I have a home server I built a few years ago. It uses a VIA EPIA motherboard, an M10000 with a C3 CPU. The storage is provided by two Seagate hard drives. A full-size CD-RW drive provides CD ripping facilities; I picked the drive based on its ability (according to reviews) to ignore all common CD copy protection methods. The whole thing fits in a box about the size of a shoebox, and needs a single small fan to cool it. I had to replace the CPU fan a while back, but other than that it has been totally reliable. The server handles file serving, media serving, IMAP, a home wiki, IRC client, and occasional development and test tasks.
I chose VIA based not only on their low power CPU offerings, but because every piece of hardware on the motherboard had full open source drivers. VIA had done what other manufacturers seemed unwilling to do, and contributed driver code to be incorporated into the core Linux kernel.
Now they’re going further. They have released open specifications for their crypto subsystem and integrated graphics processors. These seem to be at least some of the specification documents that X.org Unichrome driver developers had complained were not included with the earlier source releases.
More tellingly, VIA have hired the founder of gpl-violations.org to act as their open source liason. Other than hiring RMS, I can’t think what more they could do to convincingly argue that their previous mistakes were just that–mistakes.
No doubt this enthusiasm for openness partly stems from the recent success of low powered notebook computers running Linux, such as the Eee PC. It’s a market niche that VIA can compete well in, if they get rock-solid Linux support for their hardware. They’re even beating Intel on performance.
I’ve been tempted to replace my little server with one built on an EN12000, a fanless 1.2GHz EDEN-based motherboard that uses 6W of power. The main problem is finding a suitable fanless case that will take full-size drives and doesn’t cost a limb or two.