackmount unit might be a lot tidier than a regular computer.  Especially if I plan to buy a few more computers. What do you think of this idea? How much would it increase cost?   Thanks!   Jen