Initially I used a dual-boot system, running Chrubuntu, based on 12.04 Precise Pangolin. Fortunately, there is an alternative. It's a fairly new method of running Ubuntu inside a Chrome chroot, called crouton. The advantage is I actually get to use Chrome OS when I want to, without changing the partition table. Just Ctrl-Alt-F1 for Chrome, Ctrl-Alt-F3 for Ubuntu. Easy! The disadvantages are many. Sharing resources with Chrome may prove tricky. Not only are there additional operating system CPU, memory and disk overhead, but there are things like unmounting the USB RAID in Chrome, so that I can mount it in Ubuntu.
The biggest disadvantage is that this is a fairly unproven method of running Ubuntu. I've already run into permission errors with some of the mounted partitions from Chrome. The other is that there is no running gnome-session, which means that things like the Ubuntu Software Center, the shutdown menu, etc, all are currently broken inside of Unity. But, I figure as long as I document the server building process, save important config files, AND keep the data secure, I should be able to reconstitute the server much more quickly in the future.
So for now, chroot will be a bit of an experiment. I would actually prefer to run in some sort of VM or virtual appliance, but this processor is probably a little under-powered for that. Soon...soon...
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