Random Noob Questions for setting up MineCraft Server

[turb0]

Background on the situation.

Basically there are a handful of first graders in my daughter's GT program that use Minecraft for coding basics and whatever else they can knock MC for use in educational settings. There was talk about creating a private server for them that could be used for just a select few kids so they can have a safe place to play and interact without too much interference from the outside world.

Long story short, I know little about MC, but I'm about to dive straight into this and host a small server for the kids as the rest of the dad's apparently talked a big game but dropped the ball. I've literally never played it before, but I have seen a few kids playing it and know the basic concept.

I have a few older laptops that I could use and possibly an old desktop that could be used as well. All have at least a dual core processor and 2GB of RAM. I planned to host this either at the house on my RR account (quietly) or at my start-up's office where I have equal amount of bandwidth to spare. I also understand the basic concept of whitelisting players to the group and will work to get that setup up as well to keep it private.

I plan to finish reading up on most of the basic materials I need to get familiar with so I'll spare you the really noob questions out of the gate here.

So here go my questions:

Some of the kids have Macs and others have iPads (and even a few play via Xbox). Can both connect to the same server to play online or are there separate servers specifically for either platform?

If there is a difference, is there any reason to focus on supporting one platform over the other?

For basic online play there seems to be a random amount of plug-ins and add-ons that some people prefer over others. Since this is strictly for educational purposes and for friendly interaction, what do you all recommend for getting started with for the kids?

I think that covers the basics. Thanks for the [h]elp in advance!

 

[Greatone123]

Xbox - Ipad - MAC/PC/Linux - all use different versions of the game. None of them can play together outside of their version.

If you run a vanilla server without mods, you don't need much as far as resources go. MC's weakest link is disk IO since it's constantly reading/writing to the world files.

Linux will give you more resource freedom since well it's not windows. If you don't know much about linux then MineOS has a pre-configured ISO you can install. Follow the directions then you can work the server from a webGUI.

If it's for Education and coding purposes, I'd say look at computercraft I think it's called, where you can actually create and program computers in the game.