Suggestions solicited, server bring up

[Bruce Labitt]

In the pursuit of more computation power, I've been promised a server 
class machine to 'play' with.  I believe it is a Dell 2950.  Yes, it is 
already obsolete, but it was free and has double the amount of memory I 
have on my desktop.  Anyways, I'd like to install Ubuntu 9.04LTS on it.  
I've never done a server install before, what is recommended?  What 
baseline packages are in Ubuntu Server?  I believe there is hardware 
raid on the 2950, can Ubuntu server deal with this?  Any other gotchas I 
should be aware of?

Incredibly naive question:  Since there is no GUI installed in Ubuntu 
Server (I believe), how does one easily search for packages to install?  
I can, of course, do this on my desktop first and then write stuff down, 
waddle down to the server room and do this, umm, but that gets rather 
tedious after a couple times...

-Bruce