Built new machine - Which OS to use?

[Burner27]

I built the following machine to be a 'multi-purpose machine':

Gigabyte X99M Gaming 5
Intel i7-5820K
32GB DDR4
nVidia Quadro 290 Video card (not being used for gaming)
Quad-port Gbit NIC
LSI MegaRaid 9260-4i
6 x 2TB HDDs (4 are attached to the LSI card in RAID 5 and 2 are attached to onboard Intel RAID in a RAID1)
1 x 512GB m.2 SSD for OS

Now I need to decide what OS to use. What would you do? I would use it as file storage, and a video encoding machine. I also want to run VMs on it as well. I have been using VirtualBox in the past to run VMs on Windows 7 and Windows 10, but I think I ought to get to know a real Hypervisor like ESXi or Windows Hyper-V. I have licenses to run Windows Server 2012 R2 which includes Hyper-V. What do you think? I could run a Win10VM for the encoding that i want to achieve and Windows 2012 R2 would be a great file server--no?

Thank you for your advice in advance.

 

[Elixer]

Windows 2012 R2 would be fine for your use scenario.

 

[Burner27]

Windows 2012 R2 would be fine for your use scenario.

Can you elaborate please ?

 

[whm1974]

Linux or one of the BSDs.

 

[Burner27]

Linux or one of the BSDs.

Can you elaborate as well please? Why do you recommend it?

 

[whm1974]

Much better once you learn them. Pretty much do what you want and a whole lot cheaper.

 

[Elixer]

If all you are going to do is running a few VMs on it, and since you got a license for Windows Server 2012 R2, I see no reason not to use it, unless you really want to get into linux.
It is much more polished than what the linux side offers, so, it is easier to get it up and running, and you can also use it to run other games or applications made for Windows as well.

If however, you are going to be running multiple sites, then, I would use linux for a variety of reasons, mainly, you got much more control over everything.

 

[XavierMace]

Much better once you learn them. Pretty much do what you want and a whole lot cheaper.

Unless you work in the business world where 95% of everything runs on Windows.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Unless you work in the business world where 95% of everything runs on Windows.

Linux knowledge is nothing to shrug at though. It comes in handy in many business applications today, especially when money is involved.

I support hardware professionally, I see *nix and Windows on a regular basis. From x86 *nix installs, scaled through clustered setups that are racks long...to enterprise environments, *nix is there and not going anywhere. Some of the most expensive gear I see is completely *nix based.

Op, run a linux VM or two and learn when you get bored of Windows.

Diverse knowledge comes in handy.

 

[XavierMace]

I didn't say Linux knowledge doesn't come in handy. I've got two Solaris boxes and a RHEL box at the house. But at the office at my current job, out of the 6k servers we support (which coincidentally is in banking), less than 50 of them are running anything besides Windows or VMware. The percentage is even lower on desktops. That holds true in most of the business world, save for web hosts or compute clusters.