Distro decisions.

Ubuntu?

[Gibble]

Ok currently, the way my home network works, is I have a slack machine, acting as a router, and running apache, and a few other things...I attempted using jails to seperate everything, and while it worked...it's a pita to maintain. Behind this machine, on the network I have a wireless router as an access point. My knoppmythtv box (linux pvr) and my Windows PCs are on the wired network, while my windows laptop uses the wireless access point.

I am planning to rip out the slackware box, and just use the wireless router for all my computers, wired and wireless. Which frees up a PC. Since, I don't need it as a webserver (external hosting) as my development is done in a standalone system (WAMP) with the laptop.

Now, I want to use that PC, to create a fileshare on the network. Accessible by the windows machines and the linux (mythtv) machine, as well as external ftp connections. Samba, FTP, and whatever else I need for the linux machines to talk (NFS?). I would also like for this machine to be able to handle external USB drives, so I can quickly add storage as I have several of them, and centralizing them would be nice. Last, but not least, I'd like to run KDE or Gnome, or whatever and be able to use some form of vnc to manage this machine. And...yes, there's an and, as I was typing all this out, I've come to the conclusion I want to run my mythtv server on this as well...so I'm thinking ubuntu?

Should all this be possible? Any suggestions on the procedure for getting all this running?

[jtara]

I think you can do everything you want to do with any modern distribution. Most if not all of what you need will be a part of the distribution.

Ubuntu/Kbuntu is a good choice, though I don't like the fact that there are seperate distributions for Gnome and KDE. I use Fedora Core 5, myself, though I know it's not everyone's cup of tea. My theory is that it has the best third-party support. If it's not available for Fedora Core, it's not available...

[graeme_p]

I don't like the fact that there are separate distributions for Gnome and KDE

They are not really separate distributions - the difference is only what packages are included on the install CD. If they did not do that you could not have a single CD install.

Accessible by the windows machines and the linux (mythtv) machine, as well as external ftp connections. Samba, FTP, and whatever else I need for the linux machines to talk (NFS?). I would also like for this machine to be able to handle external USB drives, so I can quickly add storage as I have several of them, and centralizing them would be nice. Last, but not least, I'd like to run KDE or Gnome, or whatever and be able to use some form of vnc to manage this machine

You can install Ubuntu and then apt-get kubuntu (or vice-versa) and have both desktops installed.

FTP can be set up fairly easily on any distro I have used (although there can be more configuration if you have more advanced requirements).

USB storage should work with the default install.

Gnome is simpler, KDE is more configurable, makes it easier to find advanced options and has a very Windows like default configuration. There is no reason not to install both.

ANY linux desktop will work fine with an X-Windows thin client. It is again just works for any Linux/Unix machine and I use it all the time. For windows google for "windows x server": I have not used these myself but some developers at my last job used to use these all the time.

For Linux PCs to access each others directories you can use NFS. I do not use it myself because opening files on another PC in KDE or Gnome apps works fine across FTP or SFTP/SSH.

Samba seems to me to be the most likely source of problems. I do not use it (because I have no Windows PCs) but I have heard a lot of complaints about Samba configuration.

[Gibble]

Hi, thanks.

Btw, anybody use openLDAP? How hard is it to configure and manage?