Nix Noob chooosing an OS

[superfletch]

Hi,

 

I'm a relative newcomer to Linux, I've played around with desktop editions of Fedora, Ubuntu and Mandriva a little and had some limited success but I always seem to revert to type and end up going back to MS.

 

However I'm trying to make my home network more use to me on the move as I travel quite a bit and would like to be able to access certain stuff at home when I'm in schools, offices training venues etc. To this end what I want to do is set up a decent Linux box that I can leave on when I'm away (or ring Mrs Superfletch and get her to switch it on) which will do the following for me:

 

Act as storage for the home network - I guess I need Samba for this,

Run a secure FTP Server that is set to start up with the OS so I can grab files from the home network anywhere,

Accept and manage (route) VNC Connections from wherever I might be back to the correct PC in the house.

 

What I'd really like is for a few people to point me in the direction of a decent Linux OS to do this with and recommend some applications to achieve this. I'm after an OS with a decent GUI and a reasonable user base for support.

 

TIA,

 

SF

[Midget]

managing VNC could be done by assigning different ports for different machines on the router

 

as for storage, FreeNAS would do the job nicely and has a webGUI

 

FreeNAS: The Free NAS Server - Home

 

how to set up FTP:

Setting Up FTP Access in FreeNAS

[powdarrmonkey]

I suspect you're going to get many, conflicting answers here. Personally I'd suggest Ubuntu for a beginner.

[Midget]

but he doesn't need a full OS, just storage controller

[Midget]

only if he never wants to recover his files if it fails

[superfletch]

Hi Folks,

 

Thanks for the quick replies. I've has a go at setting up a Smoothwall box before so I guess the principle is pretty similar with FreeNas. I've actually got a FreeNas CD burnt that I never ever used - didn't realise I could use it to manage the external stuff too though - that is great.

 

Good idea about forwarding the VNC through the router - I'd assumed everything would run on the same port but thinking about it a bit more that doesn't have to be the case - nice one!!

 

Also cheers for the offer of the NSLU2 - that looks like a decent bit of kit however I've already got some hardware that I want to run all this on. Otherwise it would indeed be an ideal answer...

 

Thanks to al of you...

[powdarrmonkey]

/me read VNC and assumed a workstations