Hello all,
I'm a frustrated Windows 2k3 Server user.... Wanting to move to Linux to run the server.. I just wonder which distro is secure and the most easiest to set up to share folders with Mac OS X & a Windows 2000- XP Computer with no promblem at all.. I just want it simple... Like this ... Set up OS, Set it to share a Drive with nothing but Data on it. Which distro should I go with... I think that drive which is 149 GB With all the data on it is NFTS so could some one give me some pointers of which Distro is best.. I have Red Hat 9 , SUSE 9, Mandrake 9 , Fedora... I'm running a Proliant 800 server with 550 MHz , 1 GB RAM ... Thanks for your help.... Also there's one more thing I would like to access this server via remote desktop from Windows or Mac OS X so which application for the OS X should I get... Same for Windows... I can't have the montior for the server on the table when I have the Mac on it so...

Basically, you need a server running only two services:
sshd (http://www.openssh.org)
Samba (http://www.samba.org)

Most distributions come with this available/built in, I know Fedora Core 3 would be an excellent choice. My server runs off Debian/GNU Linux, providing both of those functionalities (and others).

Mac OS X has a built in ssh client, for Windows, I reccomend PuTTY (google for putty, it should be the first result).

Fedora is probably easiest to install.

Another note, you'll want to migrate your NTFS system to (most likely) ReiserFS or EXT3.

So any distro will do as long as I have these 2 services running... Right? Can I mount the drives from OS X since it's already got Samba on it.. do i mount them as smb:\\ ipaddress ?? what about remote desktop? also I'm a newbie so I don't really know how to set perrmissions on sharing a drive... Can I do that migrate to Resier FS with out losing any data at all?


Thanks,

Jason