I'm looking at building a small server for my home office. I've played around very little w/ linux, namely just a couple older distro's of Mandrake. Basically I've got an Athlon 64 system, 1gig ram, and 2 sata 250 gig. hds ran in a raid conf. NEEDS: I need a good server for both my work (architecture, graphic arts, and Digital Video production) plus my wife work (mostly word documents/spreadsheats) and an extensive music/video collection. We have two XP machines and will soon be adding a MAC for my son. MY QUESTION: With what I have hardware wise and what I want to accomplish, should I be looking a linux system and which distro would be the best for this job. Thanks so much! Bryan

That is PLENTY for a home server. Of course, you haven't said specifically what you want your server to do. But I am assuming you want a fileserver....maybe an intranet? Linux is perfect, also. As far as which distro is best for this job, well, really just about all of them can accomplish that job, even the "desktop" distros. I personally prefer Fedora Core. A lot of people are using Gentoo these days. Also popular are Mandriva, Suse, Debian, and Slackware. You should find some of the online forums dedicated to each of those distros, and maybe based on the community itself, you can make a more informed decision. MrBoogie

Personally I love Slackware. It is lightweight enough, yet highly personalizable and configurable. Plus great fonts. I just don't see what else should it do.

Thanks Guys, And yes, sorry for not clarifying, this will be an intranet....I'm mainly wanting it for the back up capability. My file size for 3d renderings/animations and graphics work can be quite large, and due to the price, I though I might as well go ahead and get the big drives. Thanks again! Bryan