Suggestions of distros for file server
 

The server will be a PIII 400Mhz, with 128MB RAM.

I'll have 2 HD's
1GB HD - this will have OS on it
160GB HD - File server HD

Was wondering if anyone had any opinions on what distro I should use.

Factors to consider:
1. Windows boxes will be accessing this as well as Linux boxes
2. Ease of configurability - what I mean is does a certain distro add-in a certain functionality to make it more easily configurable for a file server simply because I won't be using a GUI ... it will all be text commands that I want to use. However, initially to configure it I may use it GUI but not after it's been initially configured, but when I go back I want to be able to configure it through text commands :). (I know Linux pretty well so learning it won't be a problem) :)
3. Speed - I know Linux has quite the advantage over Windows NT as a file server because it's faster but I would like to know if any of you have experienced a difference in speed with other distros


That's about all I really have right now :).

Thanks for your suggestions in advance.

well, you are going to have to choose a pretty slim distro, and skip kde and gnome installation to get everything onto 1GB. I recently did a full install of FC2 and it used 8GB.... something to think about.

search the forums for item related to slim distros.

I would say College Linux or Slackware. I'm only guessing though that College Linux comes with Samba (I don't see why it wouldn't). College Linux is 1 CD and Slack is 2...once things are extracted it will take more space but still better than fooling with 3 discs from something like Fedora. Of course, they might be harder distros to set up than others (at least that's what I found with Slackware)

Moved to the Distribution forum, as it's a distribution-related question..

I'd say to use the distribution you have most experience with. To make your server fast you'd need to remove unneded packages, turn off services you don't need etc. The operation is the same/very similar on all distros, but experience with a certain flavour helps.
Fileserver means Samba, I assume. All (I think so) distribution come with Samba package, so that's not a limitation. You need to fit in a 1GB disk, what is perfectly doable, but without nice graphical tools new distros offer to make the configuration easier. What you may consider is to use Webmin for configuration (and configure using a web browser).
Speed, when unneded features are off, is the same. It's essential to do it, however. So again, the distro you know best.

Why bother with the one giger at all?

Just make a 3gig partition for your OS on the 160 giger. . . and install SuSE 9.1pro. YaST will make it easy to setup the Samba shares, and NFS if needed. . . . YaST also can run via nCurses. . . so you don't need to install X or KDE.

Remote Admin the thing with SSH. . . which you can use from Windows (think Putty) and Linux.

Oh and if SuSE is not your thing. . . then get your hands dirty with Slackware.

Slackware.

U can set up a full install in 20 mins.

I have it running on a dell poweredge!