guys here is the deal, for the past three years my home has been windows free, running only linux and free bsd oldest sone has mandrake 10.1 second son has linspire 4.5
oldest son has laptop with linspire I have laptop with suse 9.2 . Down in the noc I have my main box with mandrake 10.1 official I have a server running fedora core 3 and finally I have a box I use for testing differant distros.
The time has come for a total home network with a server that serves up all the ripped dvd's tv shows music and files I want to be able to connect to 2 tv's as well .Everything in the house is networked both hardwired and wireless.
the server will have 1 gig ddr ram and 2x 160 gig drives I think I will have mandrake 10. 0r 10.2 on it what advise can you guys give for me ie any links to similer projects ,
wireless connectivity to tv's ect .All advise and suggestion will be appreciated.

what sort of ideas are you after? for the actual serving software, i'd suggest freevo or mythtv.

ok what I want to really do is the following:

1] have a server with all my media on it ripped dvd's , jpegs, mp3's hsared out so that all computers can access it from a link on a family [internal] website.

2] I want to connect to my two tv's ie probably thru svideo in [ if this is possable] using myth or freevo so that if we change the input setting on the tv it will show as a component and we will be able to use as a htpc , I already built a htpc with freevo but I want this to be more .

3] a website hosted withing the home network .

4] e-mail server so we all have a e-mail with our own domain[ i already have a domain].

From what I know of samba I believe I could use it , remember all computers are linux and freebsd , there are no windows machines.I have 1 networked hplaserjet printer .

Can I use Samba?
Is it possable to connect to two tv's either wireless or wired and use svideo or other?
do you guys know of links , I have googled quite a few . Most of what I have googled has been on building a htpc to sit on top of tv , I already did this last year fedora core 1 and freevo.This will be a full out network for home with the added bonus of multimedia . I will post all news here and this time I am keeping notes so I can repeat it all .