Real Linuz N00B, Needs Server help!..Pretty please :P

[MilesB]

Hey all,
Dunno if you know me, but I lurk around at Futuremark.com as Mnet_Gaming! and an Administrator at phphelp.com

Anyway, now you know who I am let me explain my problem ..

I like the idea of linux, I dont like windows/microsoft.. but Linux does not like me..

I've tried it nemerous times before, without any luck but this time I have a real use for it.

I need a setup capable of the following...
Web server (Capable of supporting PHP in full)
File server (So I can move all the networks files onto this machine)
Mail server
Proxy server (Basicly an alternative to ICS, it needs to allow me to logon and play games etc from any machine on the network like ICS)

And I need to be able to set certain tasks to be run every few hours (cron job) which will activate a php script.

All this will run on a top spec (and brand new) 2700+ Athlon XP with 256MB RAM (I'll buy more soon) along side a 80GB WD SE hard disk. :P

I tried doing this in Virtual PC on my Windows machine.. I used GenToo, but it took longer than my pacients allowed (10 hr+).

So anyway, I want to use Linux Red Hat (seems a nice distro).. I have minimal to no linux expirence, but I have read lots of docs etc..

How would I go about this? Any help would be great!

[TheMustangGuy]

Go to www.linuxiso.org and download red hat 9.0

its a painless install to do after u get it buirned to cds u will need either nero to burn the images to cd.

after that boot linux off the cds and follow teh promts. it will come to a screen asking what packages u want to install i recomend installing minamal packages to start with just the ones you know you are going to need like server packages ect.

now after you have it all up and running hop on to google or any search engine and look for linux commands that way you can learn your way around the termanal. yes linux has a gui but the gui is the tip of the ice berg linux's
true power is in the termanal.