Incidentally, this was originally run on a 233mhz machine without a problem. It is currently running on a 433mhz.
The 233mhz machine (which is now Pie) cost me $60 in parts off of eBay (and $0 for software). The new system I got for free for upgrading my friend's old computer and getting her old parts. The computer I use for a router ("gate") was traded for a chair.
Why use old hardware? It's cheap.
You can modify boot.ini to run withought the UI. In fact I think I showed Newby how.
Apache is installable withought a UI and it's startable from command line.
I don't know why you bring Windows update into this but you can't withought a UI
Realistic or not, it's possible.
Ah, modifying a configuration file. How do you do that without a UI? Or do you have to boot into a UI, fight with the slowness, and eventually modify boot.ini then restart? That's a pain. Linux does it by default.
How do you download Apache without a UI? I know on Linux you can use links and wget, but how do you do it on Windows? I'm not aware of a way to download web content without a UI...
Sidoh explained why Windows Update is important.
My point still stands, until every Linux distro out of the box using every configuration can run a server, their statement is false. Unless of course they want to allow the OSes to be configured and then do the test. In that case it'd be pretty close.
That wasn't Microsoft's challenge, and it wasn't their statement. Sorry to break it to you, but Microsoft fails the challenge that THEY set up.