Best Distro for @ home/file print server

[Redman]

My main concern is my server used to be a win server 2k3 box and it just crapped on me one day, NTFS said "nope, I quit". I dont want to go through that again.

Of course, I could say something like "it won't happen with Linux", but I can't. Simply because hardware also can die
But the software shouldn't be a problem.

Fedora is "bleeding edge technology", which means that it's fairly up to date with the newest packages possible. But it also means that things might not work 100% because new things have been put in hasn't been taken care of (yet) by applications.
Nice example: the 8k.stack option in Fedora 2. It presented (for a short while) a problem with the installation of Nvidia drivers.

Don't get me wrong, unless you have a fancy Nvidia card in your server, this doesn't apply to you of course. Fedora is a great distro which gives you plenty tools. At home, I have the latest Fedora running and did/do not have any problems with it.

CentOS 4.0 is RHEL4 based. And they have set the goal that all RHEL updates can be used on CentOS also. This means that there should be support for 5 years, just like RHEL. When Red Hat brings out a RHEL version, it will be supported for 5 years (in other words, you can run it for 5 years without needing to upgrade to a newer version).

So, the question you might ask yourself is, how critical is my server? Do I host a popular site on it (like LinuxForums ) and is downtime deadly? Or am I having a file/printerserver running at home and if it goes down, it's not the end of the world?
Depending the answer(s), you could choose Fedora or CentOS.

[midnight]

Only an @home file/print, with hopefully ftp access so I can have a few trusted friends be able to login and upload and recieve a few files (working together to start the makings of a game studio). But mainly a locally based file/print server. I dont need bleeding edge by far (I save that for MY machine) so I'm assuming go for the centOS?

[Redman]

Only an @home file/print, with hopefully ftp access so I can have a few trusted friends be able to login and upload and recieve a few files (working together to start the makings of a game studio). But mainly a locally based file/print server. I dont need bleeding edge by far (I save that for MY machine) so I'm assuming go for the centOS?

If you intend to install the server and hide it somewhere in some dark location for some time ("fire and forget"), then I'd say CentOS.
Updates (if you are concerned about it) come for the next 7 years (based on the updates by Red Hat, look here).
A Fedora-release will last some 1 to 2 years before it's labeled "legacy" and it transfered to the Fedora Legacy site (see here for more details).



As a matter of fact, I'm thinking myself switching to CentOS on my server instead of going for Fedora 4

[adam7979]

btw, there are several redhat clones out there, an interesting article published here should give you a better idea about what's going on between redhat enterprise and these clones

[Redman]

btw, there are several redhat clones out there, an interesting article published here should give you a better idea about what's going on between redhat enterprise and these clones

Nice article, clears things up...

Pie Box Linux was new to me. Downside of that distro is that you can only buy it, downloading isn't possible