Years ago I realized running a 100W PC all the time was REALLY expensive, so I switched to an old linux laptop at 30W (about $4/month). That helped, but I moved to the m1 mac specifically for the power efficiency. It does all the things my linux server did, and it does them at 6W (75¢/month).

I've found no competitor with similar performance that can run in such a low power footprint. M4 mini's are way better at power/performance, and I imagine their price is about to come way down since the M6 mini just got announced.

Software-wise, it's different, but mostly equivalent. Homebrew or macports has a similar software inventory to debian. And Apple's container framework is a welcome improvement over colima for running most container workloads.

Macs are totally “fine” for light server duty… as is just about any computer of the last decade+. The CPUs are beasts, the disks are screaming fast.

The operating system itself may not be ideal at serving but you can just run Docker/Orbstack if you need to do something especially Linux-y.

I’d put the question back on you — what are scenarios where an Apple Silicon Mac wouldn’t cut it as a light server for one person or a handful of people? About the only scenario that comes to mind is scenarios where you expect to utilize it so heavily that the fans are running for many hours a day. At some point those are either gonna wear out or just ingest so much dust that the machine runs hotter and needs a deep clean. But even that is largely mitigated by just pointing an external fan at it.

Are you using Apple displays or did they fix it?

Last year when I was browsing the only recentish Apple silicon capable of driving that was the M3 Ultra.