Im building a custom homeserver, based on a RAID. My aim is to build a reliable fileserver, but I also want it to be capable of playing music (as it has an audio output), and streaming movies/music to other devices in the network.
Later on, I'd also like to run some services on the background (like Apache,VNC or so). Im quite confused of all those Linux distributions all around and frankly I don't know which one would be best for me. Any ideas?
Thanks a lot for any advice!
For ease of installation and use for your needs, Ubuntu Server would be a great choice. A very well-support operating system with tons of documentation and community support, Ubuntu will allow you to do the initial setup as a LAMP/Samba server - fulfilling your needs for a web server, as well as a file server. You simply choose the type of server you want, and it will install the required packages, dependencies, and allow you to set some options without directly modifying the .conf files.
I personally use and have been using Ubuntu since 6.04. One of the best distros of Linux. Hardware support is superb - my web and file server needed NO additional hardware drivers for any of the NIC's, sound, video, the SATA card - all worked after the initial install.
I advise you Debian. This is a high balanced distribution, great for server and desktop application as well.
Depending on your needs, you may want to Google for LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP/Perl/Python) and see what you can do with this. Which services do you want to run ? If all you want is share a bunch of files, FreeNAS may do the job. If you want media streaming or other fancy purposes, the deal is different. ClearOS or ClarkConnect may also be appropriate for you, depending on your needs.
It also depends how much you want to play with the inner config files. ClearOS is mostly a web-based system, which can run headlessly, and where all configuration and administration is done through the web.
