Ok couple of questions. I have an older pc that I installed Debian on. I installed command line only no gui. I wanted to learn more about servers so this is a learning experience for me.

1. I don't know where to go from here. Is there a good guide that I can use to setup the server on my home network? I have the debian pc, one windows laptop, and one apple macbook pro laptop.

2. Can I remote into the debian pc from my apple laptop to work on it?

Thanks

A server has to have a role or use. What tasks do you want this to perform? Tasks usually need to be set up one at a time. Not really a single command for do it all for me, yet.

Exactly how old is this computer? Specs?

I'd think you can remote into it or it is possible.

I would start as file server and backup.

I wanted to remote into it as it is in the basement. Just so I don't have to go down there.

It is a 32 bit dual pentium 3 with 2 gigs of ram 320 gig HD. An older Dell. If I get it going I may add a HD.

You can do a variety of things---e.g.
Set it up with shared drives
Set it up with FTP
Install Apache and make it a web server
etc.

That is good enough to run almost anything. I'd be tempted to throw in a gui but you can if you want do it all from cli.

You need to tell us what kind of file you want to serve. Video, Music or text files. It makes a difference as to what would be recommended.

Also what do you want backup? The entire Windows box or just select files and do you want hourly, daily or just when you feel like it backups.

I use ' rsnapshot ' for backing up select files every 4 hours. That may be over kill and once a week would be better but it's automatic and doesn't take up anymore disk space. I used to use filezilla and then midnight commander (mc) but got lazy and switched.