I have a computer project, and I'm going to make it server to run home FTP wirelessly, so I have easy deposit when using iBook to surf the net and download stuff so I can just toss them to that box easily even if away from home which I'm more than at home. Server is possibly going to have another functionality as a IMAP server. I'm going to make it accept only registered MAC-addresses. I need to be able to take full control over that system with iBook, since I'm most likely just going to set it up and then give display & controllers back to my friend.
I'm quite used to operating on command line, but remote accessing is something new for me. I'm not even sure if FTP would be the best protocol to use between two unixes, but it's the one I'm most familiar with. If you have other ideas, please express those!
So, which edition of BSD's you'd recommend? Or should I take some Linux instead?

I wouldn't recommend any BSD to a newbie, but just about any Linux distro can do what you wish. And you will be joining the which distro thread soon.

Right. Thanks for info. I think I'll try myself. Now, how the hell I can delete my own threads?

<rebuke>That doesn't sound very nice -- "no BSD will work for you, but any Linux would" -- come now, you've barely even presented any evidence for your argument!</rebuke>

Anyway, since you're comfortable with the CLI then you should have no problem setting up a BSD system. Since it seems like you're basically going to run a networked file-server, I'd recommend OpenBSD because: (1) many networking services are installed by default (2) it has an excellent firewall [pf] (3) it has a fantastic security track record. You can use SSH for remote shell access, and SCP (which works through the same service) for moving files back and forth.

When you first get started, it will seem scary, but steel your heart, read the docs (most especially manual pages and those online at http://www.openbsd.org/), and read what you typed before you hit ENTER, and you'll be just fine! Any more questions, of course, we'll be happy to try and answer here.

One possible mark against OpenBSD in this case is the fact that wireless networking may not be supported for your hardware. I know wireless is one of the project's big focuses at this time, but they don't have everything covered yet. If it doesn't work out (you'll know during installation, most likely) try NetBSD or FreeBSD instead. Both have excellent hardware support, and operate in a manner very similar to OpenBSD. Their firewalls lag somewhat behind the capabilities of the latest version of pf, though (IMHO).

--

Nothing against Linux here, as it's a great family of OSes, but I thought since you'd asked about BSD, that I'd offer up whatever information I could on the subject. Personally I like BSD better, but I think that for most intents and purposes they're practically the same when it comes to this sort of thing. The only real difference I can think of is what kind of service management utility the distro gives you for this sort of thing. On BSD, there are none, but if you're not afraid of the CLI then even more flexibility and power (plus easy remote administration) awaits you!

Whatever you decide, good luck!

Any of the BSDs would be fine for him. And I'd probably recommend FreeBSD as being slightly more friendly. But all are fine if he's comfortable at the command line.

Sorry, didn't mean to come across as anti-BSD (I have some FreeBSD systems), I just don't think that any BSD's are very newbie-friendly because I find hardware support to be less thorough and they aren't as easy to setup as your average Linux.

I've checked that at least FreeBSD offers complete support for amd64. and with little fiddling I'd get geforce 6150 that's integrated on my motherboard fully functional. other functions are trivial. I'm more interested in BSD because I've been on Linux already and OS X is based on BSD and I've used it's command line more than any linux for last 18-or-so months.

I have a GeForce FX 5500 on my system that works great with the binary Nvidia drivers. Of course it's a 32 bit system and maybe you'll have issues with the 64 bit but I doubt it. The graphic support isn't very hard to get working. But if you're running this as a server that you'll be accessing remotely, why are you installing X on it? You won't need X to get the server you described above. You can certainly have it (on top of all the rest, I've done something similar before) but you don't need it.

It's going to be primarily server, but unfortunately I need to be able to use both XP & Vista on the computer because of my job. Otherwise I'd just bougth some old pentium with big harddrive.
Other reason why I want X windows to work is complete graphical remote desktop access from iBook to server, be the operating system what so ever. Why? Because I want so.

Which reminds me: is there any good software to do that between other platforms and FreeBSD? I'm used to use VNC between mac & windows.

You won't need to get the video card working for remote graphical access. That's a function of the Xserver... which will be local to whatever computer you're on. The server is the keyboard, mouse, and monitor you're sitting at. The client is the machine the programs are running on. It's a little backwards from what people are used to.

XP and Vista have no bearing on Xorg... but you know that. So your main reason is that you want to. That's cool. As for other platforms, I don't know. I rarely bother to remotely run the whole desktop. Usually I'll ssh into the machine and just start the [graphical] programs I want and not everything. "ssh -X user@machine gkrellm" for example. As most machines I sit at support X (being either *nix or OSX which has X11.app to layer the protocols on top of everything), I've never tried anything else.

I do no serious work on Windows so I've never tried X forwarding to it nor do I know what programs would work to do that.