Most "out-of-the-box" fileserver with samba
 

Im looking for the easiest way to get a fileserver with samba up and running.

The machine is going to serve 3-5 windows clients - nothing else.

Which distribution should i choose?

Pobably doesn't matter too much. I'd choose something server orientated (I guess this is all you're using it for). How about CentOS with a minumim install to keep it light. Has good packages available through the RH repos. These will help you keep Samba up to date. I'd probably disable SELinux thoughj - it can be a real bugger with Samba.

I agree with billymayday that centos is a good file server os, however suse would probably be easier for someone new to linux. Just use YaST to configure all of the file sharing. YaST is SuSE's gui configuration editor that let's you pretty much control all of your installed services with an easy to use user interface. I haven't had the best luck with CentOS's gui samba configuration editor. I usually end up going back to manually editing the smb.conf file.

I don't use the gui full stop, so I wouldn't know

I'll also agree with the previous replys, Suse (SLES in particular) is very easy, although, I'd like to suggest having a look at using webmin as a very easy way to setup samba (and many other services) if you choose not to use Suse. You can of course also use it on Suse, makes a nice compliment to yast.

2c wirth...