Suggested distro for home server

First post - nice to be here.

I own a few Internet servers, all running CentOS 4.5 - 5.2 64bit.

I have just installed a 24 port Gigabit LAN in a data cabinet at home, and want to buy a 1U server with 4 drives - RAID 1 or 5 - for backing up home PC's - all running Windows 7- development work for my Internet servers, and also to use it a firewall for my home network, create VPN tunnels for remote access etc.

Basically what I want to do is feed the broadband in to the Linux box and then from there to the switch.

I guess it would be SAMBA for mapping linux directories from Windows.

It also gives my sons the opportunity to learn Linux in a non-production environment.

I only use SSH - Tunnelier - but it would be nice if there was some sort of remote GUI terminal from Windows to Linux that my kids can play with as well - before getting in to the real CLI stuff :)

Appreciate answers to the following:

1. What distro of Linux would be most appropriate for the above and installs on SATA RAID?

2. What do I need for network cards - I assume I need at least 2.

3. Any other suggestions?

Thanks very much indeed.

Adrian.

Welcome to the forums, adrian! :)

You can check this poll for favorite server distro as voted by our membership:

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/cof...rs-2010-a.html

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Originally Posted by ozar

Welcome to the forums, adrian! :)

You can check this poll for favorite server distro as voted by our membership:

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Thanks for the welcome Ozar and for the poll link.

The server will not be used as a server as such - unlike my datacenter hosted servers - it is more for home use - to frontend my LAN etc as above.

any distro can perform the functions you want with the right applications installed

the server distro poll is useful to get people's perspectives on which ones they prefer, because in the end it comes down to preference

my preference is to have a distro that i can use for a long time without touching, so I'd prefer centos for this, while not the most bleeding edge, it gets the job done

Quote:

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Originally Posted by coopstah13

any distro can perform the functions you want with the right applications installed

the server distro poll is useful to get people's perspectives on which ones they prefer, because in the end it comes down to preference

my preference is to have a distro that i can use for a long time without touching, so I'd prefer centos for this, while not the most bleeding edge, it gets the job done

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Thanks.

I prefer CentOS for no other reason that I use it every day.

For the benefit of my sons who are just learning Linux, is there a GUI for CentOS while they get up to speed with CLI?

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Originally Posted by apc1

is there a GUI for CentOSI?

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KDE and Gnome should work fine on CentOS, among others. Is that what you mean?