I had Win 7 running as my home server and it worked perfectly. For some reason I thought I would try Windows Home Server 2011. While this worked technically, it is not what I needed at all. Before I go back to my trusty Win 7 install, I want to give Linux a shot on the srever. Here's what I need:

1. Ability to run a backup utility to copy new files from one large USB drive to another. This is more of a sync than a backup since I want deleted files from Drive A removed from Drive B.
2. Print server
3. The wife is a pro photographer and she stores thosands and thousands of images on th mass storage. With Win 7, she could use the Windows Live Photo Gallery for cataloging and easy viewing. Is there an equivalent here?

Which dsitro would you select based on the above requirements?

Any distribution of Linux would suffice. However, for stability, I would go with either Slackware or Debian.

Note: GNU/Linux is NOT MS Windows. If you've never run Linux before, you'll have a steep learning curve ahead of you. Linux is not going to look or behave like anything you're familiar with from using Windows.

Luck!

~Eric

The best distro for a home server that is simple to set up and use is probably FreeBSD or OpenBSD even though they are not considered linux's, technically.

http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/58887

Kind regards