Best HTPC setup

Ahh.. you're one of those real geeks -- I'm thinking of going geek-lite with Ubuntu on an old P3 that i have. Looks pretty easy, and I don't have to spend hours learning how to do things in it... I might go Gentoo eventually if I feel like learning how things really work.

Hmmm... I think I might lean towards building an HTPC for the living room, but not worry about making it super quiet yet. I'll use linux to prove the concept -- data partition will be fat32. This will let me build it a bit sooner -- like in May instead of August, while I save up money for more parts and maybe Vista. I can then convert to Vista later and keep my data partition.

The only downside to this is that if I do go the server/extender route, I will have spent a bit more money on the processor than I really need, but who complains about too much power?